New $5M deep tech fund aims to lure founders from universities

Spend time at a university, and inevitably you’ll come across someone who has a plan to save the world, or at least make some small part of it better. It might be merely the optimism of youth, but sometimes they’re actually on to something.

Critical Venture Partners is betting that young founders plucked fresh from universities can solve some of the world’s most intractable problems, including climate change, healthcare, and economic opportunity. The firm was founded by a trio of recent graduates from the University of Pennsylvania.

“We’re the type of founder that we’d invest in — being young people, investing in other young people,” Sam Strickberger, co-founder and general partner at Critical Venture Partners, told TechCrunch.

Strickberger and his co-founders Seungkwon Son and Max Strickberger, his brother, have raised a $5 million inaugural fund to woo founders to their portfolio with check sizes ranging between $50,000 and $250,000. A quarter of the fund is reserved for follow-on investments. Limited partners include Aarti Chandna, partner at Silicon Valley Social Venture Fund; Seth Goldman and board chair of Beyond Meat; and Andrew Kaplan, partner at Bain Capital.

To attract fresh talent, Critical Venture Partners is working with Yope — an accelerator formerly known as Founder.org started by Michael Baum, co-founder and CEO of Splunk — to launch a $100,000 startup competition.

So far, the firm has invested in three startups: General Galactic, which transforms CO₂ into methane; Mobius Industries, which recovers metals from waste; and Stratagen Bio, which adds quantitative data to MRI scans.

“We’re really inspired by the history of young founders building really large category-defining companies,” Strickberger said.

In that sense, Critical Venture Partners is in good company: Venture capital valorizes young founders to such a degree that it borders on obsession. Still, it feels intuitive that intractable problems might require fresh thinking to solve. The optimism at the new firm might be youth talking, but they’re certainly in good company.