Dorm Room Fund is a $10 million American venture capital firm focused on investments in student-run startups. Established by

First Round Capital First Round is a venture capital firm that specializes in providing seed-stage funding to technology companies. Founded by Josh Kopelman and Howard Morgan First Round typically provides seed-stage funding and focuses on portfolio companies ...

in 2012, the firm is operated by full-time undergraduate and graduate students. It has backed companies that have raised a combined $300 million in venture capital from investors including Y Combinator, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and

Union Square Ventures Union Square Ventures (USV) is an American venture capital firm based in New York City. The firm has backed more than 130 startups, including Twitter, Etsy, Stripe, Coinbase, Zynga, Tumblr, Stack Overflow, Meetup, Kickstarter, MongoDB, Flurr ...

. With investments in over 100 companies, the firm is one of the most active seed-stage investors in the US. The firm has teams in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

, and

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the capital city, state capital and List of municipalities in Massachusetts, most populous city of the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financ ...

. In addition to providing early-stage capital, Dorm Room Fund draws upon its own resources as well as

First round First or 1st is the ordinal form of the number one (#1). First or 1st may also refer to: * World record, specifically the first instance of a particular achievement Arts and media Music * 1$T, American rapper, singer-songwriter, DJ, and rec ...

's to support student entrepreneurs. In January 2018, Dorm Room Fund's Head of Engineering Yasyf Mohamedali launched VCWiz, a tool to help founders (student or otherwise) research, discover, and reach out to seed-stage investors. In February 2018,

Snap Inc. Snap Inc. is an American camera and social media company, founded on September 16, 2011, by Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie Brown based in Santa Monica, California. The company developed and maintains technological products and services, ...

announced a program to provide free advertising on Snapchat to select up-and-coming startups, targeting Dorm Room Fund portfolio companies in particular.

Portfolio

Dorm Room Fund's portfolio includes A&B American Style, Brooklinen, Blockstack, FiscalNote, Elektra Labs, LearnLux, LovePop, Grove Labs, BevSpot, Bevi, Humon, and TetraScience. Notable acquisitions within the portfolio include tbh (acquired by

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin ...

Firefly The Lampyridae are a family of elateroid beetles with more than 2,000 described species, many of which are light-emitting. They are soft-bodied beetles commonly called fireflies, lightning bugs, or glowworms for their conspicuous production ...

Zodiac The zodiac is a belt-shaped region of the sky that extends approximately 8° north or south (as measured in celestial latitude) of the ecliptic, the apparent path of the Sun across the celestial sphere over the course of the year. The p ...

(acquired by

Nike Nike often refers to: * Nike (mythology), a Greek goddess who personifies victory * Nike, Inc., a major American producer of athletic shoes, apparel, and sports equipment Nike may also refer to: People * Nike (name), a surname and feminine given ...

), and Yard Club (acquired by Caterpillar).

References

{{US-private-equity-company-stub Financial services companies established in 2012 American companies established in 2012 Venture capital firms of the United States