Brief: Angel Analyst Fellows Learn Investing, Thanks to Alumni Gift

The Furman Angel Analyst Fellowship was made possible by a $1 million gift from Ken Clemens ’87 and his son, Chase Clemens ’22 – both business majors.

The collaboration with VentureSouth, a Greenville-based firm that funds startups in the Southeast, offers students an in-depth exploration of venture capitalism, which provides funding for fledgling businesses.

For Lynnea Parish ’25, an applied mathematics major, the fellowship opened up a world she’d never known before.

“This whole world of venture capital and angel investing, I had no idea it even existed,” she says. “But I fell in love with it.”

Parish, 21, had no plans to major in math, but Furman’s “amazing” math department changed her mind, she says.

And the fellowship – which she says focused on a variety of topics from analytical thinking and finance to interpersonal relationships and networking – was “a pivotal moment” in her life.

“I came into the program with not that much knowledge at all, just a willingness to learn,” she says. “Coming out … venture capitalism is the career path I’d like to pursue.”

Parish says she hopes to use the skills she is learning in the fellowship to evaluate startup companies.

“When you invest in companies, you’re investing in a problem that needs to be solved,” she says. “It helps solve problems for people in the real world.”

Kyler Bailey ’26 also characterized the fellowship as “a great experience.”

“Not only did I meet and network with other Furman students,” he says, “but also CEOs, CFOs … people who are venture capitalists.”

A native of Spartanburg, South Carolina, Bailey is majoring in computer science but also is interested in business.

With an eye on a career in cybersecurity and, more broadly, investing in cyber-security companies, Bailey says he learned key principles for making a good investment, such as analyzing the team dynamics, cooperation and cash flow of a project.

“Once I reach a threshold economically, I can invest in other companies,” he says. “And you have to put in the effort if you want to make a good investment.”

What’s more, he says, he’d like to share what he learned with the African American community because “there are not a lot of people in this field who look like me.”

Pedro Albuquerque Moreira ’26 says the fellowship gave him an inside look into the world of angel investing, the profession he hopes to enter.

“I hope to work in finance as an analyst for investment banking,” he says, “or for a private equity firm.”

Born in Brazil, Moreira attended high school in the United States before coming to Furman, where he’s a business administration major on the finance track.

And the fellowship, he says, was an “awesome opportunity.”

“It taught me a lot about angel investing and return on investment,” he says. “Every week, there was a different speaker from VentureSouth to talk about how to do due diligence on startups.”

The students learned how to analyze potential profitability, he says, and made pitches about possible investments to the VentureSouth teams, who offered their feedback.

It all helped Moreira solidify his goal of working on Wall Street one day.

The endowed eight-week fellowship emerged as Ken and Chase Clemens pondered ways to express their support for Furman.

“Chase and I have a great passion and love for Furman and want to do everything we can to see it succeed,” Ken Clemens has said. “(The fellowship) will give the students an advantage that others don’t have. And in the end, that’s really what we’re trying to accomplish.”