The Michigan Venture Capital Association is proud to offer the Venture Fellows Program to Michigan’s venture capital community. The program, launched in 2023, is designed to increase the number of venture professionals in Michigan in order to accelerate the fundraising and deployment of capital into early-stage companies.
Since you started your fellowship, what standout achievements have you been part of and how did you contribute?
Since starting my fellowship in Q4 of 2024, I have been a part of the Arboretum Ventures team for about a year and a half and have had the opportunity to contribute meaningfully to the fund’s core functions including internal development, diligence, deal execution, and portfolio support.
On the internal development front, I helped to facilitate the “onboarding” of two new members of our investment team, by sharing internal organization, best practices, and workflow knowledge with them while also trying to embody the culture that makes our investment team so great. For the fellow junior member, it was a rewarding experience to have been in the same shoes; it has been a collection of moments where I often found myself answering the same questions I posed when I first started. This experience enhanced my stewardship of the firm while also serving as a nice reminder where I could recognize, appreciate, and share my growth over the past year plus.
With more than 350 deals screened about halfway into the year, a particular standout achievement that comes to mind is supporting the diligence and execution for a deal that went into the Arboretum portfolio in Q1/Q2 of 2025; this deal stands out as it matured from a portfolio company to a publicly listed company within the same year. It has been a highly educational and interesting experience to observe this process. I learned a ton about public markets, different investment strategies, and macro-environmental dynamics, which was highly additive to the work and knowledge base that I am building as a private market investor.
What are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced during your fellowship and how have you overcome them?
A continual challenge that I face which I find highly engaging is the breadth and depth of healthcare itself, including the different markets for investment consideration (e.g., neurology, cardiology, etc.) and investment considerations themselves (e.g., reimbursement, competitive landscape). What makes this further challenging is the continually changing nature of both!
While I cannot say that I have or ever will fully “overcome” this challenge, an approach that I continue to work on is to lean on internal team expertise, KOL research, and simply further repetitions and exposure. This comes in many forms, including taking more pitches in the different domains, going to specialized conferences (e.g., the ischemic stroke conference), and doing my best to ask informed and well-aimed questions. Networking always comes in handy here too; there is always someone out there who is an expert in something, and it is our job to find them!
What have you learned about yourself or your perspective on venture capital that’s new or surprising?
A perspective that I continue to appreciate is the relationship and qualitative side of investing. While market sizing, returns modeling, and other technical diligence can be laid out into a concise, well-repetitioned, and arguably more objective process, the “people” side is something that I have continually grown to emphasize and pay respect to. Emotions and subjective thinking of course play a role in investing, and various parties / stakeholders have various incentives and motivations. With more exposure, I am certainly learning more the nuances of this dynamic.
For myself, I often surprise myself with my thoughts and “biases” when it comes to looking and diligencing at investments. In a process I helped to run recently, I found myself waking up some days having a very favorable view and other days having the opposite. Managing this for myself while trusting our diligence process is something I am learning to do with more deal activity. Communication has helped a lot here, both internally within the more experienced investment team and externally with other stakeholders. This added rigor is especially prevalent in earlier stage opportunities, where there are less “numbers” and certainty.
What are your career plans post-fellowship?
I hope to plan for and continue to have the opportunity to work with a talented team on work that is interesting, meaningful, and rewarding whilst developing and taking on more responsibilities. If those things are true then my career plans are satisfied.
What have you enjoyed the most about your affiliation with the MVCA? What is your favorite MVCA event or resource?
It has been interesting to learn more about and get plugged into the venture and start-up ecosystem within the state, which I had had no prior exposure to beforehand. The networking events are specifically conducive to this.
Having had the opportunity to attend conferences of relevant interest is a great resource as well, as it directly supports my experiences, learnings, and goals as stated above. A specific example is when the MVCA supported my attendance of the American Heart Association’s (AHA) Ischemic Stroke Conference in Los Angeles. Having seen many companies in the space where improved patient outcomes can be so high-impact, it was a highly educational and worthwhile experience that I am fortunate to have been supported with.
Besides work, what is one of your passions or aspirations – what do you love to talk about? How is this like or not like venture capital?
Besides work, I like to watch and follow baseball. There are a lot of interesting parallels from the game to venture itself beyond the “pitches” – the “games” and “seasons” are long, and there are so many variables to both, a lot of which is out of direct control but can be optimized for. Furthermore, there is a shared risk and reward element, with overlaying statistics by which decisions can be informed but outcomes cannot be controlled. In summary, consistency is rewarded while being ultimately hard to achieve in both!