kauffman-fellows
(7)
Samir Kaji
Samir Kaji is the co-founder and CEO of Allocate, a private markets platform that helps wealth advisors and family offices build and manage institutional-quality portfolios. Before founding Allocate, he spent about 22 years in venture banking at Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic Bank, where he advised more than 700 venture and private equity firms. He also hosts Venture Unlocked, a widely followed podcast and newsletter about how venture capital firms are built and scaled.
Casandra Stewart
Casandra Espinoza Stewart is the CEO and co-founder of Homeroom, a San Francisco software platform that brings the messy, paper-bound world of after-school enrichment, summer camps and extended care online. A Stanford public-policy grad and former Greylock Partners analyst, she traded venture capital for venture building, teaming up with former teacher Christina Walker to give PTAs, parents and class vendors one place to schedule, book and get paid. Homeroom hit a $1M GMV run rate in month one and raised $3.5M in seed funding led by Forerunner Ventures in 2019.
Carl Fritjofsson
Carl Fritjofsson is a General Partner at Creandum based in San Francisco, where he focuses on AI infrastructure, vertical AI, and consumer bets. A Swede who co-founded the rewards startup Wrapp and the bootstrapped ad network AdProfit before turning investor, he built Creandum's Silicon Valley office and has backed companies including Cornershop (sold to Uber for $3.5B), Pipe, GoPuff, Cast AI, Planhat, SafetyWing, and H Company.
Eric Wiesen
Eric Wiesen is a General Partner at Bullpen Capital, a San Francisco-based venture firm specializing in post-seed and early-growth investments. A two-time founder, former corporate attorney at Fenwick & West, and ex-General Partner at RRE Ventures, Wiesen brings a rare trifecta of legal, entrepreneurial, and investment experience to backing companies that don't fit the standard seed-to-Series-A mold. His track record includes exits through Braintree/PayPal ($800M), Venmo, Makerbot, and TapCommerce, and he's known for hunting non-obvious, non-consensus opportunities where value is obscured from the investment herd.
Michael Fanfant
Michael Fanfant is a General Partner at Runa Capital, a $200M+ early-stage VC firm, where he backs B2B SaaS and regulated-industry startups in fintech, edtech, and digital health. Before turning investor, he co-founded Octane Lending — a point-of-sale financing platform for powersports vehicles that hit a $900M+ valuation in 2021. A Stanford economics graduate, Kauffman Fellow (Class 27), and Events & Community Chair at BLCK VC, Fanfant brings the operational credibility of a builder and the pattern-recognition of an investor to every check he writes.
Kara Egan
Kara Egan is the co-founder and CEO of Teal Health, the San Francisco-based company behind the Teal Wand - the first and only FDA-authorized at-home self-collection device for cervical cancer screening in the United States. A Stanford engineer-turned-Wharton MBA, Kara spent years as a venture capital investor at Emergence Capital and .406 Ventures before betting on a product she believed could remake an 80-year-old medical process. Backed by $23M from investors including Emerson Collective, Serena Ventures, and Forerunner, Teal Health has rapidly expanded nationwide with a device that studies show is just as accurate as in-clinic screening and preferred by 94% of women who tried it.
Tanguy Chau
Tanguy Chau is the Co-Founder and CEO of Paxton AI, a Palo Alto-based legal tech company building an AI-powered assistant for lawyers. A Belgian-born, MIT-trained chemical engineer who competed for Belgium in sailing and chemistry olympiads, Chau spent seven years as a venture capitalist at Formation 8 and Mayfield Fund before co-founding Paxton in 2022. Under his leadership, Paxton raised a $22M Series A in January 2025 (total $28M), achieved a 94% non-hallucination rate on the Stanford Legal Hallucination Benchmark, and grew 14x in monthly recurring revenue over nine months - serving clients from solo practitioners to the nation's 20 largest law firms.