Mona DeFrawi’s Startup Journey

Mona DeFrawi

The only career advice Mona followed – “do what you love and work hard to be the best at it” – came from her grandmother, who was one of the first three women allowed to attend university in Cairo in 1929, and the first to graduate medical school in 1934. Mona DeFrawi discovered her love for entrepreneurship while in grad school and has enjoyed a career passionately supporting radical visionary innovators who are dedicated to improving the world.

Over her career, Mona has been honored to support many worthy innovations, including improving the kidney dialysis industry’s quality of patient care; enhancing nutrition and outcomes for preemies on formula; commercializing biologically friendly pesticides; creating the cloud; funding more startups and VCs; helping turnaround distressed banks and financial institutions; increasing technology commercialization and education, while advising and mentoring generations of entrepreneurs; pioneering the private markets to deliver new liquidity and exit solutions for the venture industry, launching the Unicorn stampede, and more, such as:

• Raised a $500M first-time private equity fund
• Managed four startup IPOs/IR over 10 years including a 2,500% increased valuation IR turnaround
• Helped build two of the first university and state technology commercialization offices
• Authored and taught the first Entrepreneurship curriculum for The Johns Hopkins University, School of Engineering
• Global Pre-IPO investments for VCs, sovereign funds, family offices, etc.

Having survived war, third world challenges, and refugeehood as a child, Mona is honored and dedicated to support the startup ecosystem and the prosperity and social advancement it delivers. Now Mona is dedicated to democratizing entrepreneurship and private markets, to help shrink the global wealth divide, while funding many more worthy startups.