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Santa Clara UniversityBronco Ventures
Partnership Portal
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Santa Clara UniversityBronco Ventures
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Santa Clara UniversityBronco Ventures
We are Santa Clara alumni who have had exits, built a Silicon Valley operating company, and now invest in and power startups alongside Factory Berlin, Blitzscaling Ventures, and Llama Lounge. We want to bring that engine to Bronco Ventures: build the technology, find the message, bring the customers, open the network, and put money back into your fund.
One belief runs through all of it: we only win when you win.
How we help, in four lines
Research before the build, customer feedback at MVP, then the architecture and AI. Led by Shawn Venkat.
Tested against real buyers, so the go-to-market is built on evidence.
Through our partners we generate thousands of qualified leads a month.
Lynqo, our fundraising platform, plus Factory Berlin, Blitzscaling Ventures, and Llama Lounge.
01 · Why this matters
Founders build the product first and hire marketing last. The data says that order is backwards.
CB Insights puts it plainly: running out of capital "is almost always the final cause of death, not the root problem." The telling causes are poor product-market fit at 43%, bad timing at 29%, and unsustainable unit economics at 19%. Those are demand problems. Startup Genome found that prematurely scaling startups write 3.4x more code in the discovery phase, and that founders overestimate the value of their intellectual property before product-market fit by 255%.
The programs that serve these founders know it, and three of the best have said so publicly.
02 · The field
We are not the only capable marketing team in the market, and we will not pretend otherwise. But the serious ones price out of reach and refuse this stage in writing, and none of them build the technology or put capital back into your fund. Every figure is from the firm's own published pricing or FAQ, August 2026.
| Who | Entry price | Their own stated gate | Builds tech | Invests back |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Demand Curve | $4,500/mo plus ad spend | "Sweet spot is Series A through C, or seven figures in revenue" | No | No |
| Powered by Search | $6,000 to $21,600/mo | "Pre-revenue or pre-PMF? Unfortunately, no." | No | No |
| Refine Labs | $14,000/mo, 6-month min | "Series B and beyond" | No | No |
| Innovative Group | Cohort-priced. Program-paid, founder-paid, or equity. | Pre-seed through Series A is our target, not our exception | Yes | Yes |
03 · What we bring
Technology first, because validating the market before the build is what prevents the 43% failure. Then the message, then the customers, then the network around all of it.
04 · The network we would open
We do this today with founder platforms and funds across two continents. One piece of it we are building ourselves, and it was designed for exactly this kind of partner.
Lynqo is a two-sided fundraising platform we are building with Stefan Krause, CEO of Factory Berlin, Andy Mark, and a small founding team. AngelList owns syndicates, Carta owns cap tables, PitchBook charges upward of $30,000 a year for deal intelligence. None of them have claimed the activity of fundraising itself, and that is the space Lynqo is built for. Accelerator partners are a core distribution channel in the plan, which is why we want Bronco Ventures companies in early.
Factory Berlin, now Factory Network, has been one of Europe's largest founder communities, at roughly 4,500 members and 150 startups before its 2024 restructure. We work directly with Stefan Krause, its CEO, formerly a board member at BMW and Deutsche Bank, and our Lynqo co-founder.
European distribution for a Bronco Ventures companyBorn out of CS183C, the Stanford blitzscaling class taught by Reid Hoffman, Chris Yeh, John Lilly, and Allen Blue. Reid Hoffman is an LP and reviews every deal. Roughly 40 portfolio companies including Gusto and CrewAI, selected by a scorecard built to find the top 5% of startups.
Investor access and a proven selection methodThe AI pitch and investor series founded by Jeremiah Owyang in 2023. Twenty five events through May 2026, ten AI startups pitching at each. The March 2026 event at Google DeepMind drew 121 named VC firms including Accel, Bessemer, and Google Ventures. The May event was hosted at Stanford and sold out.
A stage your founders could pitch fromConversations are underway with the Stanford venture program and with Y Combinator on the same partnership model. We would rather tell you these are in progress than imply they are signed. Santa Clara would be the first university program in the model, which is deliberate given you are twenty minutes from our office.
Early partner, better terms05 · The Cunningham Shoquist Center
The Cunningham Shoquist Center for Applied AI and Human Potential was founded on a landmark gift from Debora Shoquist, class of 1976, trustee and executive vice president of operations at NVIDIA. It is built as an interdisciplinary hub where faculty, students, and industry partners collaborate, with more than 100 faculty already working in AI across disciplines. We would like to be one of those industry partners.
Healthcare and medical imaging, information access, infrastructure, intelligent robotics, computational creativity, and human-computer interaction. All of it framed through the Jesuit humanistic lens, with the Markkula Center's AI ethics work alongside it.
World-class research, by designResearch becomes a company when someone builds the product, finds the buyer, and raises the round. That is precisely the three-part gap in section 01, and it is what our AI practice, Blitzscaling Ventures, and Llama Lounge exist to close.
From paper to company06 · Our investment back into Bronco Ventures
This is the part we care most about, and it is the reason this reads as a partnership rather than a vendor pitch. We are alumni. We have had exits. We have the network. We want Bronco Ventures to be recognized for producing founders who win. We are willing to put capital behind that conviction, not just services.
Percentages, timing, and vehicle would be scoped and papered rather than assumed here.
07 · The rollout
Mapped onto the ways of getting involved that Bronco Ventures already publishes, so nothing new needs inventing and nothing gets sold into a cohort that did not ask for it.
Lead generation is the number one problem your founders have, and it is the fastest thing we can prove. We start there, alongside the free involvement roles you already offer, so you can judge the work before any larger commitment.
Once the lead generation engine has proved out, we can help the startups in other ways depending on their specific needs, with full support on marketing and technology builds. This is where your founders get the most value.
We will reinvest a percentage of revenue into the Bronco Ventures Fund as LP capital and sponsorships. Real skin in the game, on both sides, aimed at exits that raise the profile of the program.
08 · The people
Senior operators who have scaled companies across twenty five countries, backed by a fractional executive bench with Fortune 500, IPO, and merger experience.
Partners at StrataFusion, founded 2001, who have held technology leadership seats at Fortune 500 companies and taken companies through IPO and acquisition. This bench is available to cohort companies through the partnership.
Everything in this brief points at one outcome. More successful startups coming out of Bronco Ventures, real returns for investors, and the program recognized worldwide for both. We would host a Llama Lounge on your campus, bring your founders into a European community and a Silicon Valley investor room, and put our own capital back into your fund.
We can do that because we are not only a services firm. We invest, we build technology, and we have the partners. And we want it because we are alumni, and Santa Clara sits at the heart of Silicon Valley.
The ask is small: 3 to 5 startups we can generate leads for, before October Demo Day.