In early June of this year, I reached out to Patricia on Wharton’s MBA Class of 2026 admitted students Slack. Having loved my time in climate policy and climate tech venture capital, I was excited to meet Wharton classmates interested in the space as I transitioned into my MBA.
As is often the case in 2024, the Slack message turned into a Zoom coffee chat, on which we realized we had a lot in common (product managers, climate tech, etc.) as well as key difference points between us (me being tech-oriented in PM vs. Patricia loving the design side, etc.). Read: a great co-founder dynamic. Soon, we found ourselves riffing about different business ideas online and offline.
These were some of some of our ideas:
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What if we built a CRM for your life?
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What if we made it so that a portion of your spending automatically goes into a money market fund (have y’all ever heard of Acorn…we thought we killed it here)?
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Blind/Fishbowl but for VC….? (sounds toxic right?)
As we were riffing something hit us — when we got to campus and started our venture, how would it get funded and move beyond the idea / MVP stage? We soon came across a dilemma common to many founders at Wharton and within the greater Penn community.
At schools like Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, Haas Business School at UC Berkeley and Harvard Business School, founders have the full attention of VCs of all sizes who make it a key part of their job to get to know, coach, and eventually fund student founders at these schools. At Stanford and Berkeley, it’s easy to run into a VC on-campus, excited to chat about your startup. At Wharton, that is not so much the case.
At the same time, students at these schools have the backing of their classmates when building startups. Campus funds funded and operated by students like the 20|20 Fund and Courtyard Ventures carry student startups forward with small checks and operational support, enabling startups to move past pre-seed toward broader commercial success.
Here at Penn, without direct connections to VCs and without a student-led VC fund to “bridge the gap” in pre-seed rounds and help founders kickstart their raises, founders take non-dilutive grants and are left to figure out “what’s next” on their own.
Although historically Penn founders have been successful in raising funding ($71B), we are still trailing Harvard ($126B) and Stanford ($125B) by quite a margin. These two missing pieces of the ecosystem, we feel, are a big reason why.
How do we change this? Can we overcome our reputation as the “finance school”?
We think yes. The class composition here at Wharton for example has transitioned from 70% consulting and finance in 2010 to 57% in 2022, with 20% of Wharton grads going into the technology sector. This signals a clear shift in industry at large but also as a point of emphasis at Wharton itself. With more Wharton MBAs setting their sights on technology and entrepreneurship than ever before, we are building Center City Ventures, an early stage fund capitalized and run by the Wharton MBA Class of 2026, to support our classmates in building top-tier startups. We’re raising $750K from our classmates in the Wharton MBA Class of 2026 to invest in and support current Penn-affiliated founders and founders who have graduated from Penn in the last 5 years. We see an opportunity now to capitalize on this momentum by bringing the expertise and capital from WG26 to galvanize the burgeoning startup ecosystem here at Penn.
The shift we’re seeing at Wharton and across Penn is just the beginning. By addressing the funding gap with initiatives like Center City Ventures, we can support the thriving ecosystem that nurtures the next generation of innovators and leaders. As we look to the future, we see Penn not just keeping pace with other top universities in the startup space, but setting the standard for student entrepreneurship and innovation. The question is no longer “What comes first: founders or funders?” At Penn, we’re making sure they arrive together, hand in hand, ready to shape the future of business and technology.
Are you a Wharton MBA looking for opportunities to learn more about venture? A Penn alum seeking to give back to student communities at your alma mater? An industry expert hoping to lend your support to student organizations at top schools? Or an investor interested in supporting a student-run venture fund? We’d love to work with you to achieve our mission to support Penn founders and provide VC experience to the Wharton MBA community.
Currently, we’re recruiting members from the Wharton MBA Class of 2026 to help us fund and operate Center City Ventures. Our first fund close for early / founding members is October 1st, 2024, and our second close is December 1st, 2024. Join our mission to build a better Penn startup ecosystem together!
For more information about Center City Ventures, visit centercityventures.com or email any questions to [email protected]
