10 Years, 60 Startups, $105 Million – and Counting: Duke Capital Partners Leads the Way in Alumni Investing
A version of this story first appeared on Duke Today.
Transcription service Otter.ai, custom 3D-printed implants manufacturer restor3d, and retirement savings platform Vestwell are just a few of the 60-plus startups backed by Duke Capital Partners (DCP), Duke University’s official early-stage venture investment arm.
This year, Duke Capital Partners celebrates its tenth anniversary. Since 2015, the team has connected Duke investors with opportunities to support Duke-affiliated startups. And they’ve delivered: DCP has built a $105 million investment portfolio, backing more than 60 companies collectively valued at more than $10 billion.
Ten years ago, though, DCP was just a dream.
“We started out as just five or six people huddled in a small conference room in the Duke Law School,” remembered Trevor Kiviat L’16, who was a law student at the time. His professor, Kip Frey L’85, had the feeling that if they built something like DCP, the opportunities would come.
Frey tapped Kiviat and a few of his classmates and, under the leadership of John Glushik E’90 as managing director, spun up what was then called Duke Angel Network. DCP also helped launch similar efforts at institutions down the road: Carolina Angel Network and Wolfpack Investor Network.
“The idea was simple: bring Duke people together to back Duke innovation and watch what happens,” said Frey. “Ten years later, the results speak for themselves.”
Entrepreneur and investor Kurt Schmidt took the helm as managing director in 2019 and continued developing the process. As the number of portfolio companies, investors, and team members increased, interest from entrepreneurs seeking funding also rose.
Nowadays, Schmidt says, more than a thousand startups a year reach out to DCP seeking funding. About two hundred are evaluated more deeply, and a dozen or two are put through deep pressure testing and brought to the investor members. Each DCP member chooses whether to participate and at what amount, and then DCP coordinates the transactions.
The results are receiving recognition: seven DCP portfolio companies were named to Forbes’ 2025 list of America’s Best Startup Employers, three have appeared on Inc. Magazine’s Fastest Growing Private Companies list for two years running, and several have been featured on Fast Company’s list of the World’s Most Innovative Companies.
“A lot of universities talk about entrepreneurship. The difference with Duke is – through DCP and other initiatives – we’re actually doing it,” said Ken Gall, professor in the Thomas Lord Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and a serial entrepreneur who’s started several companies in the medical device space supported by DCP.
Though faculty-founded startups make up less than 1 percent of the total volume of companies reviewed, they account for half of the capital that has been invested over the past decade. Close to one-quarter of DCP’s portfolio companies have a student founder and almost half have alumni founders.
“It’s Duke people helping Duke people,” said Schmidt. And it’s not just about the money: “Companies need more than capital to be successful. They also need strategic guidance, mentorship, and connections to industry leaders. We connect people within our community to portfolio companies to help them succeed – with the ultimate goal of improving lives.”
For example, Dr. Neil Roth T’87 M’91, an orthopedic surgeon and DCP member, has flown into the Durham area from New York to test shoulder procedures with restor3d, one of Gall’s startups, when they were expanding into shoulder implants. “It’s a win-win for startups, for the DCP members, and for Duke,” said Roth.
“We probably would have been forced to move to New York if not for DCP,” said Kasper Kubica T’17, co-founder of antiperspirant solutions company Carpe, which recently had a successful exit – marking the tenth time DCP has returned capital to its investors. “Instead, we’re building the ecosystem here in the Research Triangle.”
The secret to DCP’s success – now co-investing alongside firms such as Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins, Google, and Amazon – is the team and network that Schmidt has built. He is also quick to highlight DCP’s Associates Program: Duke students who spend two years learning how venture capital and startups work and taking an active role in the investment process.
“The deals we were doing are real deals with real impact, real entrepreneurs on the other side. In some cases, we were participating in rounds that fundamentally changed the trajectory of these businesses,” said Willa Townsend T’15 B’23, who served as a DCP associate while at the Fuqua School of Business. In fact, the program was a major reason she applied to Duke in the first place.
“Venture capital is a very opaque industry and notoriously hard to break into,” said Townsend. “By having this student associate program, we’re democratizing access to venture capital.” She’s one of more than 130 associates trained by the DCP team over the years, and the experience helped prepare her for a job at Thrive Capital, a venture capital firm funding the likes of Instagram, OpenAI, and Spotify.
“One thing we consistently hear from firms that hire our students is how unique it is that DCP associates have real, hands-on venture capital experience – and can speak directly to the investments they worked on while still in school,” said Schmidt.
“We now have portfolio companies on four continents. I don’t know that I would have envisioned that would have been possible,” reflected Schmidt, noting that the “small but mighty” DCP team still has big ambitions to grow into the future. “We’re still scratching the surface of what’s possible.”
Kiviat, from the first class of student associates, works at an innovative alternative asset manager in New York. He has also come full circle and is an investor member with DCP.
“Returning to DCP, now as a member of this organization I helped create, isn’t just a return – it’s felt like a homecoming,” said Kiviat.
Meet Kurt Schmidt
As managing director of Duke Capital Partners (DCP), Kurt Schmidt embraces learning about novel technologies every day.
“Every day at Duke, I’m inspired by the groundbreaking work happening across our research labs, within our alumni community and by our students,” said Schmidt. “It’s a privilege to be in an environment where innovation is constant and the potential for real-world impact is so high.”
He’s loved science and technology from an early age and was inspired by the entrepreneurial example of his mother, a painter who ran a studio business out of their family home.
“In my mom’s ability to take a blank canvas and create something out of nothing I can now see the beginnings of my interest in building a startup from just a seed of an idea to a successful company,” said Schmidt.
As an engineering undergraduate at Penn State, Schmidt combined his passion for technology and entrepreneurship by spending his summers in California, working with companies that were laying the groundwork for today’s modern communications infrastructure. That hands-on experience paid off: He was recruited by the founder of a GPS semiconductor startup, joining a scrappy team of entrepreneurs with big dreams and a drive to innovate.
“I felt like I had found my tribe,” said Schmidt. “It was a team that shared a deep sense of purpose and possibility.” Over nearly a decade with the company, he embraced every opportunity to learn, stepping into new challenges and gaining a broad, hands-on understanding of what it takes to build and run a successful business.
After a successful IPO for that Silicon Valley-based company, Schmidt and his wife were looking to move to an area with an emerging technology scene where he could share what he had learned and help build something new. Austin, Boulder, Seattle, and Portland were all on the list – but a visit to the Triangle sealed the deal.
“With three amazing universities anchoring the area,” said Schmidt, “we fell in love with the Triangle.” Schmidt quickly embedded himself in the local entrepreneurial community and shifted more into investing.
With the engaging students, inventors, entrepreneurs, and investors in the Duke community, Schmidt has found his tribe again. And through DCP he’s found a way to give back in a meaningful way.
“For me, that’s one of the most rewarding things,” said Schmidt. “Now I get to pay it forward.”