Luke Armour (Princeton ’13) on Building a VC Fund for Princeton Founders
Dear stupendous readers,
Welcome to another edition of Profiles In Entrepreneurship! For this issue we are very fortunate to get an inside scoop of Luke Armour’s journey as a VC. He is the founder and managing director of Chaac Ventures, a fund dedicated to supporting Princeton alumni-founded companies. Keep reading to find out how he started Chaac at such a young age, how Princeton founders stack up against entrepreneurs from other schools, and more.
How did you get the idea to start Chaac Ventures?
After graduating in 2013, I moved to Los Angeles to join a software-focused growth equity firm (later stage venture capital). Princeton founders started reaching out to share their startup ideas, investment decks, and to ask my opinion on where they could raise capital for their startups.
I started connecting Princeton founders with alums and investors I knew. I looked around at what other schools had with regards to funding their alums, and realized how behind the curve we were at Princeton (in terms of funding founders). Schools like Stanford, Harvard, MIT, Berkley etc. had private funds set up with the express purpose of investing in alumni founders, and thus the idea for Chaac was born.
What initially led you to venture capital?
Venture capital is an extremely fun industry, where you can work with and support visionary founders and also (hopefully) create a great deal of value for investors in the process. What really drove me towards venture was an amazing summer internship I had my sophomore summer working for Ed Sim as an intern analyst at Boldstart Ventures in NYC. It was such an inspiring summer and it led me to pursue tech investing after college.
Is there anything interesting that stands out among Princeton founders compared to founders from other schools?
While we have seen incredible talent from many ecosystems (not just Princeton), I would say that the majority of the Princeton founders we see have overly-ambitious ideas that may very well go on to become substantial companies and have positive impacts on the world. We feel a higher-than average number of these ventures will succeed (compared to traditional early-stage VC), and will become leading companies in AI, machine learning, computer vision, facial recognition, cybersecurity and the like. Combining these founders with the strength and breadth of the Princeton network only increases those chances for success. The founders we see coming out of Princeton are incredible.
How did you convince limited partners to invest in Chaac as a young, first-time VC?
We laid out our vision, and we were fortunate that several LPs appreciated and agreed with what we were seeing. We are grateful to work with an amazing group of investors and advisors (some, but not all Princeton alums), who also feel the Princeton community is a good investment, both in terms of financial returns, but also potential positive impacts to our society.
The 1–2 books that you think should be required reading for everyone?
There are so many great books out there, but a few of my recent favorites are Hyperfocus by productivity expert Chris Bailey, Measure What Matters by the legendary Kleiner Perkins venture capitalist John Doerr, and lastly, Oversubscribed, an eBook on raising seed capital by Chaac EIR, Mike Wilner.
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This interview is brought to you by Kelvin Yu ’21. Reach out to him here for questions or comments.
That’s it for this issue! As always, if you are involved with entrepreneurship in any way, role, shape, or form (VC, engineer, founder, etc.), or want to contribute to PIE, we’d love to talk to you :)
