It was 3 a.m. on a November night, and Bhuvan Meruga and his down-the-hall neighbor Andres Valdiri were too excited to fall asleep. In the basement of their residence hall at UNC, they had spent the night filling up whiteboards with their action plan for First Frontier Ventures: a new venture capital firm.
First Frontier Ventures initially aims to help VC firms by providing feedback and evaluations on their deal flow given the First Frontier team’s unique insights as young innovators. Both Meruga and Valdiri are first-year students at UNC, the first public university in the U.S., and they have chosen to partner with fellow first-year Rishab Jain from Harvard University—the first private institution. By pairing these two pioneers of education, Meruga said First Frontier Ventures hopes to maximize its capacity and resources to invest in pioneers of new industries.
“Being a catalyst for moving it toward a younger perspective is something we think could make a real change in the industry,” Meruga said.
Prior to launching First Frontier Ventures, both Meruga and Valdiri had experience working in finance and investing via various internships and advisory programs. Valdiri worked on a friend’s startup in high school and also won a $1,500 prize in a regional youth entrepreneurship program as a senior in high school in Wilmington, for which he was profiled by UNC before he even started classes.
The business partners initially met last summer during first-year orientation, and upon arrival at UNC, both students joined the university’s Portfolio Management Team. Meruga is studying business and economics, and Valdiri is studying business and computer science.
Meanwhile Jain, their partner and a Harvard first-year, was formerly named one of TIME’s 25 Most Influential Teens for creating a software platform that helped doctors better identify pancreatic cancer.
Valdiri said that as a student-run firm, he considers the First Frontier Ventures a “middleman” between startups and venture capital firms, where they can evaluate startups for investment. He said a lot of venture capitalists come from investment banking or consulting backgrounds, but that as students, First Frontier Ventures brings a different perspective to the table.
“We offer a new insight that could be valuable to them,” Valdiri said.
Meruga said there are a lot of startups emerging in the Triangle that First Frontier Ventures is interested in, but the startups and investors aren’t aware of each other. The Triangle area is particularly interesting to Meruga and Valdiri because there is a high volume of new, potentially high-growth startups that are unknown to investors.
And they won’t just be focused on the Triangle. First Frontier Ventures will also be looking more broadly at what they call “the next generation of technology,” such as startups in the fintech space.
So far, First Frontier Ventures has partnered with Triangle-based 2ndF, a company founded by former Global Data Consortium CEO (and past Grep-a-palooza keynote speaker) Bill Spruill that also aims to connect investors with startups.
With 2ndF, Meruga and Valdiri are sometimes included on calls with entrepreneurs and advise on deals with companies. Making this connection with 2ndF was a “big step forward,” Valdiri said.
Advising on deals now will give First Frontier Ventures credibility to eventually receive funding, Meruga said, once they can prove they have the experience necessary to make proper investments. An exact funding goal has not been set and will likely be determined at least a year in the future.
Meruga said while it was hard to get footing at first, since the start of March they have been connected with dozens of founders and investors.
The business partners also plan to build a venture scout program, where they will recruit high school and college students who share a passion for venture capital. The scout program will host educational seminars about evaluating startups and the scouts will work to identify potential investment opportunities for First Frontier Ventures.
“The next six months are going to be incredible to watch this project grow, and we’re really looking forward to it,” Meruga said.
If you’d like to contact First Frontier Ventures about potential partnerships, you can email them at firstfrontierventures@gmail.com.
