Collin West

Collin holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management with an emphasis on innovation and entrepreneurship, earning the prestigious Four Pillars Award for exemplifying the school’s values. 

Outside of work, Collin channels his competitive spirit into Brazilian jiu-jitsu, mountain biking, and climbing mountains, often tackling one or two peaks each year. 

Additionally, Collin and his team of four broke a Guinness World Record completing the longest expedition across the Arctic Ocean by rowboat, covering over 1,000 miles non-stop and unsupported for 41 days. 

Collin West believes that a select group of founders and their teams will shape the future – and that those exceptional practitioners are underserved by the investment ecosystem. In 2020, Collin founded Ensemble VC with the goal of leveraging data science to accelerate the venture ecosystem’s ability to find exceptional teams and help them build transformative companies. Collin’s investments include Saronic, Zoom Video, ICON, Carta, Groww, and Sidecar Health.

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Collin has been on the founding fund team for three data-driven VC strategies. He began his VC career as part of the founding fund team at Correlation Ventures, where he helped lay the foundation for data-driven investing. He then became Founder and General Partner of the Kauffman Fellows VC Fund, which later evolved into Ensemble. Alongside these roles, Collin founded the Kauffman Fellows Research Center, where he authored influential data-driven research papers that continue to shape venture capital practices. Before his career in venture capital, Collin founded digital advertising and adventure travel businesses and worked as a strategy consultant at Accenture.

A member of Class 17, Collin served his fellowship at Correlation Ventures under the mentorship of Trevor Kienzle.