Breaking Into Venture Capital Without Prior Experience — Featuring Sarah Romanko
* Because of the emergency of the host we move the event to March 10th to March 20th *
There’s a common belief that venture capital is a closed circle of careers reserved for former bankers, consultants, or elite MBA graduates. But the industry is evolving. More professionals are earning their way into VC by building visibility, contributing to the ecosystem, and developing real investment judgment before ever holding the title.
Sarah Romanko represents this modern path. As part of the investment team at Geek Ventures, she sources, evaluates, and closes startup investments while supporting founders post-funding. Alongside her investing role, she has built a strong ecosystem presence, 25,000+ LinkedIn followers, 80+ speaking engagements, and 40+ judging and mentorship sessions across major startup platforms and universities. She was also awarded a full scholarship to Cohort 20 of VC University, a highly selective program powered by UC Berkeley Law, NVCA, and Venture Forward.
In this live conversation, we’ll break down what it actually takes to move from being “interested in VC” to being taken seriously by funds, how to build credibility early, sharpen your investment thinking, and position yourself strategically in the venture ecosystem.
If you’re exploring a path into venture capital without a traditional background, this session will give you practical clarity and actionable next steps.
Place - Online (Zoom )
Agenda:
- Welcome
- Host and Speaker Introduction
- Panel Discussion
- Audience Q and A
- Networking Session
Speaker:
Sarah Romanko – Investment Team at Geek Ventures. Sarah focuses on sourcing, evaluating, and closing early-stage investments, while supporting founders after funding. She is deeply active in the venture ecosystem through speaking, judging, mentorship, and community leadership, and is passionate about increasing diversity within venture capital.
Host :
Yu Li Shein - Co-Founder & COO of Openfor.co, and Co-Director of Founder Institute Japan/Korea/Taiwan. With over 12 years of international experience across business development, partnerships, and global expansion, including time in India, the United States, and Japan, she has played a key role in shaping Asia’s startup ecosystem. Yu Li was instrumental in launching and scaling Founder Institute Japan, building the mentor and partner network from the ground up, and helping establish it as a major accelerator brand in the region.
📌 What You Will Learn:
-What VC firms actually look for beyond resumes
-How to build credibility before you have the title
-How to position yourself strategically in the ecosystem
-Practical steps to create real opportunities in venture capital
📌 Who Should Attend:
-Aspiring venture capital professionals who want to break into VC but do not come from traditional finance backgrounds
-Startup operators, founders, or early team members thinking about transitioning into investing
-Students or young professionals exploring venture capital as a long-term career path
-Angel investors who want to move from occasional investing to institutional venture
-Ecosystem builders, community leads, and accelerator managers who want to deepen their understanding of how funds operate
-Professionals in consulting, tech, journalism, or corporate roles who are curious about how to reposition themselves toward venture capital
About the Co-Host Organizations:
- Geek Ventures: Geek Ventures is committed to investing in bold, innovative, and brilliant immigrant entrepreneurs, coming to the US from all over the world. We believe that the challenges immigrants face when coming to a completely new environment nurture resilience and determination. We aspire to become guiding lights for such founders in order to accelerate their integration into the new tech ecosystem.
- Openfor.co: It is an entrepreneurial talent development company and non-equity venture/ecosystem builder supporting individuals and organizations starting from individual-level; detects high-potential people with our proprietary system, developing and featuring personal stories to launching a digitally productized personal brands, content creation and visibility with our 700K audience reach, to turning it into a business, and monetization to all the way up to launching a company. All-in-one platform with a marketplace, education, back-office support, content creation, and global reach, combining early visibility with hands-on operational support. Meanwhile, as an ecosystem builder, we work with more later-stage startups, larger enterprises, and governments, building and operating complex multinational 7-8 figure programs. It all boils down to this: we are on a mission to make the venture ecosystem accessible, making the world a more entrepreneurial place.
- Founder Institute: Founder Institute, which originated in Silicon Valley, is a founder and idea stage accelerator, and with its Founder Capital, backs the best performing FI alumni as early as the angel stage. FI has over 8K+ startup portfolio (Including leading e-learning platform Udemy, IPO in Nasdaq $3,8B) across 200 cities in 100 countries around the world.) We are also the largest mentor network in the world, with over 35,000 mentors, and our alumni have already raised over $2 billion in US dollars and have recently exceeded the 10K mark of investors in the FI-Venture-Network.
- Founder Capital The Founder Institute VC fund that invests and supports top accelerated companies from the world's largest startup network.
- Co-Capital: Focusing on preseed startups in AI-native, B2B founders emerging from APAC, building globally structured companies from inception.