Mariel Rosic

Mariel Rošić joined Dorm Room Fund as a Boston-based Investment Partner while an undergraduate at Brown University, where she studied neuroengineering (an Sc.B. in Neuroscience alongside engineering coursework). She was announced in Dorm Room Fund's 2019 partner class, which described her as "passionately curious about brains, embodiment, and human-centered impactful technologies/systems." As a student-investor she sourced, evaluated, and backed founder teams from Boston-area campuses on behalf of the fund. Dorm Room Fund is a student-run venture firm launched in 2012 by First Round Capital's Josh Kopelman; its partners are current students who write early checks into other student-led startups (the fund spun out independently and raised a $12.5M Fund IV in 2022).

Her research background is scientific rather than financial: at Brown she worked on fish biomimetics and ran a multi-year study on the "neural correlates of chronic pain" aimed at brain- and spine-computer interfaces and spinal-cord-stimulation devices for pain management. Alongside the lab work she built AR/VR experiences and led community and meditation programming (STEAM leadership, MC of the Providence Salon).

After her Dorm Room Fund tenure, Rošić moved into Partnerships & Growth at Wefunder, the equity-crowdfunding platform that lets everyday people invest in startups — she has spoken publicly on equity crowdfunding for female entrepreneurs and investors (She Angel Investors podcast, Episode #244). She has also been associated with the startups Sylva and Parents Are Human.

Today Mariel is a full-time Lecturer and Fellow at Stanford University's Life Design Lab, where she co-teaches the "Designing Your Life" (ENGR 104B) and "Designing Your Spiritual Life" (ENGR 104R/204R) courses with Bill Burnett and Deepak Ramola, and co-teaches "Story Pharmacy" with the Stanford Storytelling Project. She describes herself as an experience designer, facilitator, and coach for founders and CEOs; she trained as a Chan Buddhist monastic, speaks five languages, and is the daughter of Eastern European immigrants. Her active venture-investing work is therefore historical (Dorm Room Fund / Wefunder era) rather than her present-day primary role.

• Invested through Dorm Room Fund's model: pre-seed/seed checks into companies with at least one student or very-recent-graduate founder, typically ~$20K at the time she was a partner.
• Personal areas of conviction reflect her scientific training: brain-machine interfaces, neurotech, embodied/human-centered technology, and AR/VR experience design, plus health and pain-management hardware.
• Stated interest in "human-centered impactful technologies/systems" — a preference for founders building tech that augments human capability rather than replacing it (a theme she carries into her later work: "technologies and experiences that enhance embodied wisdom rather than replace it").
• Through Wefunder, an advocate for equity crowdfunding as a way to widen access to startup investing, with particular attention to female entrepreneurs and investors.