- A Passion for Penn -
Red & Blue Ventures is led by a team of Penn alumni with decades of early stage investing and operating experience.
- Investment Team -
MICHAEL B. ARONSON
Managing Director @ Red & Blue Ventures
University of Pennsylvania - The Wharton School
BS. Entrepreneurial Management
1977-1978
Michael co-founded Red & Blue Ventures and has had a more than 30 year career working with technology companies. He has significant expertise in company formation around business school concepts, software development, capital raising, strategic alliances and joint ventures, financial reporting and tax issues, executive compensation, employment matters and copyright law. He was previously the co-founder and Managing Director of MentorTech Ventures, where he also invested in the University of Pennsylvania ecosystem. Michael has participated on the Boards of Directors, either as a member or observer, of a number of active and successfully exited companies including Jet.com (acquired by WalMart), Some Spider, The Neat Company, Ticketleap (acquired by PatronManager), Port, SeniorHomes.com (acquired by Bankrate), Prognos and Wanderfly (acquired by TripAdvisor). He acted as an advisor to management at Quidsi (acquired by Amazon), Yodle (acquired by Web.com) and Merchant Circle (acquired by Reply.com).
Prior to becoming a full time venture capitalist, Michael was an entrepreneur and angel investor. He was the co-founder, CFO, EVP & Board Member of SMG, Inc., a $28M simulation software company, named three times to “Inc. 500” fastest growing companies list. He was a founding shareholder and/or co-founder of five successful software companies, two of which were acquired by public entities, two by private investors and one of which has NYSE-listed corporate investor. He was also an investor in two additional software companies, one of which was acquired by public company and one which had successful IPO.
In addition to his venture capital and entrepreneurial activities, Michael has served on the Board, and the Executive and Investment Committees of Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania for more than 20 years. He also served as a Senior Lecturer and faculty member at Wharton for 20 years and has a network of more than 4,000 former students.
Michael received his B.S. in Economics with Honor from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, majoring in Entrepreneurial Management and Multinational Enterprise.
Brett Topche
Managing Director @ Red & Blue Ventures
University of Pennsylvania - The Wharton School
BS. Finance, Legal Studies, Political Science
1999 – 2002
Brett co-founded Red & Blue Ventures and has more than two decades of venture capital and private equity experience. He has spent much of his career primarily focusing on investments in ecommerce, digital media, mobile applications, marketing technologies and B2B software. Prior to co-founding Red & Blue, he spent more than nine years at MentorTech Ventures. He represents Red & Blue as an observer on the Boards of MD Ally, Strella and Burrow. He also observes on the Board of goTenna representing MentorTech Ventures. He previously served on the Board of Wanderfly (acquired by TripAdvisor), and observed on the Boards of SeniorHomes.com (acquired by Bankrate), Curalate (acquired by Bazaarvoice) and TicketLeap (acquired by PatronManager).
Prior to joining MentorTech, Brett was a member of the Fund Investments Team at Hamilton Lane Advisors, a fund-of-funds manager and private equity investment consultant. In this capacity, he evaluated private equity funds across a broad spectrum of stages and strategies on behalf of both discretionary and non-discretionary clients. During his time at Hamilton Lane, Brett reviewed more than 100 funds, including venture capital, mezzanine, buyout and real estate funds. Based in part on reports he drafted, more than $1 billion was invested into these funds.
Prior to working for Hamilton Lane, Brett spent more than four years as an Associate with NJTC Venture Fund, where he focused on investments in early-stage companies in the software, Internet and communications sectors. His responsibilities included deal flow generation, initial company reviews, performing due diligence on potential investments, participating in deal structuring, reviewing legal documentation and working with companies post-investment, occasionally as an Observer on Boards of Directors.
Brett is a magna cum laude graduate of the Wharton School, with a B.S. in Economics, with concentrations in Finance and Legal Studies and a Political Science minor from the College and Arts and Sciences.
- Advisory Team -
Dr. Laura Huang
University of California, Irvine
Ph.D. Management
INSEAD
MBA
Duke University
M.S. Engineering Management
B.S.E. Electrical Engineering
Laura Huang is a Distinguished Professor of Management and Organizational Dynamics and serves as Faculty Director of the Women's Entrepreneurship Initiative at Northeastern University. In addition, she has held faculty positions at Harvard Business School and the Wharton School and is currently on the board of Wharton Alumni Angels and NJECC. Laura's research examines the role of intuition and interpersonal signaling in entrepreneurship, workplace interactions, and economic decisions. She is the international best-selling author of EDGE: Turning Adversity into Advantage, published by Portfolio: Penguin Random House. Her work has been published in top journals, including Administrative Science Quarterly, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Journal, Organization Science, and Journal of Applied Psychology.
Laura was named one of the top 40 business school professors by Poets and Quants and was a recipient of the 2020 Cozzarelli Prize given by the National Academy of Sciences. In 2021, she was named to the Global Thinker50 Radar list as one of the top thinkers with the potential to change the world of theory and practice.
Before her academic career, she held investment banking, consulting, and management positions for organizations such as Standard Chartered Bank, IBM Global Services, and Johnson & Johnson.
Laura holds an MS and BSE in electrical engineering, both from Duke University, an MBA from INSEAD, and a PhD from the University of California, Irvine.
Dr. Eric Bradlow
Harvard University
Ph.D. Mathematical Statistics
M.S. Mathematical Statistics
University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School
B.S. Economics
Professor Eric T. Bradlow is the K.P. Chao Professor, Professor of Marketing, Statistics, Education and Economics, Chairperson of Wharton’s Marketing Department, and Vice-Dean of Analytics at Wharton. An applied statistician, Professor Bradlow uses high-powered statistical models to solve problems on everything from Internet search engines to product assortment issues. Specifically, his research interests include Bayesian modeling, statistical computing, and developing new methodology for unique data structures with application to business problems.
Eric is a fellow of the American Statistical Association, American Educational Research Association, is past chair of the American Statistical Association Section on Statistics in Marketing, past Editor-in-Chief of Marketing Science, is a past statistical fellow of Bell Labs, and worked at DuPont Corporation’s Corporate Marketing and Business Research Division and the Educational Testing Service.
A prolific scholar, Professor Bradlow’s research has been published in top-tier academic journals such as the Journal of the American Statistical Association, Psychometrika, Statistica Sinica, Chance, Marketing Science, Management Science, and Journal of Marketing Research. He also serves as Associate Editor for the Journal of the American Statistical Association and the Journal of Marketing Research, and is on the Editorial Boards of Marketing Letters, Marketing Science, Journal of Marketing Research, Quantitative Marketing and Economics, and the Quarterly Journal of Electronic Commerce.
Professor Bradlow has won numerous teaching awards at Wharton, including the Anvil Award, MBA Core Curriculum teaching award, the Miller-Sherrerd MBA Core Teaching award and the Excellence in Teaching Award. His teaching interests include courses in Statistics, Marketing Research, Marketing Management and PhD Data Analysis, as well as any material related to customer analytics.
Professor Bradlow earned his PhD and Master’s degrees in Mathematical Statistics from Harvard University and his BS in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. David Bell
Stanford University Graduate School of Business
Ph.D.
MS, Statistics
University of Pennsylvania
MA (Honorary)
University of Auckland, New Zealand
M.Com (1st Class Honors)
B.Com
David is trailblazer in ecommerce and omnichannel strategy and referred to as the “Guru of the direct-to-consumer movement” by Inc. magazine. As an investor in iconic new economy companies, former Chaired Professor in academia, and award-winning researcher, David brings a unique and first-principles viewpoint to commerce and entrepreneurship.
As co-founder at Idea Farm Ventures, he and his fellow co-founder and team focus on “better-for-consumers, better-for-the-planet” products and services that bring delight to staid categories. In addition to providing capital, the team works hand-in-hand with founders on key work streams and critical business decisions. Early personal investments include Bonobos (acq. by Walmart for $310m), Diapers.com (acq. by Amazon for $545m), Jet.com (acq. by Walmart for $3.3b), Harry’s, Warby Parker, and Cotopaxi, among many others.
A sought after speaker, David has delivered keynote presentations on business innovation in the digital economy, go-to-market strategy and related topics, globally for AXA (France and Hong Kong), Alibaba and Haier (China), Nike, NY Life, Novartis, Ralph Lauren, and Shell (US), Al Futtaim and Mastercard (UAE), Google (Brazil, Mexico, US), NZTE (NZ) and the OECD (France), among others.
As an academic, David published peer-reviewed research in all premier academic marketing journals: Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Management Science, Marketing Science, and Quantitative Marketing and Economics, as well as Journal of Econometrics. He won numerous teaching awards and several prestigious research awards from the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), including the Frank M. Bass Outstanding Dissertation Award, John D.C. Little Best Paper Finalist Awards (three), Marketing Science Long Term Impact Finalist Awards (two), Best OM Paper in Management Science Finalist Awards (two), as well as First Place in the Applied Research Challenge from the Production and Operations Management Society (POMS).
David holds a Ph.D. from the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, an M.S. in Statistics from Stanford University, an M.A. (Honorary) from the University of Pennsylvania, an M. Com (1st Class Honors) and B. Com from the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He resides in New York City and is a US Permanent Resident and New Zealand Citizen.
DR. DAVID REIBSTEIN
Purdue University
Ph.D, Marketing
University of Kansas
BS & BA
Professor David J. Reibstein is the William Stewart Woodside Professor of Marketing at Wharton. His research focuses on competitive marketing strategies, marketing metrics, and product line decisions, among other issues. Most recently, Professor Reibstein's research on competitive marketing strategies addresses competitors' reactions to marketing actions, offering companies insight into ways to anticipate these reactions and use them as a part of strategizing. His marketing metrics work has focused on linking marketing metrics to financial consequences resulting in his most recent book, entitled Marketing Metrics: The Definitive Guide to Measuring Marketing Performance, 2nd ed.
Professor Reibstein is the Immediate Past Chairman of the Board of Directors of the American Marketing Association. A former Executive Director of the Marketing Science Institute, he consults extensively with companies worldwide, including GE, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Rohm and Haas, and others.
His research has been published in top-tier academic journals including Marketing Science, Journal of Marketing Research, and the International Journal of Research in Marketing. Professor Reibstein is also the author or co-author of numerous books and chapters in books on subjects including competitive marketing strategy, global branding, and marketing performance measurement, among others.
Professor Reibstein is a dynamic, award-winning teacher who has been honored with more than 30 teaching awards. In 2005, he also received the John S. Day Distinguished Alumni Academic Service Award of Purdue University's Krannert School of Management, an honor given to a graduate whose service within the academic community reflects the spirit and service of former Krannert Dean John Day. His teaching interests include Marketing Strategy in the MBA Program, as well as teaching Competitive Marketing Strategy, Marketing Metrics, Pricing Strategies, and various other programs for Wharton's Executive Education Program.
Professor Reibstein received his PhD from Purdue University and his BS and BA degrees from the University of Kansas.