Michael Staton
Partner at Learn Capital
San Francisco, California
Overview
Work Experience
Partner
2021 - Current
Co-Founder, CEO
2020
Even before #COVID19 and the Remote Learning crises, the Learn team and I were working to develop better tools for parents to discover, curate, and manage extraordinary experiences for their families. Now with #COVID and #PandemicPods, we're giving parents the tools to organize their families in their pursuit of extraordinary learning. Pre-Seed investors include LearnStart, Learn Capital, 1517fund, City Light Capital, Hustle Fund, Dunce Capital, Copperwire Ventures and Techammer.
Partner
2012
I helped to raise our Global Innovation Fund anchored by the International Finance Corporation. Notable deals include VIPKid, Outschool, Minerva, Brilliant, Andela, and Photomath. For Fund II, I helped raise annex capital and assisted the firm in sourcing and making investments in Coursera, ClimbCredit, BrightBytes and MysteryScience. I serve as the main brand ambassador to international conferences. I help early stage startups with strategic issues, particularly positioning, marketing, and sales operations.
LearnCapital is a venture capital firm focused exclusively on funding entrepreneurs with a vision for better and smarter learning.
Venture Partner, Advisor
2019
Alpha Partners invests in competitive growth rounds for the world's leading growth-stage technology ventures, gaining access by providing on-demand SPV capital to early-stage venture capital firms and sharing economics. Investments include Vroom (IPO), Wish (IPO), Careem (acquired by Uber), Coupang, Coursera, Udemy, Dr. on Demand, GetAround, Lime and others. I organize their emerging manager community in the SF/Bay Area and advise on their community and network of early-stage venture capital firms.
Catalyst, Venture Advisor
2019
I helped Laerdal Finans and Laerdal Medical set up the Million Lives Fund, a $100M venture capital fund with the strategic impact goal of helping to save 1 million lives every year by 2030. I helped lead strategic conversations at the Board level of Laerdal Medical, assisted with strategy work and materials generation, socialized the initiative with the family office, as well as identified and recruited the Managing Partner, Jeff Trost. In general, I helped make sure the initiative came together. Million Lives Fund will invest in: Medical Education, Medical Devices, Digital Health, and Digital Therapeutics with an aim to make significant impact in areas that show a larger than normal unnecessary loss of life, including Maternal and Prenatal Health, Infection/Sepsis, Medical Error, Cardiac Arrest, Trauma Response, and Stroke. A key strategy of Million Lives Fund will be to invest in education, training, and best practices dissemination to assure that innovations with greater patient outcomes are more widely spread at a more urgent pace than the current 17 years :). After the initial setup, I remain involved as a Venture Advisor.
Laerdal Million Lives Fund is a venture capital firm that focuses on investments in life-saving technologies.
Seed Investor
2022
Avela helps families and charter school systems by offering a full suite from search, select, apply, application and enrollment management.
Software to advance equity in education.
Angel Investor
2022
Seabound captures emissions from seagoing vessels and converts it into building materials.
Venture Partner
2021
NextGen Venture Partners typically invests $1-2 million in seed-stage companies. Venture Partners are founders and innovators across the country whose expertise support NextGen's portfolio growth.
NextGen Venture Partners invests in seed-stage companies with the participation of their venture partners.
Series A Investor
2022
Copper Banking helps teens become financially literate.
Copper is an all-digital bank built specifically for teenagers to teach them in making smart financial decisions.
Raised $42,300,000.00 from Alumni Ventures, Insight Partners, BIP Ventures, Sleeping Bear Capital, Invesco Private Capital, Springbank Collective and Fiat Ventures.
Angel Investor
2021