This fall, the University committed $100,000 to a new fund called the Fordham Angel Fund. Overseen by the Fordham Foundry, it will provide seed money to businesses run by current undergraduate and graduate students.

Donna Rapaccioli, Ph.D., dean of the Gabelli School of Business, said the fund, which will commit investments of up to $25,000 in individual businesses, exemplifies application-based learning and industry connectivity, which are key elements of the college’s approach to education.

“Launching the angel fund is another great opportunity for our students to get exposure to the real-world practices of an investment committee, and a chance at real-time decision-making with tangible outcomes,” she said.

“It will provide the added benefit of seed capital for worthy businesses that will add value to society.”

Al Bartosic, GABELLI ’84, the Foundry’s executive director, said the fund is in many ways the pinnacle of offerings that the Foundry can offer.

“We started with the basic mentorship, then we put a pitch challenge together; we’ve been doing that for four years. Last year we put our Ram’s Den competition, which was then called Venture Up!, together; we’ll be doing the second one this month,” he said.

“We wanted to give students an opportunity not just to get mentorship and guidance, but also, what a lot of them need is cash to work with their businesses.”

A Volunteer Effort

The backbone of the fund, which is open to students from all of Fordham’s nine colleges and schools, is two committees of volunteers staffed by students, alumni, and experts in venture capital including academics and working professionals.

The investment committee that will evaluate potential companies is made up of Kevin McQuillan, whose son Chase graduated from the Gabelli School in 2017; Vipin Chamakkala, GABELLI ’10; Donna Redel, LAW ’95; Jerry Wong, program director of the Gabelli M.S in Global Finance; and Bronson Lingamfelter.

“These are people who live, work, eat, breathe, and sleep venture capital or startups,” said Bartosic.

The task of locating companies that might be worth investing in, meanwhile, falls to members of the second committee, the Angel Fund Fellows. Though the position is also open to all undergraduate students,tthe first cohort is made up of Gabelli School students:  seniors Tigerlily Cooley and Christian Pankovcin, and juniors Luis Navarro, Julia de Xavier, and Matthew Nguyen.

The fellows, who have been searching for investment-worthy companies since September, will present the investment committee with 15 potential investment opportunities this month. In January, the investment committee will whittle that list down to four or five finalists who will be invited to present their plans in person.

Bartosic said he expects that at least one company will receive funding. In March, the fund will refer that company to the Law Schools’ Entrepreneurial Law clinic, where law students will conduct their own due diligence.

“The goal is to give these fellows a taste of how a venture fund really works, so they understand that it’s not all just opening a business up, riding around on a skateboard, and feeling good about things. The due diligence is really the hard work,” he said.

Learning How Venture Capital Works

The fellowship program was an obvious fit for Tigerlilly Cooley, a global business honors program student at Gabelli Lincoln Center. She’s currently interning at venture capital fund Future/Perfect Ventures, and before that, she was a Venture Capital College Fellow at the Female Founders Fund. She also interned at Sony Music and currently fronts her own band, Bleachbear. The two fields are not so far apart, she said.

“I like meeting with people. I like client-facing things where you talk to other people. I have a band, but I’ve been thinking a lot about the business element of it. I kind of think of that as my startup,” she said.

McQuillan, a member of the investment committee, said he was excited by the opportunity to help students learn the ropes of the venture capital industry. It’s one he knows well, as he’s currently a general partner of OCA Ventures and the founder and general partner of Focus Opportunity Fund. He credited Rose McSween, Ed.D., senior director of development at the Gabelli School, with bringing him on board.

“We sat down one night and talked about how kids want to learn about starting businesses, and how Fordham needs to start one of these funds. She got a bunch of people to volunteer their time, and I was one of them,” he said.

“One of the key responsibilities in life is, you should help the next generation, and share your successes and failures so they don’t make the same mistakes. I’m doing this because I want to help the next generation. The motivated ones are the ones I get the most excited about.”

Bartosic said that when it comes to choosing companies, the Angel Fund will require them to meet standards such as the Environmental, Social and Governance Criteria (ESG), and those set forth by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASBE), but otherwise fellows will not be steered to specific industries.

“There’s a small subgroup of students that are steadily working away on their businesses while they’re at Fordham. We’ve seen them, we’ve identified several of them, and we’re sure there are lots and lots of them that never come to the Foundry,” he said, adding that Fordham entrepreneurs can be found beyond the Gabelli School.

“I just ran into someone from the Graduate School of Social Service who has a business, and we didn’t know about it, and she was like, ‘Can I get some help?’ So people are out there, doing these things.”

The demonstration of a medium size DJI Inspire 2 drone and a small DJI Mavic Pro drone, inside the Lombardi Fieldhouse, was part of Introduction to Real Estate Finance, a class offered to Gabelli undergraduates as part of the colleges’ alternative investments concentration. Both drones flew short flights in the middle of the fieldhouse as Gabelli students gazed up attentively.

Roseanne McSween, Ed.D., senior director of development and adjunct professor at Gabelli, said she invited a representative of White Plains-based City Dronez to campus as part of a unit on the disruptions in real estate finance. In addition to real estate finance, classes in the concentration cover hedge funds, private equity and venture capital, and alternative investment strategies.

In Real Estate, Plenty of Potential

Drones have many uses in the real estate world, McSween said. As an example, she noted that workers currently inspect the sides of buildings under construction in person. It’s dangerous, expensive, time-consuming and absolutely necessary work, and it can also be done by drones, once authorities such as the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) give the go-ahead.

“There are all sorts of applications for this kind of technology that the students hadn’t ever thought of,” she said.

“We colored in a whole range of uses for it that relate to land, real estate, and construction.”

Kevin Meenan, FCRH ’77, GABELLI ’82, cofounder and CEO of City Dronez, said the days of drones buzzing alongside unfinished skyscrapers are not here yet. The FAA is taking its time studying the feasibility of the drones in cities, because, as with any new technology, it only takes one accident to tarnish an entire industry. But the time when drones are cleared to fly highly-regulated routes to destinations in major cities is not far off, which is why he said he and his partner named their business City Dronez when they started it in 2015.

That’s due in no small part to the fact that Amazon delivers five billion packages annually under their Prime program. Meenan noted that four billion of those packages weigh five pounds or less, and 80 percent of Amazon’s cost of delivering a package is in the last mile of delivery. Drones are ideally suited for such short, small deliveries, and can do the job much more cheaply than humans in trucks.

“The pressure that Amazon, FedEx, and UPS are putting on the government is really driving the agenda for the FAA and private partners to figure out how to get drones into the air as safely and as quickly as possible,” he said.

Drones are already being used extensively in the agricultural sector to survey crop fields. In addition to photos and videos, they can be outfitted with devices that can capture thermal issues and atmospheric readings.

A Natural Fit For Veterans

They’re also used extensively by the U.S. military, and in fact, City Dronez hires many disabled combat veterans.

“The three skill sets that we need the most are analysts, pilots, and logisticians, and there are tens of thousands of them coming out of the military. We believe that it’s an incredible source of talent,” he said.

“My partner spent 30 years in the military, and he’s very committed to providing them meaningful, exciting, and productive careers in this industry.”

Shea Golden, a junior finance major at Gabelli who is enrolled McSween’s class, said the drones were a lot louder than she expected. What stood out for her was their potential use for surveying bridges to assess whether they need repairs. She was also impressed to learn about how they can be programmed to fly a specific route autonomously for 30 minutes before returning to the pilot. After graduation, she’s hoping to pursue a career in real estate management and investment.

“Real estate is such a tangible asset in business, which I always found interesting. Being in the finance track, you see things like stocks, bonds, and commodities, and I just feel like real estate is unique in that aspect,” she said.

McSween, whose career has included stints at Related Companies and Citibanks’ commercial real estate division, said the demonstration was part of a larger effort to shake off the traditional model of a teacher lecturing to a group. One of the students’ recent assignments was to see how much information they could glean about the financing and development of Hudson Yards, a $20 billion development currently under construction atop the rail yards between West 30th and West 34th streets on the West Side of Manhattan.

“I’m teaching them as much about working as a team in a professional environment as I am the real estate industry,” she said.

“We talk a lot about effective business writing, and I pair them together to edit each other’s writing, do presentations in front of one another, and give each other constructive feedback. We’re constantly getting up out of the chair and interacting with either pairs or groups of students. So it’s not a passive learning experience.”