A new way forward
Blended Capital.
Capital Studio was created when a collection of founders, operators, and investors decided to support innovation and economic mobility amongst Underestimated Entrepreneurs.
By pulling resources from the public and private sectors, we created a blended capital stack that reimagines the capital pipeline. We are developing a scalable pathway towards innovative solutions, venture capital funding, economic mobility, and most importantly, change.
Our Team
Osa Aihie
Partner
Osa Aihie is a first-generation tech entrepreneur, investor, and consultant. Prior to Capital Studio Osa worked as a fractional CMO to early-stage and venture-backed tech startups. In this role, he developed and implemented growth strategies that enabled startups to achieve key milestones needed for follow-on investment.
Osa is also a partner at Africa Equity Group where he conducts venture capital investments and advises companies in emerging markets across Sub-Saharan Africa. In his work, he applies blended capital approaches to companies that are using technology to address the Sustainable Development Goals outlined by the United Nation.
When he is not busy advising new emerging startups, you can find Osa writing poetry, working with local CDFIs, and traveling to new countries.
Osa Aihie
Partner
Partner Osa Aihie is a first-generation tech entrepreneur, investor, and...
Virginia Chau
Partner
Virginia Chau is an entrepreneur, investor, Fortune 100 business analyst and consultant, and former global securities and corporate attorney. She helped structure national accelerator programs and funds in emerging technology with blended capital and serves on several community and national boards in advanced technology, agriculture, cannabis technology, energy, and natural resources.
As an AmeriCorps VISTA Alumni, she also received her Bachelor of Science with summa cum laude distinction from Lesley College, Executive Education Certificates in Advanced Negotiation from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan and Harvard Business School, and her Doctor of Jurisprudence from the Washington University School of Law in Saint Louis with a Certificate in Corporate Law as a Scholar in Law.
When she is not busy advising new emerging startups, you can find Virginia hiking, exploring an untapped new country, supervising voter polling centers, and testing new healthy recipes for her Asian-Jewish food blog.
Virginia Chau
Partner
Partner Virginia Chau is an entrepreneur, investor, Fortune 100 business...
Eric Drummond
Strategic Advisor
Eric Drummond is an entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and former law partner at the international law firm of Squire Patton Boggs who practiced business and complex administrative law for over 25 years, focusing on emerging technology, advanced energy, and telecom law. He represented global clean energy developers, national lab scientists, and advanced technologies to even co-founding a Li-ion battery grid-tied energy storage company.
Drummond is currently Chair of Colorado’s Venture Capital Authority, Co-Founder of Energize Colorado, and Founding Director of the Colorado Clean Energy Fund, and current chair of Innovation Corridor. The Innovation Corridor is a unique B2B technology enhancement and investment platform composed of two co-anchor national labs, both with leadership-class supercomputers, including the largest and fastest supercomputer in the world dedicated to advanced energy research, Fortune 100 enterprise companies, academic institutions and entrepreneurs, and federal agency partners.
He received his Undergraduate Degree in Philosophy (emphasis in Symbolic Logic and First-Order Predicate Calculus) from the University of Texas at Austin and his Doctor of Jurisprudence from the University of Texas School of Law.
Eric Drummond
Strategic Advisor
Strategic Advisor Eric Drummond is an entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and...
Our Values
REIMAGINE
THE WORLD
In order to create a meaningful impact, we must reimagine the world around us, differentiating between how things currently are and what they have the potential to be.
EMBRACE
COLLECTIVE EFFORT
Monumental issues require collaboration. Instead of recreating the wheel, we prefer to work collectively with individuals and organizations, leading and joining when necessary.
CHAMPION
THE UNDERESTIMATED
Founders who come from historically marginalized communities and/or represent underestimated identities are extremely capable of building world-class solutions with limited resources.
BUSINESS AS
A SOLUTION
Businesses will play a key role in addressing the major issues of this generation such as climate change and economic inequality.
Our Initiatives
GrantVEST
GrantVEST is a blended capital platform that matches founders with non-dilutive grants and private investors. The platform was developed from the realization that grants are a powerful funding mechanism for Underestimated Entrepreneurs with early-stage companies; however, these grants are often siloed. GrantVEST will serve as a critical step towards creating a blended capital ecosystem for building and scaling underestimated companies.
Earlii
Earlii is an economic empowerment initiative powered by Capital Studio. The program provides underestimated founders with the opportunity to develop minimum viable products (MVP) needed to achieve product-market fit. Earlii will catalyze economic mobility by providing underestimated entrepreneurs with the financial, social, and technical capital needed to build venture-backed technology companies.
