Red & Blue Ventures

Day-to-day investment decisions are driven by Managing Directors Michael B. Aronson and Brett Topche, who co-founded the firm. Aronson brings over three decades of experience as an operator and angel investor, including co-founding a simulation software company and teaching at Wharton for 20 years. Topche spent years evaluating venture and private equity funds at Hamilton Lane before moving into direct early-stage investing at MentorTech Ventures and Red & Blue.

No. The firm invests exclusively in companies where key founders or managers are University of Pennsylvania students, faculty, or alumni. It may also consider companies built on intellectual property that originated at Penn. Red & Blue states explicitly that it is wholly independent from and not affiliated with the university itself.

Red & Blue's entire investment mandate is a sourcing model. By limiting its pipeline to the Penn ecosystem, the firm builds deep network effects within a single, highly technical and entrepreneurial university community. The team includes Wharton faculty advisors and draws on Aronson's network of over 4,000 former students to find opportunities that generalist funds typically miss.

Red & Blue Ventures is effectively the successor to MentorTech Ventures. Both Managing Directors, Michael Aronson and Brett Topche, previously co-founded and managed MentorTech, which also invested in Penn-connected companies. Red & Blue continues the same university-focused strategy under a new fund identity.

Red & Blue writes checks at the seed and early stages. Its stated focus is on companies in the information technology space, which the firm defines broadly to include hardware, software, ecommerce, and technology-enabled services. It will occasionally look at other sectors if the Penn connection and co-investor syndicate are strong enough to compensate for a lack of in-house domain depth.