This case examines the strategic inflection point faced by Miriam Rivera and Clint Korver, cofounders of Ulu Ventures, as they consider institutional expansion while seeking to preserve the integrity of their decision-making model. Over more than a decade since its founding, Ulu had earned a reputation as a top-performing seed-stage venture fund by applying decision analysis to early-stage investing. The firm developed an investment model and process—a learning system that improves over time—grounded in structured judgment and probabilistic reasoning. Ulu treated human judgment as critical data, applying the same rigor to it as to quantitative analysis, and converting qualitative assessments into standardized probability adjustments to reduce bias and ensure consistency. The case invites students to consider what it takes to institutionalize a methodology rooted in first principles, and how a founder-driven framework can be sustained and extended by others.
