Venture Fund Member Profile
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BR Venture Fund (BRV) is Johnson’s early stage venture capital fund. Operated entirely by a team of MBA students, BRV typically invests up to $250,000 in US-based high growth companies across all industries. Initially funded by donations to the University, BRV is a true evergreen fund, recycling all proceeds for reinvestment. Along with investing startup capital in promising new companies, BRV also serves as the gateway to Cornell technologies by providing its investment partners unique access to new innovations. Through its established relationships with other investors, BRV has the ability to create new syndicate opportunities as well as participate in those presented to the fund.
An investment from BRV not only brings with it the backing of one of the top Business Schools in the world, but also the ability to leverage any of Cornell’s many resources.
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Rhett Weiss
Executive Director
BR Venture Fund |
Rhett is the Executive Director of the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Institute at Cornell’s Johnson Graduate School of Management. In addition, he serves on the faculty, teaching or advising graduate students in the entrepreneurship, private equity, and venture capital areas.
Before joining Cornell in July 2011, Rhett had over 25 years of successful leadership and management roles. Rhett is an experienced executive, entrepreneur, consultant, and attorney who has led domestic and foreign strategic transactions totaling over $30 billion. Throughout his career, he has been involved in dozens of entrepreneurial ventures and innovation initiatives. Rhett also has held board chairman and other leadership positions at professional, educational, civic, and other non-profit organizations.
A Virginia native, he was a partner of a Virginia law firm early in his career. When his firm was disbanding because two of his partners became judges, a bank client recruited Rhett to lead a turnaround effort as COO. Once the bank returned to profitability and was positioned for sale, he reentered the practice of law with a major international law firm. There, he resumed his practice in the corporate, finance, real estate, and economic development areas. As a result of some seminal deals on which Rhett was lead counsel, a Big 4 accounting firm, which was law firm client, recruited Rhett to build and direct a consulting practice in strategic corporate expansion. He also served on the practice’s national management team at that Big 4 firm. In 1999, Rhett founded DEALTEK, Ltd., a management consulting and decision support software firm. He invented and holds the patent on web-based DEALS® software, marketed by DEALTEK and used worldwide in over 35 countries to model and optimize location-sensitive corporate capital investments. Besides successfully launching DEALS, as CEO Rhett led consulting engagements with domestic and foreign companies to develop, grow, or consolidate their markets, operations, and facilities. Rhett continues to serve as DEALTEK’s Chairman.
Google Inc. brought Rhett’s expertise in-house to help build out its global infrastructure. From 2005 to 2010, Rhett served as Senior Team Leader – Strategic Development, based in Mountain View, California, and Vienna, Austria. He was chief designer and negotiator of several large strategic acquisition and development projects for Google’s global infrastructure, typically involving its legendary data centers. He headed key initiatives and relationships with businesses, utilities, governments, economic development agencies, landowners, and other stakeholders in North America and overseas. These responsibilities included leading location and site selection, managing professional teams, and closing numerous deals. Rhett also created and conducted negotiation training workshops in Google’s offices globally. While at Google, Rhett co-founded the “Juicy Ideas” collegiate entrepreneurship and innovation competition, with 300 universities participating in most recent round. After leaving Google, Rhett became involved again in various technology sector startups.
Business and technology news articles often mention Rhett’s award-winning projects. He also frequently has presented, authored, or co-authored works in the fields of negotiations, entrepreneurship, and economic development.
Rhett holds a BS in Management with Honors (finance major) from Tulane University, a Doctor of Jurisprudence from the College of William & Mary, and an MBA-level Executive Certificate in International Business from Georgetown University.
Representative Investments
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Medical Care Corporation created the MCI Screen, a precise measure of memory function with 97% accuracy. It is simple to implement in clinical practice, and enables physicians to distinguish normal aging from subtle memory changes caused by underlying medical conditions. Using the MCI Screen to perform short, reimbursed assessments can greatly improve patient care, while building your practice. |
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Restaurant Revolution Technologies helps restaurants improve customer service, increase takeout revenue and lower overhead costs via a transformative takeout solution for Full Service, Limited Service and Fast Casual restaurants. |
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NovaSterilis is committed to providing a new level of patient safety and product performance through the development of a new, emerging technology. The development of the supercritical carbon dioxide as a solvent for the NovaKill sterilent allows the biomedical community to achieve sterilization without compromising the product’s integrity. |
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Adenios technology both raises and lowers the permeability of the blood brain barrier to precisely control the delivery of existing drugs. The technology, spun out of Cornell University, can be paired with unmodified current therapeutics to either improve or block delivery of multiple compounds into the brain. |
Rhett participated in the FundingPost event: DC VC and Angel Event
on Tuesday, July 24, 2012 in DC, Sponsored by Bingham McCutchen, SocialRadius, The Soho Loft
To list your Company on our website and make your profile available to Rhett and 7,500+ other VCs and Angel Investors, Click Here.
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