Dorm Room Fund

Firm Profile

The original student-run pre-seed fund. Started 2012 as a First Round Capital experiment (Josh Kopelman seeded an initial ~$500Kvehicle);\ast \ast spunoutasanindependententityin2022\ast \ast witha\ast \ast$12.5M Fund IV** backed by Marc Andreessen, Insight Partners, Underscore VC and others (Fortune + TechCrunch/PitchBook + Wikipedia agree). Now manages ~$13Mandhasbacked\ast \ast 330+companies\ast \ast (>$1B value created), including Cursor, Dandy, RapidSOS, Shield AI, Figma, Codecademy.

Stage / check / structure: pre-seed only, into companies where at least one founder is currently enrolled in college/grad school. Check size $40K–$250K (up from the early $20K era), founder-friendly SAFE structure; will lead pre-seeds that fit the thesis, also co-invests/follows. Run by full-time students (undergrad + grad “Investment Partners”) across SF, NYC, Philadelphia, and Boston; LinkedIn lists HQ as Cambridge, MA (originally Philadelphia). Deal-sourcing/portfolio support flows through the FRC + university network.

Partners

DRF is student-run — there is no traditional partnership; investment decisions are made by rotating student Investment Partners.

• Ananth Veluvali — Investment Partner (init.inc’s would-be POC). No partner stub created — DEAD-tier and the intro never landed.

Recent pre-seed/seed activity (Pass-1 sketch — ≤5 deals)

⚠️ Data caveat (DEAD-tier sketch): DRF’s individual checks are rarely press-attributed — student-fund $40K–$250K SAFEs get folded into rounds that credit the larger lead, so public press yields almost no clean recent-deal table. Best verifiable recent named deal:

• Nivien Therapeutics — DRF’s “latest investment” per Crunchbase (surfaced via WebSearch), tagged ~Mar 2025, amount/role undisclosed. ^[single-source]
• Historical/portfolio (not recent): Cursor, Dandy, RapidSOS, Shield AI, Figma, Codecademy.

Full data → /Users/sazzad14/seed-market-scan/firms/dorm-room-fund.csv. An exhaustive 18–24mo deal pull needs PitchBook/Crunchbase Pro (Pass 2) — it won’t come from public press for a student fund.

Best data channels for this firm

Crunchbase / PitchBook / Tracxn are the only realistic deal sources (and even they tag many DRF checks “unattributed”). Public tech press almost never names DRF in round announcements (it credits the lead). For fund-level facts use Fortune / TechCrunch / Built In (the 2022 spinout + Fund IV). DRF’s own site (dormroomfund.com/about) is reliable for thesis, check size, and the student-IP model. Treat any single-source per-deal claim as ^[single-source].

Fundraise Relationship (init.inc)

• Status: DEAD — offer never converted to an intro. DRF backs currently-enrolled student founders with $40K–$250K checks; init.inc is a post-student team raising ~$7M, so DRF is structurally off-thesis and small for this round. The CRM treated it as a low-priority connector offer that lapsed.
• Conversation log (newest first):
  • 2026-05-13 — Killed. “Original Niam-sourced offer never converted to an intro.”
  • 2026-04-27 (approx.) — Niam offered to intro Sazzad to Ananth Veluvali (DRF Investment Partner). Never sent.
• POC: Ananth Veluvali — DRF Investment Partner; the intended (never-reached) contact. Intro source: Niam → niam.
• Mutual connections / warm path: Niam (offered, never sent) → niam. No alternate path.
• Competitor-conflict flag: None found. No DRF position in any of init’s 8 tracked AI-ITSM competitors per cap-table-patterns-across-startup-competitors. (Note: DRF’s backer First Round Capital is a Serval seed co-lead and is independently conflicted — but DRF is a separate, spun-out vehicle, so that conflict does not transfer to DRF itself.)
• Personal & rapport notes: Student-run; warm intros come through campus Investment Partners.

Cross-check vs existing wiki

No DRF mention in cap-table-patterns-across-startup-competitors. One reconciliation: DRF’s parent First Round Capital appears there as a Serval seed co-lead (conflicted) — but the DRF entity is the spun-out student fund, so FRC’s Serval conflict does not transfer to DRF. No contradictions otherwise.

Related

niam (intro source; also init’s connector to Basis Set, Innovation Endeavors, Human Capital, etc.) · cap-table-patterns-across-startup-competitors

Pass 2 deal pattern (2026-05-27)

Verified (Pass-1 rows, all carried forward):

• ❓ Nivien Therapeutics (Mar 2025, undisclosed) — Pass-1 row carried; remains the best single recent press-attributed DRF deal. Still single-sourced via Crunchbase.
• ⚠️ Generic $40K-$250K student pre-seed pattern — confirmed against Lynx Collective (Sep 2025) which notes the NYC/Midwest team alone backed “four startups last year” across 4 regions, implying ~dozens of first checks/yr but no public per-deal table.

Net-new in Pass 2: NONE.

COULDN’T-GET (structural): No additional press-attributed DRF deals from the last 18-24mo surfaced in Exa Pass-2 light pull. This is the expected structural outcome for DRF (already flagged DEAD-tier in Pass 1):

1. DRF writes $40K-$250K SAFE checks into student founders; rounds credit the larger lead, not DRF.
2. DRF’s own site/blog (blog.dormroomfund.com) is about the program/students, not deal announcements — confirmed by Pass-2 search (top result was “The New Instincts” thought piece on Gen Z investors, not a deal post).
3. A clean 18-24mo deal table would require PitchBook / Crunchbase Pro — public press will not yield it.
4. Notable historical-portfolio confirmation: Cursor (Michael Truell went student-partner→founder; $9.9B valuation as of 2025), Prepared AI (Yale; later GC-led Series C). Continues the high-quality historical-portfolio pattern, but these are pre-2024 first-checks, not recent activity.

Lead-rate / check / stage pattern: Pure pre-seed student founders; $40K-$250K SAFE checks; leads when the round perfectly fits the thesis, otherwise participates; 60+ student investment partners across 4 regional teams (NYC/Midwest, Boston/Northeast, Philly/Southeast, West Coast); dozens of first checks per year aggregate. Best data channel (Pass-2-confirmed): public press is structurally unproductive — for a per-deal pull, Crunchbase Pro / PitchBook is the only path; DRF’s own site is best for thesis/check-size facts only. For init.inc’s raise the firm remains correctly classified DEAD (structurally off-thesis: post-student team, ~$7Mtarget,vs.DR{F}^{\prime }senrolled-student$40K-$250K mandate).