Founder Story: Mike Collins on Building America’s Largest VC for Individual Investors

In this Founder Story, Alumni Ventures' Founder and CEO Mike Collins shares how disruptive thinking inspired him to launch America’s largest venture firm for individual investors. Influenced by Clayton Christensen’s teachings at Harvard Business School, Mike founded AV in 2014 to solve a key problem: venture capital was closed to most individuals. He explains how a bold, community-driven model scaled from one alumni fund to a nationwide network, why disruption remains a guiding principle, and what’s next as AV expands globally to back transformative companies worldwide.

Alumni Ventures is America’s largest VC firm for individual investors based on the combination of total capital raised, number of investments, and number of investors of leading VC firms as reported by Pitchbook and other publicly available information reviewed by AV.

CHAPTERS
0:00 Introduction - The Story Behind Alumni Ventures
1:04 Setting the Scene - Manchester Office Tour Begins
1:27 The 2014 Origin Story - Democratizing Venture Capital
2:29 Office Tour - The Culture Wall and Early Growth
4:11 Rapid Expansion - From Dartmouth to Harvard and Beyond
5:15 Mike's Background - Madison, Wisconsin Roots
6:45 The Michael Jordan Story - Basketball to Business
7:40 Getting Into VC - The Random Phone Call That Changed Everything
8:56 Harvard Business School and Clayton Christensen's Influence
9:34 Solving the Access Problem - Building the Right VC Portfolio
10:50 The Historic Mill Office - 150 Years of Innovation
13:26 Looking Forward - The Next 10 Years and Global Expansion

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