Office Hours with Foothill Ventures (AI/Frontier Tech Investor)

Join Foothill Ventures for a limited opportunity to connect one-on-one with the investing team during CMU Startup Week. These office hours are a chance for founders to share what they are building, get feedback, ask questions, and learn more about Foothill Ventures' perspective on early-stage startups and venture investing. Who you'll be meeting with: General Partner Max von Poelnitz: Max is a serial founder-turned investor; he has built and scaled health tech, payments, and food e-commerce businesses across the U.S. and Asia with a successful exit. He has spent a decade each in Europe and Asia and the past seven years in Silicon Valley. Most recently, he built a corporate venture fund for a single LP, establishing it as an active investor in photonics, energy, climate technology, and advanced materials. Previously, he managed investments for a family office and the minority holdings of a Dutch conglomerate, giving him experience across both founder and institutional investor perspectives. He holds an MBA from INSEAD, serves on the board of a child-development charity, and, after once aspiring to play golf professionally, still holds his own on the course. Software Investor Theresa Dai: Theresa is an investor at Foothill Ventures, where she invests in Seed and Series A companies in AI software infrastructure and applications. Before entering venture capital, Theresa started her career in consulting and worked as a product manager, building several SaaS products from 0 to 1. Her expertise spans B2B SaaS, agentic AI, healthcare technology, and both vertical and horizontal AI startups. Theresa holds a Mathematics degree from Northwestern University and an MBA from MIT. Both Max and Theresa flew in from San Francisco to meet with the CMU startup community. Availability is limited. Once your registration is approved, Foothill Ventures team will share a sign-up sheet for 20-minute meeting slots during the event window. We encourage interested founders to register early and provide a brief overview of their startup when signing up. About Foothill Ventures Foothill Ventures is a technology-focused early-stage VC based in Silicon Valley with $300M AUM. We back technical founders building the durable companies of the AI Era, across the entire AI stack from hardware, software infrastructure to applications. Our team of passionate investors bring deep experience as founders and operators. We have backed CMU founders working on autonomous driving, thermal cooling materials, AI agents for supply chain planning, MEMS-based arrays and so on.