Berkeley Skydeck Fund uses no UC Berkeley endowment or donation money
Caroline Winnett · How Berkeley Skydeck is Shaping the Next Generations of Innovators · Jan 13, 2026 · at 4:23
Caroline Winnett, Executive Director of Berkeley Skydeck, explains the LP structure and source of capital backing the Berkeley Skydeck Fund.
0:00 / 0:11exact quote · 11.7s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“None of the money in the fund so far is Berkeley endowment money or donations by alums. It's all investments by professional investors who want their money back, right?”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Caroline Winnett
Berkeley Skydeck Fund shares half of its carry with UC Berkeley
“That fund is the Berkeley Skydeck Fund, which invests in our accelerator companies, and here's what we did that has really turned Skydeck into an extraordinary program, and one that, that other universities are asking about, and that is the fund, which is a pr…”
UC Berkeley factors startup entrepreneurship into faculty tenure evaluations
“That's something actually Berkeley changed some time ago. Specifically, if you're a faculty and you're doing entrepreneurship, thumbs up, right, for your 10, tenure evaluation.”
Japan lacks the startup ecosystem to commercialize its top research talent
“What they don't have, and they recognize is a culture and an ecosystem where this talent can go from being a researcher, winning Nobel prizes, which they do, to startups going to market, and that's what they're working to change.”
Translating customer feedback into founder jargon kills early startups
“The degree of truly making sure you're not translating any of that language with your, you know, going in here and coming out the other end with your language and your wants and your, that's going to kill you as a young company.”
Berkeley Skydeck applications grew from 55 to 3,800 by Batch 21
“When we first started the accelerator batches, and this was before the fund got going. So this was, you know, batch one back in 2000 and 15. We had 55 applications, and we thought that was pretty good. Applications for batch 21, 3800.”
Skydeck Fund raised $23M and $60M, and is raising Fund III
“The fund is raised a fund one of twenty-three million, raised a fund two of sixty million, is going out to raise a fund three, and that is all possible because the returns on the fund, you know, the numbers, the fund is performing extremely well so that people…”