J Skyler Fernandes

J. Skyler Fernandes is a venture capitalist and entrepreneur ranked on the GCV/Global Corporate Venturing Powerlist 100. He graduated summa cum laude from New York University with a degree in Economics & International Relations, finishing a year early, and completed coursework at Harvard University (physics/foreign policy). His early career was in finance, with roles in Debt Capital Markets for Latin America at Standard Bank (2005–2006), asset securitization (RMBS) at Société Générale (2007), and the Financial Institutions Group at Credit Suisse (2007–2009), before moving into venture investing as a Partner at Centripetal Capital Partners and founding the seed fund One Match Ventures.

Fernandes is best known for founding and running Simon Venture Group (SVG), the venture capital arm of Simon Property Group — an S&P 100 company and the largest retail real estate company in the world. Launched in 2014, SVG invested in the future of retail and commerce (in-store retail tech, e-commerce, logistics, data/analytics, and IoT) and was ranked by CB Insights among the top corporate VC funds in retail alongside GV (Google Ventures), Intel Capital, and Comcast Ventures. He was profiled by Forbes in 2015 as a VC "quietly reshaping retail." He later served as Managing Director of Investments at Cleveland Avenue, the private equity and venture fund co-founded by former McDonald's President & CEO Don Thompson, focused on food & beverage technology, brands, and restaurants.

Today Fernandes is Founder, Chairman & General Partner of VU Venture Partners, a global venture capital firm founded in 2018, and Founder & CEO of Venture University, an "investor accelerator" that trains aspiring VCs, angels, family offices, and fund-of-funds through a fund-backed, "learn by doing" apprenticeship model (accepting roughly 3% of applicants; 750+ graduates). VU operates an integrated platform combining a VC fund, a real estate/private-equity fund (VU Capital Partners), and the accelerator, deploying dozens of investors who collectively review ~20,000 deals per year. Fernandes is also a widely followed educator: his "Best Startup Pitch Deck" template has been downloaded 500,000–700,000+ times and is used by leading accelerators and business schools, and he has published on VentureBeat and HuffPost.

• Invests at pre-seed, seed, and Series A, writing checks of roughly $200K–$1M, with the ability to lead rounds and participate in follow-on rounds as a long-term partner.
• Sector-agnostic within a defined set: Consumer, Enterprise, Fintech, Healthcare, Frontier Tech (including Space), and Proptech; earlier vehicles concentrated on retail/commerce technology (SVG) and food & beverage (Cleveland Avenue).
• Highly selective and volume-driven: VU frames itself as investing in ~2–4 new companies per quarter out of ~20,000 deals reviewed annually (~0.1%).
• Emphasizes team quality and coachability — Fernandes' public brand centers on teaching founders how to pitch (the widely used pitch-deck template), signaling he values clear, well-structured narratives and strong founder-investor fit.
• Global mandate: actively invests across North America, Europe, LatAm, Africa, MENA, India, and Asia-Pacific.