From its conception in the fall of 2023 to its launch in the spring of 2024, Gorges Ventures, a student-managed and financed investment club, met a resounding, enthusiastic response both from seasoned entrepreneurs who became the startup’s advisors and from fellow classmates, the fund’s investors. Launched by three class of 2025 MBA students in the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management, this closed investment club is developing a fund to invest in companies founded by Cornell University students in the classes of 2024 and 2025.

Gorges Venture’s founders—Megan Shkolyar ’20, MBA ’25; Matheus Lelis, MBA ’25; and Albert Charles '23, MBA '25—connected in the fall of 2023, during their first semester at the Johnson School, and bonded over their shared interest in venture capital. Inspired by a Tech Crunch article they read about Stanford MBAs who launched an investment club, they reached out to that club’s cofounder, Steph Mui, and started working with her and her startup, PIN, as their fund administrator. PIN’s platform provides the legal, tax, and administrative tasks that enable people to pool their money and invest in startups.

Shkolyar, Lelis, and Charles floated their idea for the venture fund at Eclectic Convergence 2023, an Entrepreneurship at Cornell event held on the Cornell Tech campus in New York City. Taking advantage of the event’s office hours, they presented their idea to Susan Sarich ’91, founder and CEO of SusieCakes, and Jim Cavalieri ’92, senior vice president in the office of the CEO at Salesforce. Clearly excited by the idea and the founders’ energy and determination, both Sarich and Cavalieri signed up to be advisors for the Cornell entrepreneurs that Gorges Ventures will select for its portfolio.

By launching Gorges Ventures, the founders set out to achieve several goals: Connect Johnson School students across all full-time MBA and executive MBA programs; make investing in venture capital an accessible, integral part of the Johnson School community and culture; build connections to and support for fellow Cornellians by investing in their startups; and create a lasting legacy at the school, as the MBA class of 1998 did in establishing the Cayuga Fund as the fund’s initial investors.

Read the full story on the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business website.

Janice Endresen is a communications editor at the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business.