StoryHouse Ventures

StoryHouse Ventures

StoryHouse Ventures was co-founded by General Partner Miles Bird, a Claremont McKenna graduate who previously invested at two venture firms and helped build a Sequoia-backed startup before launching the vehicle. The firm formalizes what was once informal alumni angel activity — tapping the Claremont Colleges ecosystem (Pomona, CMC, Harvey Mudd, Scripps, Pitzer, CGU, KGI) for founding talent. The firm writes early-stage checks from its inaugural fund, acting primarily as a co-investor rather than a lead. Its strategy spans software, climate, healthcare, and deep tech, with confirmed positions including carbon-capture startup Living Carbon (backed by Felicis and LowerCarbon), metabolic health platform Levels (co-invested alongside a16z and Founder Collective), and neurodivergent social app Hiki (alongside Techstars and Google Disability Fund). Other portfolio companies range from satellite-imaging venture Kapta Space to drug-discovery platform BRT Biotechnologies and API developer-tools company Speakeasy. On its website, the firm lists over 20 Fund I investments, predominantly in US-based businesses with a Claremont founder in the C-suite. The operation is lean, run day-to-day by Miles Bird and Chief of Staff Josh Tatum, who oversees fund operations, analytics, and content. In place of a large investment team, StoryHouse leans heavily on its community — publishing a job board with thousands of open roles across hundreds of Claremont-founded tech companies and distributing a regular newsletter tracking Claremont-linked startups. The firm shares quarterly investor updates, providing a window into a first-time GP's deployment journey. StoryHouse's structural edge is a captive origination channel: a tightly bounded alumni network of roughly 7,000 undergraduates per year across seven institutions that rank among the most selective liberal arts colleges in the US. By operating as a dedicated, near-exclusive capital source for that ecosystem, it functions less like a generalist seed fund and more like an alumni-syndicate-as-institution — one that systematically converts campus relationships into a proprietary deal pipeline.