We invest in Penn entrepreneurs building category-defining innovations across industries.
Why Penn? Outstanding founders and companies come out of the Penn ecosystem, and the numbers back it up:
The Wharton MBA is the #3 top MBA program for producing venture-backed entrepreneurs (Pitchbook 2023)
On the same metrics, Penn’s undergrad programs rank #4 across undergraduate universities worldwide (Pitchbook 2023)
Incredible companies like Splunk, Attentive, Warby Parker, and Deliveroo have emerged from Penn founders — students and alumni — over the years. It’s a long list of outstanding Penn-led innovations over the years, so we won’t bore you with all the details.
Why now? We see an inflection point in Penn’s entrepreneurship ecosystem that allows for best-in-class, category-defining companies to emerge:
Increasing student interest in company-building: Motivated by the growth of school entrepreneurship resources like Venture Lab, more and more students across Penn’s schools are interested in starting their own companies. Thousands of students at our home, The Wharton School, discuss entrepreneurship daily in special-interest Slack and WhatsApp groups. Energy is building in our ecosystem.
AI-proficient entrepreneurs: Through Penn (and specifically Wharton)’s recent investments in AI education, a new set of student / alum founders emerge from the fold. These founders understand AI and are able to either build compelling AI-powered innovations, or otherwise leverage AI within their workflows and teams to build faster and more efficiently.
We’re seeing a new generation of Penn startups emerge: Penn founders are building companies like BetterBasket and Maia leveraging technology to drive differentiated value and motivate systemic and behavioral change. As members of the Wharton MBA class of 2026, we’re excited about what’s to come and keen to catalyze the building of these startups with our financial and operational support.
At Center City Ventures, we aim to catalyze venture success for Penn startups and give startups the unrivaled advantage of support from the Wharton MBA Class of 2026.
OUR INVESTMENT THESIS
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We back startups that are Penn-affiliated, meaning that at least one founder must be a current student of a school at Penn or a Penn alum.
Despite being a venture fund run by the Wharton MBA Class of 2026, we seek startups from founders across Penn, not just Wharton, because we believe in the strength of innovations coming from other programs at Penn (e.g., undergrad, medicine, etc.).
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We hope to back student and alum founders with the demonstrated grit and dedication necessary to achieve startup success. We're not looking for founders building as an extracurricular or as a "side hustle": we seek the best founders who possess deep passion for their problem space, strong conviction for their solution space, and unparalleled dedication to building something zero-to-one.
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We come in at startups' first right-sized capital raises, typically at the pre-seed and seed stages. We prefer to write checks into rounds of $500K or more.
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We most typically won't be the largest check in a funding round that we participate in, and prefer to follow terms set by existing lead investors. In absence of a lead investor, we will work with our expansive co-investor network to help founders meet with and ultimately secure a lead investor for their round.
Our capital commitment is a first "push" for founders raising institutional capital that helps them gain momentum. We speed up momentum through active fundraise support.