A courtyard is a peculiar place to look for an investment advantage. Nobody has to schedule a meeting there. Conversations drift. A classmate mentions a prototype; someone else knows a potential customer. At Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, that ordinary setting supplied the name for Courtyard Ventures. The fund’s premise is that people already close to founders might have something valuable to contribute, if they can organize themselves well enough to write a check.
- MBA-led capital for early-stage Berkeley startups.
- Typical investments: $50,000-$100,000.
- Half the general partners’ carry earmarked for campus startup groups.
Everybody knew someone. Nobody had much to invest.
In 2021, Haas students formed Courtyard around a mismatch: an abundance of entrepreneurial connections and limited individual investment budgets. Berkeley’s account credits Atusa Sadeghi, Kevin Chang, and Dogakan Toka with the idea. Chang and Sadeghi established the limited liability company with help from entrepreneurship instructor Kurt Beyer. Pooling money gave the community a vehicle for acting on its connections.
Sadeghi put the constraint plainly: “students don’t have much disposable income.” A collection of interested classmates could become an investor founders would take seriously. By January 2022, Haas reported that Courtyard had closed its first two investments. An August profile counted nearly 200 investors. Those are early snapshots, but they show the organizing problem the fund had begun to solve.
The people matter here. Sadeghi came from mechanical engineering and mining, rather than a conventional investment apprenticeship. Courtyard drew on students with professional experience who were learning finance while retaining knowledge of other industries. That mixture helps explain the appeal of an MBA-led fund: a potential source of operating judgment as well as introductions.
A small check with a long address book
Courtyard backs pre-seed and seed companies connected to Berkeley. Its stated approach spans industries, including AI, deep technology, healthcare, and sustainable solutions. Berkeley’s BEGIN directory calls it industry agnostic. The boundary is the community, rather than a single kind of software or scientific breakthrough.
One participant in a funding round. A useful beginning, with more capital still to find.
The firm reports nearly $3 million deployed across multiple funds since 2021. Deployed capital is money invested in startups; it should not be mistaken for company revenue or investor profit. Its usual check is $50,000 to $100,000. For a founder, that makes Courtyard a plausible participant in an early round, while leaving room for other investors.
What accompanies the money? Courtyard offers access to university talent, introductions to later-stage investors, and guidance from founders and MBA operators. Those promises describe practical jobs. A recruiting introduction can help fill a missing role. An investor connection can help open the next financing conversation. Their value depends on whether the introduction reaches the right person at the right moment.
There are two audiences to satisfy. Founders need capital and useful help. Students and alumni supplying capital need a way to participate in startup investing. Courtyard connects them through a venture fund, rather than a product subscription or a course. Its business revolves around investment interests and potential future gains.
Proximity is the thesis
In a 2023 Haas podcast, Fund II general partner Xan Wood described the underlying advantage: “We are in the ecosystem.” His point extended beyond business school to undergraduate and doctoral founders. The potentially interesting company might be coming out of another department, long before it has become a polished fundraising story.
“We are in the ecosystem.”
Xan Wood · Haas Podcasts · 2023
Fund II’s own description names Wood, Bruno Sanovicz, and Elias Mufarech as its MBA team. That successor vehicle gives Courtyard another dimension: the institution must continue even as students graduate. A campus can keep producing founders. Preserving investment judgment and relationships across cohorts is a separate task.
Courtyard’s public writing offers a glimpse of where its attention goes. An October 2024 dispatch covered 19 ideas at a Lean Launchpad pitch night. In December, venture partners Leela Najafi and Zach Quart examined vertical AI search and recommendation systems. One piece watched teams forming; another explored a market thesis. Together they show two kinds of work an early investor can do before writing a check.
Half the carry takes the return trip
Courtyard’s most distinctive commitment concerns what happens if investments succeed. It says half of the general partners’ carried interest will be reinvested into campus groups supporting startups. Carry is the managers’ share of investment profits. The distinction matters: the pledge concerns that share, rather than half the money investors originally supplied.
The final step depends on investment profits. This diagram describes the commitment, not realized returns.
The logic is appealing. Campus organizations help create companies; successful investments could help finance the organizations supporting the next set. This makes community support part of the fund’s economic design. It also makes patience unavoidable. A commitment to share future upside becomes spendable support only when that upside arrives.
Courtyard belongs to a wider Berkeley investment landscape. In September 2025, QB3 reported its participation in a pitch session alongside California Innovation Fund, BEVC, and the Chancellor’s Fund. Four companies presented. The event ended with networking. Even a specialized fund operates among other investors, research programs, and people who can help a company move forward.
Borrow the organizing principle
The useful lesson is specific: gather a community’s scattered capital, define which founders it serves, and make its relationships useful. Berkeley supplies a dense setting for that experiment. A different community would need its own reasons for founders to pick up the phone.
The limits follow from the same design. A small check cannot carry a large financing alone. Familiarity with a founder cannot establish customer demand. Student turnover creates continuity work. Courtyard’s proposition is strongest when its campus access produces concrete help: a person hired, an introduction accepted, an investment made. The courtyard starts the conversation. The fund has to give it somewhere to go.