Institute News · For Immediate Release
Russ W. Rosenzweig Named Executive Director of The Venture Capital Institute
Chicago · Effective March 13, 2026
The Venture Capital Institute today announced that Russ W. Rosenzweig has been appointed its first Executive Director, effective March 13, 2026.
Mr. Rosenzweig brings more than thirty years of experience on every side of the venture table: as a founder who raised it, an operator who grew through it, an adviser who helped others win it, and a teacher who trained the next generation to think clearly about it.
His first experience with venture capital came while he was still an undergraduate at Northwestern University, when he served as one of the youngest-ever venture capital interns, working for Andy Kalnow at Alpha Capital Venture Partners in Chicago. At 22 he raised capital for his first startup, Round Table Group, which he co-founded in 1994 as the first expert witness search and referral firm. Round Table Group was acquired by Thomson Reuters in 2010; Mr. Rosenzweig re-acquired the company several years later and continues to lead it today. The firm has been the subject of three Stanford University business case studies.
During the dot-com era, Mr. Rosenzweig completed his M.B.A. at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business on the entrepreneurship, venture capital and finance track. With one of his teachers there, Professor Steven Kaplan, he formed Michigan & Oak Partners, a venture capital advisory firm that helped numerous startups of that era secure venture funding. He later joined the teaching side himself, leading and directing the New Entrepreneurs' Program at the University of Chicago and the Business Frameworks course at the IIT Institute of Design.
Mr. Rosenzweig holds a B.A. in Economics and Mathematical Methods in the Social Sciences from Northwestern University and an M.B.A. in Economics and Finance from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, having studied under seven Nobel laureates between the two institutions. He has been helping promising startups achieve success and venture funding for over thirty years, and says he is honored to be appointed Executive Director of the Institute.
The appointment takes effect on March 13: the birthday of the Institute's late co-founder, Shawna Snukst, in whose honor the date was chosen.
The Venture Capital Institute is an independent institution that gives founders a candid answer to the question the market answers expensively: is this venture fundable? Its concierge interviews founders the way an investment committee would and renders one of three findings, free, with reasons. The Institute documents fifty venture firms and fifteen accelerator programmes from their own published criteria, and maintains a research library verified against the published papers. Every fee the Institute charges is flat, never contingent on a financing. Learn more at theventurecapitalinstitute.com.
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