Analyst at 2048 Ventures. Former wet-lab researcher. The rare VC who knows what a PCR machine smells like at 2am.
Most venture capital analysts arrive via the consulting conveyor belt - two years at McKinsey, an MBA, then a fund. Lilly Iskold arrived via a different route: a genomics wet lab in lower Manhattan, a cancer-fighting virus startup in New York, and four years at Brandeis studying how cells go wrong at the molecular level. That background is not incidental to her work at 2048 Ventures. It is the work.
At 2048, she evaluates founders building in Vertical AI, Deep Tech, Healthcare, and Biotech - the precise areas where a trained biologist's ability to separate real science from hype is the competitive edge most funds wish they had. When a founder pitches a novel RNA therapy or a gene-editing platform, Lilly doesn't need it explained. She's done those experiments.
"Working on projects researching RNA's role in the development of cancer in cells, along with CAR-T cell therapies."- Lilly Iskold, on her 2024 summer at the NY Genome Center's Sanjana Lab
The New York Genome Center is not a place you stumble into. The Sanjana Lab - led by Neville Sanjana, one of the foremost CRISPR researchers in the world - works on the non-coding cancer genome: the 98% of DNA that doesn't encode proteins but quietly determines whether cells behave or metastasize. Lilly spent a summer there dissecting RNA's role in that process. Before that, she was at Humane Genomics, a startup developing engineered viruses precise enough to kill liver cancer cells without touching healthy tissue. These are not line items on a resume. They are a way of thinking.
She grew up in Livingston, New Jersey - a suburb that looks unremarkable until you notice how many of its alumni end up building or backing things in New York. She chose Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, majoring in Biology with a minor in Chemistry, teaching intro bio labs to other students while conducting her own research. The throughline: she has always been simultaneously explaining and doing.
The move to venture capital was not a pivot away from science. It was the logical extension of it. 2048 Ventures, founded and led by Alex Iskold, writes $500K to $3M checks at the pre-seed and seed stages - the rounds where founders have more conviction than revenue, and where evaluating the quality of a scientific insight is as important as evaluating the market. The fund just closed its third vehicle at $82M. Lilly is part of the team deciding where it goes.
Outside the fund, she explores art museums in whatever city she happens to be in, paints, and carries the memory of Crafty Hour - a handmade wire earring business she co-founded in college that donated its proceeds to the NAACP. Over $600 raised and donated. Small number. Large instinct.
Summer 2024 in the Sanjana Lab at NYU/NYGC, researching RNA's role in cancer development and CAR-T cell therapies as part of the MacMillan Center for the Study of the Non-Coding Cancer Genome.
Research at a platform engineering cancer-killing viruses with unprecedented target specificity. First indication: liver cancer. The kind of moonshot that requires both a brave scientific hypothesis and precise execution.
B.A. in Biology with a Chemistry minor. Served as a Biology Lab Teaching Assistant - translating hard science concepts for peers while developing her own research skills across four years of coursework and experiments.
Managed digital marketing and social media for PathSpot, a food safety tech company. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter - drafting weekly posts, competitor research, and demographic analysis. The builder's mindset applied to brand.
Co-founded in college. Handmade wire earrings sold with a mission: all proceeds donated to the NAACP. Over $600 raised. An early proof that commerce and values don't have to sit in separate rooms.
Now applying scientific rigor to startup evaluation. At 2048, the portfolio spans Vertical AI, Deep Tech, Healthcare, and Biotech - the intersection of hard science and venture capital returns. Home turf for a trained biologist.
Grew up in Livingston, New Jersey - a suburb with a quiet but consistent record of producing New York-area founders and operators.
Sells and donates handmade wire earrings. The market is the NAACP. The founder is someone who invests in startups for a living.
Paints and frequents art museums on her own time - a weekly reminder that good pattern recognition lives in aesthetics, not just spreadsheets.
Worked at Humane Genomics before it became a well-known name. Seeing precision oncology platforms before the hype is the job, and she's done it literally.
Holds a Twitter/X handle (@IskoldLilly) but the actual lab notebooks from Brandeis, Humane Genomics, and the Sanjana Lab tell a fuller story.
The most expensive mistakes in life science investing happen in diligence. When a GP with a finance background nods along to a founder's mechanistic claims because the narrative sounds credible, the fund pays later. Lilly Iskold was trained to interrogate claims - not because VCs taught her to, but because that is what experimental biology demands. You design a control. You question your own assumptions. You replicate before you conclude.
At 2048 Ventures, this training maps directly onto deal evaluation. The fund's thesis-driven approach - writing early checks in Vertical AI, Deep Tech, Healthcare, and Biotech - requires the ability to assess the quality of technical insights at the earliest stages, often before there is much data to look at. For a trained bench researcher, that is a familiar position: evaluating the strength of a hypothesis with limited evidence, and making a call.
Her professional interests center on cancer research and genetic engineering - and post-graduation, she planned to either attend graduate school or gain experience at a biotech company working on cancer therapeutics or gene therapies.- New York Genome Center intern spotlight, 2024
She chose a different path. Instead of the next degree or the next lab, she chose the table where funding decisions are made - a position that lets her influence which cancer therapeutics and gene therapy platforms actually get built, not just which ones she personally runs experiments in. The leverage is different. The rigor required is the same.
The venture capital industry is full of pattern matchers who learned their patterns from the previous generation of successful deals. What's rarer is an analyst who can pattern-match in two directions at once: backwards to a scientific literature she knows, and forwards to a market that hasn't been built yet. That's the position Lilly Iskold occupies. That's the bet 2048 Ventures made when they hired her.