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The MBA Fund
The MBA Group is a business conglomerate founded in 1969 in Braintree, Massachusetts. It invests in and builds companies across industries including insurance,...
The MBA Fund
The MBA Group is a business conglomerate founded in 1969 in Braintree, Massachusetts. It invests in and builds companies across industries including insurance, automotive services, and manufacturing. The company offers services in business development, strategic marketing, and financial support.
General information
Firm type
Private Equity
Year founded
2018
Location
Region
North America
Country
United States
City
Palo Alto
Corporate office
Palo Alto, CA, United States
Principals
Iynna Halilou
General Partner
Hansae Catlett
General Partner
Hiro Tien
General Partner
Josh Hoffman-Senn
General Partner
Sector focus
Frequently asked questions
How does The MBA Fund source its deal flow?
The firm sources exclusively from student, alumni, and dropout founders at Harvard Business School, Stanford Graduate School of Business, and The Wharton School. It maintains campus teams at each school — plus UC Berkeley — composed of current students who identify founders at the earliest stages. This embedded scouting network is the primary origination channel.
Does The MBA Fund invest only out of its core funds, or are there other investment vehicles?
The firm invests from two core early-stage funds and also manages an invite-only syndicate on AngelList. The syndicate allows investors to participate on a deal-by-deal basis in later-stage rounds, giving the firm a mechanism to follow on beyond its core fund capacity while retaining relationships with portfolio companies as they scale.
What is the typical check size or stage that The MBA Fund targets?
The firm does not publicly disclose its check-size range. Its language — 'backing founders before they're obvious' and 'the riskiest leaps with founders who are just getting started' — describes pre-seed and seed-stage investing. The separate syndicate for later-stage deals suggests core-fund checks are concentrated at the earliest institutional entry point.
Who are the decision-makers on investments at The MBA Fund?
Four general partners — Iynna Halilou, Hansae Catlett, Hiro Tien, and Josh Hoffman-Senn — are listed as leadership. The firm does not publish a separate investment committee or describe how decisions are allocated among them, but the campus-team structure suggests scouts and venture partners surface opportunities that the GP group evaluates.
Which venture firms have co-invested with or followed on into The MBA Fund's portfolio companies?
The firm's website names Sequoia, Founders Fund, Accel, Bessemer, and Lightspeed as follow-on investors into its portfolio companies. It does not disclose which specific companies received capital from each of those firms.
Is The MBA Fund structured as a single-family office, a traditional venture firm, or something else?
The MBA Fund is structured as a venture capital firm, not a family office. It raises discretionary capital from external LPs through Fund I and Fund II, and it deploys that capital into early-stage companies sourced from specific university networks. Its backers are described as top-tier venture firms, repeat founders, and super-angels rather than a single wealth source.
Does the firm disclose its assets under management?
No. The MBA Fund does not publish an AUM figure on its website or in its public materials. It discloses having invested in over 150 companies across two core funds, but the total capital deployed is not publicly available.
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