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Illini

Investing in breakout founders from Midwest universities

Capitalizing on an under-invested talent pipeline

Stakehouse backs founders with ties to hundreds of universities across Missouri and its neighboring states whether they're alumni, educators, dropouts, postdocs, PhDs, or current students.

News and noteworthy

2025-11-16

T-REX's first investor-in-residence sees St. Louis as 'the gateway to innovation'

Downtown incubator T-REX has named venture capital investor Vikram Lakhwara as the nonprofit’s first “investor-in-residence.” Lakhwara will provide mentorship and help teach company founders how to raise funds with confidence and build sustainable growth. As investor-in-residence, he will also lead T-REX’s new program that pairs educational programming with direct investor insights to support founders.

2026-09-11

St. Louis venture capital in the national spotlight

St. Louis landed on TIME's list of America's top venture capital firms, and KMOV-TV sat down with TechSTL CEO Emily Hemingway and SixThirty Ventures Managing Partner Atul Kamra to talk about the region's capital backbone. TechSTL named Stakehouse among the partners it works alongside to grow early-stage investment in the region, together with St. Louis Arch Angels, Arch Grants, Capital Innovators, Redbud VC, BioGenerator, and Cultivation Capital.

2026-08-26

Founder Framework opens applications for its second cohort

T-REX's Founder Framework is back for the fall. Led by Stakehouse founder Vikram Lakhwara, the free, 11-week, in-person program is built for early-stage founders who already have an MVP and are working toward product-market fit, a stronger go-to-market strategy, and capital readiness. T-REX extended the application deadline to September 8, and founders have already started announcing their acceptance into Cohort 2.

2026-08-17

St. Louis funders rally to grow the next generation of angel investors

Missouri Technology Corporation is making a multi-year investment in angel investor education, and the Missouri Angel Tax Credit recently became law, so the window to expand access to early-stage capital is widening. TechSTL highlighted Stakehouse as one of the St. Louis startup funders and entrepreneur support organizations working to prepare new angel investors, alongside Arch Grants, Capital Innovators, St. Louis Arch Angels, Cultivation Capital, SixThirty Ventures, Redbud VC, BioGenerator, and NEXT Missouri.

2026-07-17

Vikram Lakhwara on The Pitch Room panel at the MATI Conference

At this year's MATI Conference in St. Louis, Vikram Lakhwara joined The Pitch Room, a session on how founders sell an idea to investors and decision makers, alongside Tashara Earl of Shades of Color and Gabe Angieri of Arch Grants, moderated by Ruby Jean's Juicery founder Christopher Goode. The free session ran at the ZACK Theater.

2026-06-27

Founder Framework alumni are raising capital and winning awards

T-REX's "Founders in Focus" series is spotlighting startups from the first Founder Framework cohort, facilitated by Vikram Lakhwara. They include NeuroFore, which uses AI to detect Parkinson's earlier than ever before; Amass, which helps farmers diversify revenue while helping utilities move to cleaner fuels; AlgaEarth, which makes biodegradable algae-based packaging; and OKMed Innovations, which is building an accessible, non-invasive ventilator for low-resource settings. NeuroFore and Amass have both since secured funding and awards.

2026-06-03

Vikram Lakhwara to facilitate TechSTL's new Velocity program

TechSTL launched Velocity I, a free six-week course for founders at the very beginning of their journey: before the pitch deck, before the product, and sometimes before the co-founder. Facilitated by Vikram Lakhwara, the Wednesday-evening sessions at T-REX walk founders through problem validation, customer discovery, and the core questions every early-stage company has to answer. TechSTL described him as "making startup waves all over the Midwest," and the University of Illinois also recently featured him as a mentor in its Entrepreneurship at Illinois ecosystem.

2026-04-09

Stakehouse's Vikram Lakhwara headlines T-REX Morning Hatch

Vikram Lakhwara, founder of Stakehouse, joined Kenneth Eversole, co-founder and CEO of OpsCompanion, for a fireside chat at T-REX's April Morning Hatch, the entrepreneur-focused seminar series held the first Wednesday of every month. T-REX thanked the pair for an informative session and lively discussion.

2026-04-01

Stakehouse co-presents the StartupSTL $10K University Pitch Competition at STL TechWeek

STL TechWeek 2026 kicked off with the StartupSTL $10K University Pitch Competition, hosted by Cultivation Capital and Stakehouse. Nine student-led startups, each selected by their respective institution, went head-to-head for a $10,000 non-dilutive prize. The competition aligns with Stakehouse’s focus on identifying and backing breakout founders emerging from Midwest universities. This year’s TechWeek drew a record 11,374 registrations across five days.

2026-02-17

Entrepreneurship Week at The Wedge features Vikram Lakhwara

The Wedge Innovation Center, powered by SIUE, ran Entrepreneurship Week from February 17 to 20 in Alton, with masterclasses on VC pitching, AI for founders and scaling a venture. The Wedge highlighted Vikram Lakhwara's founder-first, impact-driven perspective in the lineup.

2025-12-09

T-REX launches Founder Framework, led by Vikram Lakhwara

Following his appointment as T-REX's first investor-in-residence, Vikram Lakhwara unveiled Founder Framework, a free, 11-week, in-person program that helps early-stage founders build core startup skills, produce practical weekly outputs, and shape an investor-ready story. Lakhwara and T-REX President & CEO Jesse A. Winters previewed the program at Morning Hatch in December, ahead of the inaugural cohort that ran from January 28 to April 15, 2026.

2025-11-04

“Venture Capital Is Not an Asset Class.” Good. It’s Time to Build Where Others Aren’t.

Venture capital has been treated like an industry that scales with dollars, an allocation exercise rather than an act of discovery. The problem isn’t that there’s too little capital. It’s that too much of it keeps going to the same place.

2025-02-25

Velocity Returns in 2025 at The Wedge in Alton

In a move to invigorate the bi-state region’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, the popular startup workshop series, Velocity, makes its return in a reimagined format and at a new location on March 10th. The TechSTL application-only program will now be led by Vikram Lakhwara and Danielle Deavens of Stakehouse Fund and be housed at the Wedge - a 55,000 square-foot social impact, research lab, think tank, and workspace in downtown Alton, Illinois set for its own grand opening in April.

2025-02-10

WashU Skandalaris Undergraduate Team Wins Regional Venture Capital Investment Competition, Advances to Finals

WashU Skandalaris Undergraduate team has secured first place in the Venture Capital Investment Competition (VCIC) Midwest Regional Finals...[with] support of their mentors, including Jeremy Degenhart (Professor of Practice in Finance at Olin Business School), Dave Kanoff (Principal, Venture Growth at the Skandalaris Center), and Jeroma Boo (Venture Growth Analyst at the Skandalaris Center). Additionally, industry experts and advisors—Vikram Lakhwara (Stakehouse Fund), Buddy Foster (Mudiata Ventures), Bobby Niehaus (Boeing Ventures)

2025-01-14

The St. Louis startup ecosystem is held back by hard-to-find investment capital

“Arch Grants is an amazing organization — we need 100 times more,” said venture capitalist Vikram Lakhwara. “They’ve kind of [borne] an outsized portion of this burden for a long time because investor tastes have changed and investors have become a little bit more risk averse.”

2024-11-15

Alton innovation center will advance tech sector in Illinois, St. Louis region, Pritzker says

As part of the tour, Pritzker met with Vik Lakhwara, leader of St. Louis-based venture capital firm Stakehouse, which plans to occupy part of The Wedge when it opens and advance the region's venture capital atmosphere.

2024-11-14

Stakehouse team tours Alton's Wedge Innovation Center

Last Thursday, the team and I had the wonderful privilege of touring the Wedge Innovation Center in Alton, Illinois alongside leadership from across the bi-state region in business, education, and government, including Governor JB Pritzker, SIU System President Daniel Mahony, and Chancellor James T. Minor.

2024-11-13

Vik Lakhwara wins STL Startup Week's inaugural "Investor of the Year" award

This one is special not because we picked up our first piece of 3D-printed hardware (that's pretty cool too), but because the accolade was decided by founders in the St. Louis startup community. It's incredibly humbling and validates how important it is to participate in our local ecosystem.

2024-10-09

Inside one man's mission to revive a Metro East city

AltonWorks is bringing all the elements of the innovation ecosystem together in one space, including universities, investors, corporations and founders, said Vikram Lakhwara, a former Silicon Valley-based venture capitalist who relocated to St. Louis and created a new firm called Stakehouse.