Michael Aronson
Founder of Red & Blue Ventures
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Overview
Work Experience
Co Founder and Managing Director
2016 - Current
Red & Blue Ventures (PENN's colors) invests in exciting seed and Series A rounds of Ecommerce and Information Technology startups from the UPENN ecosystems. These companies are founded and/or led by UPENN Alumni, current students and faculty. Now investing out of Fund II.
Board Member (observer)
2011
The prognosFACTOR™ platform intakes cumbersome and complex health care data and standardizes it. Then it’s enriched using sophisticated AI and machine learning techniques resulting in deep, data-driven clinical insights. Prognos can link such lab-testing-related insights to traditional real-world data (RWD) from other sources, as well as a choice of a wide range of options in an open data ecosystem — all while making our data-driven insights amenable for downstream applications.
Prognos Health creates a healthcare analytics platform that uses patient-level data to generate clinical insights.
Raised $66,533,367.00 from LabCorp, Safeguard Scientifics, Marshall Wace, Cigna, Merck, Red & Blue Ventures, Hunt Companies, Hikma Ventures and Maywic Select Investments.
Managing Partner
2005
MentorTech invested in about 30 companies out of the Wharton/Penn startup ecosystem. Notable exits included Yodle (sold to Web.com), Diapers.com (sold to Amazon), Payquik (Sold to CITI), Jet (sold to Walmart) and the NYSE listed Warby Parker. Total exit value of over $10 billion. Active investments include Prognos and GoTenna. MentorTech is no longer making any new investments (see Red&Blue Ventures)
Director
2005
Neat is a highly profitable cloud based accounting system for small and medium sized businesses with more than 50,000 customers.
Neat offers a cloud-based mobile digital filing system that transforms digital and paper documents into organized information.
Raised $27,650,000.00 from Edison Partners, Edison Venture Capital, MentorTech Ventures, MentorTech Ventures, Edison Partners, MentorTech Ventures and Edison Venture Capital.
Board Member (observer)
2018 - 2021
Some Spider Studio is the leading destination on the web and via social media apps, for Moms, Dads and Families. Brands include Scary Mommy, The Dad and Fatherly. The company was acquired by BDG Media
Some Spider Studios is a media and entertainment company.
Raised $10,000,000.00 from New Enterprise Associates, Red & Blue Ventures, Graph Ventures and Sandy Grushow.
Board Member (observer)
2020 - 2021
Cafe is a leading podcast company on how the law intersects with society. The company offers podcasts on politics, business and technology. CAFE’s Stay Tuned with Preet, a weekly podcast that explores fascinating legal cases alongside thought provoking ethical dilemmas, has been downloaded a total of 54 million times, with an average of 2.1 million downloads per month and 350,000 downloads per episode. In 2021, Cafe was acquired by Vox Media.
Cafe Studios is a podcast-first media company that creates and distributes premium content filtered through the lens of the law.
Director
2008 - 2017
Ticketleap was a pioneer in self serve online ticketing. It was sold to Providence Strategic Growth Partners in 2017.
TicketLeap, powered by Leap Event Technology, elevates event ticketing with its intuitive interface, full set of tools, and fast setup.
Raised $10,252,185.00 from Nextstage Capital, Nextstage Capital, Nextstage Capital and Nextstage Capital.
Investment Committee
1991 - 2016
BFTP operates as an early stage venture fund for technology companies in Southeastern Pennsylvania. Actively involved in hundreds of tech investments over a 25 year period.
The Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Northeastern Pennsylvania (BFTP/NEP) is part of a state-funded economic development initiative.
Raised $21,378,479.00.
Board Member (observer)
2015 - 2016
Jet.com was an ecommerce marketplace. It was sold in 2016 to Walmart for $3.3 billion.
Founder
1981 - 2001
SMG was the world leader in business simulation for management development for Fortune 500 companies worldwide. It was sold to a private equity firm in 2000 with approximately $25 million in revenues.