WVV Investor Spotlight: Danielle D’Agostaro, Principal Partner

I’m Danielle D’Agostaro, principal partner at WVV Capital (WVV). WVV is a next-generation venture capital firm founded as a joint partnership between four corporations — Advocate Aurora Health, Foxconn, Johnson Controls International, and Northwestern Mutual — and I wanted to take the opportunity to share a bit more about my background, why I think this firm is different from your typical VC, as well as explain how I like to work with founders.

I’m not into startups — or so I thought

While WVV is a relatively new venture fund, I’ve had the privilege of working with entrepreneurs for the past decade. Shortly after receiving my bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley, I found myself in a meeting with Ravi Belani, the Founder and Managing Director of the Alchemist Accelerator (now the leading enterprise startup accelerator in Silicon Valley). While I wasn’t convinced I was ‘into startups’, I decided to join Ravi, and ended up staying for seven years, helping turn Alchemist into the respected organization it is today. Easily one of the best decisions of my life.

I saw a lot during my time at Alchemist. I built the program from scratch side-by-side with Ravi. We went from having ten companies in each class three times a year to 25. I’ve worked alongside hundreds of enterprise software startups, sat in investment committees, and heard how startups were evaluated — until eventually, I was doing the evaluating myself. I gathered more learnings, insights, and knowledge than I would have gotten with any business degree.

I can confidently say now that I’m definitely into startups; the thrill, freedom, and creativity that comes with building a business from scratch, well — you can’t really find that anywhere else, and during my time at Alchemist I was able to go through all the ups and downs of building a business alongside over 400 companies that came through the program.

After seven years went by, however, I thought it was time to try something new. While it was incredibly difficult to leave, I knew the program would be fine — I had helped it transition online during the novel coronavirus pandemic, and felt confident the infrastructure I had put in place over the years was built to last.

Going to the dark side

Most of my time at Alchemist was spent with founders, not investors, and I was constantly advising them how to navigate the ‘dark side’ of venture capital. But then I heard from Jason Franklin, CEO and managing director at WVV, and a lot about the firm resonated with me.

First of all, the structure of the firm with four corporate partners combined with the core WVV investment team was intriguing. I already had experience working with our corporate partners at Alchemist, and WVV seemed well-positioned to offer similar types of guidance, possible customer pilots, and joint go-to-market plans.

I also found the fact that WVV is a young fund with a smaller team appealing. Not only do I get to work closely with our portfolio companies, but I also get to interface with our corporate partners and leverage my operational background to help build processes and infrastructure for the firm.

I’ve now been here for nearly a year and a half, and while I’m proud of all the companies in the WVV portfolio, Caspar.AI is one in particular that is a great example of the cross-cutting types of investments that we look to make that have strategic relevance across our corporate partners’ industries, such as smart buildings, healthcare, and manufacturing. Caspar.AI is helping senior citizens in retirement communities live on their own more safely through a connected AI hub via smart sensors. In the future, Caspar.AI’s sensor technology could be deployed in hospitals and commercial healthcare buildings to create more connected, safer facilities. As healthcare providers move into at-home care and expand their senior care offerings, Caspar.AI could partner with them to provide remote monitoring capabilities. Caspar.AI also has implications for long term care insurance as its technology can help keep people in their homes longer without having to be put into a long-term care facility. And lastly, WVV’s partnership with Foxconn, the world’s largest contract manufacturer, provides us with access to additional expertise as Caspar.AI looks to scale in the future.

Building the next generation of enterprise startups

Based on the sheer volume of companies I’ve worked with over the past decade, my expertise comes in the form of a few areas: knowing which building blocks are needed at the right time when building early-stage B2B companies (as well as what mistakes to avoid), and pattern-matching elements of a founders’ speech/body language, team interactions, and gravitas that suggests whether they have what it takes to build out the venture. And of course, I’m constantly looking for connections between the startups we invest in and potential integration points with our corporate partners as that is where our mutual value shines.

I’d love to hear from you if you’re building an enterprise company with a strong technical team that has the potential to impact the core industries of our corporate partners: healthcare, financial services, building technology, and manufacturing. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn, or drop the WVV investment team a line at info [at] wvvcapital [dot] com.

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