Dorm Room Fund

Dorm Room Fund is run by students rather than career investors, which is the structural point of the vehicle. Regional teams are staffed by graduate and undergraduate partners who source, diligence and vote on investments, then rotate out as they graduate, giving the fund continuous turnover into each new campus cohort.

The institutional backing comes from First Round Capital, founded in 2004 by Josh Kopelman and Howard Morgan and one of the defining seed franchises of the last two decades, with offices in San Francisco, New York and Philadelphia. Kopelman is managing partner; Morgan retired in 2017. First Round's own record, including the first institutional check into Uber in 2010 and positions in Roblox, Square, Notion and Flatiron Health, is what gives student partners credibility with management teams they are meeting for the first time.

Dorm Room Fund was created in 2012 by First Round Capital as a $10 million vehicle dedicated to investing in student-run companies, and it remains the original student pre-seed fund. First Round, founded in 2004 by Josh Kopelman and Howard Morgan, capitalizes the fund and provides its infrastructure, while investment decisions are made by student partners recruited from campuses across several regions.

The fund writes small first checks at the earliest formation stage, and its returns case rests on access rather than ownership: student investors see companies forming inside universities before those companies register with institutional seed funds. Positions sourced through the model include Figma, Codecademy, Loom, ClassPass and Snackpass. The fund does not publish fund-by-fund sizes, vintages or a current committed capital figure beyond the original $10 million, and no separate Form D vehicle is disclosed under the Dorm Room Fund name.