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Investing in young talents has so many parallels with investing in young startups. Getting in at the “pre-seed’ round of these talents allows me to be at the beginning of highest-growth talents who go on to have incredible high-powered careers, both in and outside of tech.
Romulus Capital Venture Fellowship is a semester-long fellowship where we identify some of the brightest, hustling young talents who may never heard of venture capital before and teach them how to break into the craft of investing through both seminar-like group sessions and experiential learning.
With 4 years’ experience of running the program and with 100+ alumni, we have learned to limit the cohort to 6–8 spots so that each fellow receives ample opportunities to experience firsthand apprenticeship learning, find a personal mentorship at the partnership and the associate level, and develop meaningful relationships among the cohort-mates. In exchange, we get the unique opportunity to witness firsthand each fellows’ learning rate and their standards of excellence over a meaningful amount of time.
With over 100–150 applicants every semester, I’m really proud to announce our eight fellows for the RCVF 21F Cohort:
Valentina Costarelli
Valentina is at the California Institute of Technology where she is majoring in Computer Science with a concentration in Physics. Born in Italy, she moved to southern California with her family at the age of 12. She is fascinated by the world of science, tech, and finance. Valentina recently worked as a software development engineer at Amazon within the AWS Artificial Intelligence division. Before that, she was an observational cosmology intern researching the mysteries of the early universe. She has also shadowed ophthalmologic procedures and intraocular lens replacement surgeries. Valentina is passionate about STEM advocacy and education and has been a part of international conferences as a guest speaker and other STEM events. Outside of work and her studies, Valentina loves art, reading, and walks along the beach.
Mirella Deng
Mirella is at McGill University, studying investment management. Born and raised in Ottawa, she grew up swimming competitively and avidly researching proteins before entering the busy world of finance. She recently completed a summer in investment banking at TD Securities with the TMT Toronto team where she was immersed in the healthcare IT space and introduced to venture capital and growth equity. Through the Romulus Capital Venture Fellowship, she is excited to dive deeper into the entrepreneurial and tech side of business and realize synergies with her finance background. Outside of class, Mirella enjoys getting back in the pool, listening to Khalid, and dreaming about her future tiny house build.
Ivan Dewerpe
Ivan is a global citizen, having lived in seven countries across four continents, and is a first-year graduate student at Columbia University in Computer Science. He is a founding member of Monolog, an audio journaling company augmented by Natural Language Processing, enabling users to analyze the aspects of their lives that impact their Happiness, Stress, Anxiety and Focus levels. He is most passionate about Artificial Intelligence, especially Reinforcement Learning, AI Safety and explainability. One of his long-term goals is to build trust between humans and technology by ensuring the development of human-interpretable AI systems to allow for oversight of potential machine flaws. Outside of Romulus, Ivan is an avid fan of Fnatic’s League of Legends team, loves playing tennis and squash with friends, and learning Mandarin.
Katherine He
Katherine is at MIT double majoring in computer science and business management. She’s passionate about all areas of entrepreneurship and especially interested in innovative technological solutions that will fundamentally disrupt existing sectors. Previously, she interned at Two Sigma during summer 2021, where she worked on infrastructure for treasury and payments, and at the startup AccesSOS during spring 2021 where she worked on the UI and functionalities of their application. On campus, she’s the director of HackMIT, a student-run organization that operates MIT’s largest undergraduate hackathon with over 1,000 annual participants and significant corporate sponsorships. She is also involved in MIT’s student government and TedxMIT. Outside of MIT and the business world, Katherine enjoys listening, playing, and writing music, as well as traveling to new cities and exploring their museums.
Mariam Kamerji
Mariam is at Columbia University where she hopes to major in sustainable development and business as she has a passion for creating sustainable change in the world. Mariam has a passion for startups as she is heavily immersed in the Columbia Startup ecosystem. She has been product manager for a total of three startups (Sonar, Pawful, and Opal) through the Columbia Build Lab, where she created product strategies, managed people, and lead discussions and initiatives to move things forward for each respective startup. She was also an Almaworks Fellow and learned impact organizational strategy, product development, and go-to-market strategy. Currently she is also working on a startup of her own called Throworg that works to drastically decrease greenhouse gas emissions that are a result of the waste sector. Outside of the startup world, Mariam likes to go to arcade games and try to win the prizes-aka the fluffy stuffed animals.
Priyanka Kumar
Priyanka is at Harvard University majoring in Economics with a secondary in Computer Science. She is the Vice President of Harvard Undergraduate Capital Partners and started the HUCP Innovation Fund to support early-stage entrepreneurs from diverse backgrounds by providing equity-free grants of up to $10K and thousands of dollars in partnership credits to any Harvard-affiliated founder. Priyanka is very passionate about robotics and spent two summers at General Electric’s Research and Development Robotics Group creating crawler robots and drones for the inspection and maintenance industry in aviation and energy sectors. Outside of robotics, Priyanka cares a lot about creating better access to education for individuals from all backgrounds and has been recently exploring and working with startups in the edtech space. In her free time, Priyanka likes to hang out on Clubhouse, listen to podcasts like Ted Radio Hour and The Daily, or sing opera.
Jay Qu
Jay is a fifth year PhD Candidate in Physics at Stanford, researching at SLAC National Lab in the Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences. He is most passionate about the Energy, Climate Tech, and Real Estate spaces, and how new research and technologies can drive impactful hardware, software, and business model innovations. His interest in entrepreneurship started in late 2019 when he co-founded a startup with friends from college called Terra2, which aimed to democratize solar investing via an online platform that would allow everyday investors to invest directly in solar projects via “solar REITs,” and led this team through the 2020 Cleantech Open accelerator. He is also passionate about the way in which we can leverage this new age of interconnectedness to build technology-enabled online platforms and communities to connect us with other people with shared interests and ideals. To that end, he is working on an idea through Stanford’s Cardinal Ventures accelerator and the GSB’s Startup Garage that aims to enable emerging music artists to more directly engage with their supporters and build a fan community via blockchain technology. Jay loves going to music performances, hiking, traveling, and meeting people from all walks of life.
RunLin Wang
RunLin is at Harvard University studying Statistics and Computer Science. Originally from Calgary, Canada, he spent most of his time before college studying biology and chemistry, before coming to college and being captivated by the dynamic interface between technological innovation and the business world. Over the past few years, he’s worked with a variety of small startups in areas ranging from health software to edtech. RunLin particularly enjoys the thought process behind analyzing how small startup ideas can scale and make large-scale impacts in a sector. He also likes to focus on new technologies in technical industries, such as telecommunications and semiconductors. In his free time, he can be found skiing, playing tennis, and riding electric scooters.
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