Troy Williams
Managing Director @ University Ventures
New York, United States
Troy Williams is a Managing Director of University Ventures. Prior to University Ventures, Troy was a senior executive at Macmillan where he was CEO of Macmillan Enterprise Solutions and President of Macmillan New Ventures, managing an edtech portfolio of seven companies with a focus on data and analytics, university systems and student performanceand outcomes. Troy founded and for nine years was CEO of Questia Media, an early ebook company ultimately sold to Cengage Learning. Troy received his bachelor’s degree in History, Phi Beta Kappa, from Rice University, and his law degree from the Harvard Law School where he was a member of Harvard Law Review. Troy started his career in the mergers and acquisitions practice at Cravath, Swaine & Moore. He is on the Advisory Board of Rice University's School of Humanities. Troy focuses on investments in software and systems for universities.
- Total investments:
- 16
- Last investment:
- Lead investor:
- 75%
Last updated:
For AI agents: llms.txt
Industries Troy Williams invests in
Stages Troy Williams invests in
Countries Troy Williams invests in
Contacts
| Type | Contact | Validation |
|---|---|---|
| Work email | ||
| Personal email | ||
| Work phone | ||
| Personal phone | ||
| Socials |
Investment Focus
Industry
- Education 7 (44%)
- Higher Education 3 (19%)
- SaaS 2 (13%)
- Mobile 2 (13%)
- Software 2 (13%)
Stage
- Series A 6 (38%)
- Seed 3 (19%)
- Venture - Series Unknown 3 (19%)
- Series B 1 (6%)
- Series C 1 (6%)
Country
- United States 8 (50%)
- Canada 1 (6%)
Investments
| Company | Description | Round | Links |
|---|---|---|---|
| KickUp helps professional development teams differentiate teacher support through analytics.Its SaaS-based analytics platform is designed to offer professional learning services. The analytics platform helps users customize pre-loaded goals to align with their district or region's strategic goals, pull together real-time data from surveys.They partner with K-12 organizations to coordinate professional learning efforts, improve decision-making, and ensure that great ideas translate into demonstrable outcomes in the classroom.Jeremy Rogoff, Victoria Kinzig, and Eric Krupski headquartered KickUp in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 2014. | Venture - Series Unknown / Jul 09, 2026 | ||
| At PeopleGrove, we believe the way students experience and value their education has changed. They are seeking an academic experience that addresses:- Job outcomes, not just a degree - Social and digital, not isolated and static - Experiential, not theoreticalIn fact, many are questioning the value of a college education. Only half of USalumni strongly agree their education was worth the cost. Meanwhile, supportive relationships most influenced, even doubled, graduates’ perception that their education was worth the cost.We believe relationships and community are key to student success and engaged alumni. That's why we built PeopleGrove: a unified solution for relationship-driven career success. By making mentors, advisers and coaches accessible, we help students from all walks of life access new opportunities and achieve their career goals.PeopleGrove is on a mission to connect every student and professional with the mentors, advisers and network needed to realize their full potential and find a fulfilling career. PeopleGrove's mentorship and advising platform has been successfully launched at the world's leading institutions, including Stanford, UMUC, K-State and many more.It turns out the student journey aligns with a new hire journey. We're excited to be working with Intuit, Qualcomm and CooperVision so that there employees can better access experts and coaching within their own organizations. | $4.7M / Series A / May 01, 2019 | ||
| Motimatic develops a student retention platform. Their platform leverages scientifically proven techniques that drive personal behavior through subtle psychological cues, habit-forming triggers and other motivational strategies, enabling educational institutions to retain and help students complete their studies. | $4M / Series A / Apr 24, 2019 | ||
| Packback is a social learning platform powered by a proprietary A.I. that college professors use to help their students fall in love with the subject matter, drive personalized learning, and most importantly, quantify and improve critical thinking skills. | $2.5M / Series B / Jan 29, 2019 | ||
| Mainstay is a developer of a chatbot platform that boosts enrollment, persistence, and completion at hundreds of colleges and universities. The company uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to facilitate the path to and through college. Specifically, Mainstay developed Oli, a chatbot that combines AI with human experts to provide freecollege guidance to all students. For their college partners, it eliminates repetitive tasks, helps colleges meaningfully engage students at scale, and provides deep insights into their pipeline of prospects. | $5M / Series A / May 30, 2018 | ||
| With the continued growth in online learning and test-taking, education and training professionals wrestle with the challenge of maintaining exam integrity. Examity® was founded in response to this issue and offers a flexible solution to include live, recorded and automated authentication and proctoring. As the recognized leader in the industry,Examity® partners with more than 150 universities and corporations worldwide. | $3M / Venture - Series Unknown / May 08, 2018 | ||
| Packback is a social learning platform powered by a proprietary A.I. that college professors use to help their students fall in love with the subject matter, drive personalized learning, and most importantly, quantify and improve critical thinking skills. | $4.2M / Series A / Jan 31, 2018 | ||
| Packback is a social learning platform powered by a proprietary A.I. that college professors use to help their students fall in love with the subject matter, drive personalized learning, and most importantly, quantify and improve critical thinking skills. | $1.5M / Seed / Sep 19, 2017 | ||
| EverTrue is a leading advancement software that supports fundraising efforts at educational institutions. By connecting institutional data with dynamic insights from LinkedIn, Facebook, Zillow, the U.S. Census, and more, EverTrue provides advancement offices with the modern data and tools they need to engage alumni, raise support, and measure teamprogress.Today, EverTrue is improving results for more than 300 institutions through a fully integrated suite of products that powers efforts across the entire advancement office. EverTrue is headquartered in Boston, MA and is backed by Bain Capital Ventures and University Ventures. | $6M / Series C / Aug 22, 2017 | ||
| At PeopleGrove, we believe the way students experience and value their education has changed. They are seeking an academic experience that addresses:- Job outcomes, not just a degree - Social and digital, not isolated and static - Experiential, not theoreticalIn fact, many are questioning the value of a college education. Only half of USalumni strongly agree their education was worth the cost. Meanwhile, supportive relationships most influenced, even doubled, graduates’ perception that their education was worth the cost.We believe relationships and community are key to student success and engaged alumni. That's why we built PeopleGrove: a unified solution for relationship-driven career success. By making mentors, advisers and coaches accessible, we help students from all walks of life access new opportunities and achieve their career goals.PeopleGrove is on a mission to connect every student and professional with the mentors, advisers and network needed to realize their full potential and find a fulfilling career. PeopleGrove's mentorship and advising platform has been successfully launched at the world's leading institutions, including Stanford, UMUC, K-State and many more.It turns out the student journey aligns with a new hire journey. We're excited to be working with Intuit, Qualcomm and CooperVision so that there employees can better access experts and coaching within their own organizations. | $1.8M / Seed / Jul 14, 2017 | ||
| See all 16 investments → | |||
Co-Investors
About University Ventures
University Ventures is the only investment firm focused exclusively on the global higher education sector. UV pursues a differentiated strategy of innovation from within. UV has the deepest respect for the missions and traditions of colleges and universities around the world and is confident that through innovation, these same institutions will besuccessful in fulfilling and expanding their missions.
University Ventures Contacts
| Name | Phone | Socials | |
|---|---|---|---|
Corinne Spears
Vice President
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Ryan Craig
Managing Director
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Troy Williams
Managing Director
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Aanand Radia
Managing Director
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Cassidy Leventhal
Vice President
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FAQ
What does Troy Williams invest in?
Troy Williams invests primarily in Education, Higher Education and SaaS startups, most often at Series A and Seed stage. Most of the 16 investments tracked by Shizune back companies in United States. The Investment Focus section breaks down every industry, stage and country in the portfolio.
How do I contact Troy Williams?
Public channels for Troy Williams include LinkedIn, X (Twitter) and the website linked on this profile. For a verified work email and phone number, create a free Shizune account — contact data is searched across 20+ sources and validated before delivery, so your outreach lands in the right inbox.
When did Troy Williams last invest?
The most recent investment recorded for Troy Williams closed in Jul 2026. Shizune tracks 16 investments in total for this profile, including round sizes, stages and portfolio companies, all sourced from confirmed public funding rounds and refreshed monthly.
Is Shizune's investor data accurate?
Yes — every stat on this profile is calculated from confirmed public funding rounds monitored across hundreds of sources since 2020. This profile was last refreshed in Sep 2026 and is updated monthly. Spotted something off? Use the “Suggest an edit” link near the top of the page.
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