Camilla Fezzi nearly left the message unanswered. A student at Caltech, working in biology and chemistry, she had received a LinkedIn approach from Davide Franchini with a project in mind. Her first reaction was suspicion of another stranger with a grand proposal. She replied anyway. Eventually, the conversation produced Young Ventures.
That small decision is a useful introduction to the firm. Its central proposition depends on conversations that happen before a company has learned to introduce itself to investors. The person worth meeting might still be a student. The evidence might still be in a laboratory. Someone has to answer the message.
- Student investors scout research founders across nine university ecosystems.
- Deep tech and clean tech are the focus; €100,000 is the stated average ticket.
- The first announced investment is Cortirio, a portable brain-imaging company.
The next room over
Founded by Franchini and Fezzi, Young Ventures connects students around Bocconi, Caltech, Stanford, Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, ETH Zürich, LSE and NYU. The geography matters. These are places where scientific work and potential founders already meet. The firm wants its investors close enough to notice what is happening before the work acquires the packaging of a venture-backed business.
Consider the distinction between knowing that a laboratory exists and knowing what its researchers are trying to make work. A university name can be printed on anybody’s pitch. Familiarity with the people, their experiments and their technical setbacks takes a different kind of access. Young Ventures is betting that student proximity can provide it.
The team’s own role descriptions suggest how it intends to use that access. Its roster includes technical partners alongside investment partners, with campus affiliations attached. The fields are demanding: robotics, computational biology, advanced materials, frontier computing and industrial decarbonisation. Reading a slide deck is only the beginning of assessing work like this.
For a researcher, the attraction is understandable. An investor who can follow the experiment may need less translation. For the investor, the attraction is earlier visibility. Neither advantage guarantees a good investment. They give the conversation a better starting point.
A cheque you can point to
The first announced example is €100,000 invested in Cortirio. Young Ventures says Yuga Kozuki and Fezzi led the deal internally. Cortirio is developing a wearable headset that uses infrared light to map blood and help detect stroke and traumatic brain injury. The ambition is to bring brain imaging closer to the patient.
Cortirio describes low cost, portability, rapid diagnosis and continuous monitoring as its aims. Its website gives a two-minute on-site diagnosis claim. Those are the developer’s descriptions of the technology; they should be read as such. The investment story concerns a company building a medical device, with the work of establishing its performance still central to the proposition.
What makes the choice revealing is the problem’s physical character. There is hardware to engineer and biological information to interpret. The usefulness of a portable scanner depends on what it can reliably tell the people treating a patient. This is a practical test for a fund that says it wants to understand difficult science early.
In an October interview, Cortirio founder Patrick Beldon described Young Ventures as arriving at a useful time and moving quickly. His company was already fundraising. That distinction matters: a helpful early investor can add value without claiming to have discovered a company before everyone else.
The students follow the lead
Young Ventures describes a deliberate follower strategy. It co-invests alongside lead investors rather than setting the round’s price itself. Its structure is a club fund: a holding company invests through an evergreen vehicle, while stakeholders can increase exposure to particular opportunities through dedicated special-purpose vehicles.
- 01Find the workCampus scouting
- 02Test the caseScience + business
- 03Invest alongsideA lead investor
A process diagram, not a promise of acceptance.
The distinction between finding an opportunity and pricing it is useful. Campus access may help with the first task. A capable lead investor can contribute to the second. Young Ventures still needs its own judgment: its published process pairs technical assessment with the commercial case, rather than treating a university connection as an investment decision.
At its September 2026 launch, the firm reported reaching a first closing and described a $10 million hard cap. That cap is the fundraising ceiling. It is not a statement that $10 million has been raised. The launch plan also called for ten investments in the first academic year, averaging €100,000 each.
“The hard part of this job is raising the money”Davide Franchini · The Oxford Student, October 2026
The arithmetic keeps the story grounded. An initial €100,000 cheque can help a founder pursue the next step. Capital-intensive science can require substantial follow-on financing. The relevant question is what evidence that first money buys, and whether it helps the company earn the next commitment.
Bring the experiment. Bring the economics.
For founders, the preparation is concrete. Young Ventures’ published guidance asks for a concise deck, the team’s background, the technology’s stage, available traction, the amount being raised and an explanation of fit. A clear account of what the money makes possible belongs beside the scientific explanation.
The firm also offers a free valuation calculator. Users enter projected EBITDA, comparable-company figures, a target return and a holding period. The tool produces an indicative valuation and can estimate ownership for an investment ticket. Its usefulness depends on the assumptions supplied. A spreadsheet cannot settle whether the underlying research will become a business.
The lesson readers can borrow is modest and practical: build relationships near the work, bring technical and commercial judgment together, and explain the next funded milestone. That approach depends on trusted access, specialist knowledge and investors willing to commit. A campus acquaintance alone supplies none of those guarantees. Young Ventures has made its first announced bet; the companies it helps build will decide how valuable the next-door advantage becomes.