être Venture Capital

être Venture Capital

être Venture Capital was co-founded by managing partners Jenny Kuan, PhD, a tenured professor at CSU Monterey Bay and Berkeley Haas PhD, and Hillary Talbot, a two-decade startup operator and former competitive Alpine skier. Unlike most micro-funds, être operates an explicit thesis that the collaborative, hands-on model of early Silicon Valley venture capital can be reapplied to undercapitalized founders in sectors that have fallen out of the hype cycle. The firm has publicly open-sourced its term sheets and closing documents, and runs a free, 400+ graduate education program designed to pull more women into the venture capital ecosystem as investors, mentors, and limited partners. être invests catalytic capital as a lead investor at the pre-seed, seed, and Series A stages, addressing a structural gap it identifies as the missing 'lead' that prevents credible startups from pricing a round. The firm's $2M Thesis Fund has deployed across five portfolio companies spanning clinical-stage biotechnology, plant-based biomaterials, AI-enabled digital health, health-tech marketplaces, and B2B laundry logistics. Confirmed investments include co-leading a Series A into Obatala Sciences, a human-derived tissue company supplying big-pharma drug development, and leading the pre-seed round for Hexas Biomass, a proprietary fiber crop company that was acquired by Bioleum and is now on an IPO track. Other positions include MyBackHub (AI-driven back-pain assessment) and Portico (transparent-pricing healthcare marketplace). The portfolio is geographically dispersed across Louisiana, California, and Washington State, with co-investors that include Brook Byers and Ochsner Lafayette General Healthcare Innovation Fund II. The two-partner firm has generated one exit (Hexas Biomass) and achieved cash-flow positivity for Obatala Sciences within its first four years, confirming its ability to pick, price, and support through exit. In 2025, être co-invested alongside Brook Byers in the seed round for MyBackHub, an AI tool built by a Stanford orthopedic surgeon and designed to reduce reliance on back surgeries that fail 60% of patients. Beyond the fund, Kuan launched the Women in VC Initiative through CSU Monterey Bay's Institute for Innovation and Economic Development, while Talbot teaches monthly orientation sessions for women breaking into venture capital. être's structural differentiator lies in its hybrid academic-operating architecture. Kuan's university platform serves as a deal-flow channel, a validation mechanism, and a talent pipeline that conventional micro-VCs cannot replicate, while Talbot's operating practice converts that academic bridge into go-to-market execution, profitability engineering, and exit negotiation. The firm's refusal to charge for its term-sheet library or its 101-level coursework functions as a deliberate moat expansion — it primes a lattice of future founders, angels, and co-investors that flows directly back into être's own sourcing.