Red Bear Ventures (RBV) is a community-first investment platform which invests exclusively in companies founded by, or managed by, the students, faculty, staff, and alumni of Cornell University, one of the world’s most innovative and entrepreneurial universities.
Led by industry veterans and long-time business partners Dan Stoller (CALS ‘93) and Gus Warren (A&S ‘94), RBV invests across stages and verticals and syndicates investment opportunities to the RBV community via special purpose vehicles (SPVs).
Join the RBV Community!
We’ll keep you in the loop on exciting companies (roughly 1-2 per month).
No pressure to invest - just a way to stay close to what Cornellians are building and support founders if it’s a fit.
RBV Portfolio
(RBV started investing in December 2024)
Stage: Series A
About: A platform to deliver affordable, reliable fusion power.
Cornell Affiliation: Will Regan, President/Co-Founder, Cornell AB Physics ‘06
Stage: Seed
About: Democratizing access to the world’s best athletic coaching.
Cornell Affiliation: Rocky Collis, CEO/Co-founder, Cornell A&S ‘06
Stage: Seed
About: A virtual bank for international businesses, executives, and students.
Cornell Affiliation: Amarildo Gjondrekaj, CEO/Co-Founder, Cornell JGSM ‘19 and Sara Schmitt, COO/Co-Founder, Cornell JGSM ‘19
Exit: Acquired October 24, 2025. Details here.
Stage: Series A
About: A platform to transform microbiome drug screening, drug discovery, and therapeutic development across multiple diseases.
Cornell Affiliation: Hao Shi, CTO/Co-founder, Cornell Dept. of Physics PhD ‘20 and Iwijn De Vlaminck, Co-founder and Chair of Kanvas’ Scientific Advisory Board, Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Cornell
Stage: Pre-seed
About: The smarter way to build self-reliant, high-performing teams.
Cornell Affiliation: Alberto Escarlate, CTO/Co-Founder, Co-head Startup Studio @ Cornell Tech
Stage: Series A+
About: A revolutionary way to test for infectious diseases, powered by genomics and artificial intelligence..
Cornell Affiliation: Dr. Niamh O’Hara, Co-Founder and CEO, is a scientist-entrepreneur who did her postdoc work in health tech and metagenomics at Cornell Tech. Dr. Chris Mason, Co-Founder, is Professor of Physiology and Biophysics at Weill Cornell Medicine.
About Us
RBV is designed to connect the 350,000+ people in the Cornell community to the remarkable innovation happening at Cornell start-ups. The platform also makes it very easy for Cornell entrepreneurs to engage with the school’s vast network of alumni for mentorship, introductions, and investment.
As Managing Partners of RBV, Dan Stoller and Gus Warren – friends for over thirty years and business partners since 2020 – have 60+ years of experience managing venture funds and assessing, investing in, and operating early-stage technology companies. They have started, or been early employees of, eight startup companies, five of which were acquired and two of which are still in operation.
Gus Warren was part of the venture group at Hambrecht and Quist, and has managed, or helped manage, venture funds for British Telecom, Samsung, Time Warner and Texas Instruments. He was also a Venture Partner at FirstMark Capital. His investments have included InfoGear (acquired by Cisco), Digital Fountain (acquired by Qualcomm), XtremeSpectrum (acquired by Motorola), Speakeasy (acquired by BestBuy), Arroyo Video Solutions (acquired by Cisco), BigBand Networks (IPO), Entropic Communications (IPO), Skystream Network (acquired by Tandberg Television, now Ericsson), and Visible World (acquired by Comcast).
Dan Stoller played an instrumental role in the early days of the Internet advertising business, then spent 16 years in executive roles at AOL and Time Warner, most recently as Group Vice President, Corporate & Technology Strategy at Time Warner Cable, where he headed a team that analyzed and advised on the key technical, competitive, and policy issues driving the business. He also developed and managed the TWC “Greenlight” process that deployed hundreds of millions in capital for technology, infrastructure, and new products.