Jan 25
Platform at 186 Ventures, welcome Sophie Panarese
Last week we announced the closing of our flagship fund, 186 Ventures I. As mentioned in the linked Forbes article, the creation of our investment platform has been over three years in the making. We’ve had the opportunity to build up both an angel and institutional portfolio of phenomenal founders, and now we must ensure we establish an operations platform that allows us to support the growth of both our founders and firm for decades to come.
186 Ventures Platform Ethos: Founder First
Founders are the lifeblood of any venture capital firm and they are who keep us relevant and in business. That is why most of everything we do keeps the founder at top of mind. Regardless of whether we wrote a small check or large check into a company, we always try to add disproportionate value relative to what is expected of us. Even the way we craft our community activation efforts across the US in conjunction with key tech ecosystem stakeholders — both high growth company operators and our venture capital co-investor partners alike — we keep this at top of mind.
This has been part of our bedrock at 186 Ventures and what has so far played an important contributing factor to our brand both on the East Coast & West Coast. We care about founders & how they are looking to change the world and we aim to institutionalize efforts to support them even before we invest. Although there are already hundreds of proof points of how we’ve helped our founders — whether to find a needed senior leadership team member or help connect them with other fantastic venture capital co-investor partners in the 186 network— we now recognize we must up our game if we want to scale and continue to add value to our companies.
Welcome Sophie Panarese
We are thrilled to announce our first full time hire, Sophie Panarese! In thinking through the ways 186 could continue to support its founders and operations, finding the right individual to join us at such a formative stage was a critical component to our efforts.
Sophie hails from Milton, Massachusetts and graduated from Georgetown with Cum Laude distinction where she was Captain of the Women’s Varsity Tennis Team. Sophie later gained investment & operational experience at Cambridge Associates and TJX Companies respectively. She possesses an optimal combination of institutional LP / VC landscape exposure and first hand, ground floor operational experience — two key components that will be important for us to further internalize as we build 186 Ventures.
Our platform & operations efforts have already hit the ground floor running with the seven fund portfolio companies we have today. Sophie will be spending most of her time building out various frameworks to help sustain our internal operations and our external platform efforts to bolster community activation and portfolio support. We couldn’t be any more grateful to have her on board and we are excited to see the amazing things she accomplishes here at 186.
If you’d like to collaborate with 186 Ventures in any way or have ideas with how we can collectively push community efforts in Boston, NYC, SF, or LA, feel free to give her a shout: sophie@186ventures.com.
— Giuseppe & Julian
Founded in 2021 by Giuseppe Stuto and Julian Fialkow, 186 Ventures provides pre-seed and seed stage funding to impact-obsessed founders. 186 Ventures leverages a world-class network and deep founder experience to present a differentiated approach to founder relationships, venture financing, and following through with end-to-end support. Named after the speed of light, 186 Ventures invests across consumer, enterprise, and disruptive technology.
