Cassandra Crothers

Investor, New Horizons

LinkedIn

Prior to joining Millennium, Cassandra founded Departure Capital to invest in category-defining frontier tech companies that are addressing humanity’s biggest existential risks and opportunities. Investing across critical infrastructure of Earth and beyond, climate, and health, she backed companies including Privateer, Orbillion, Endiatx, NodeQ, Maxterial, Concha Labs, and Meliora.

Cassandra is a global professional with experience in frontier tech venture capital investing, technical sales, business development, strategy, and operations. She focuses on deep tech investments for Millennium.

Previously, she specialized in early stage, global deep tech investments as a Principal for Upheaval Investments of Chicago and San Francisco, a family office-backed fund focused on funding massive companies with advanced underlying technologies. She supported portfolio companies such as Atomos, HaptX, Reniac, and Passbase.

Prior to VC, Cassandra consulted C-suite executives of global companies on local partnership and market expansion opportunities in Greater China and Southeast Asia, led international sales teams and exceeded sales targets as an individual contributor for software and technology solutions, investigated and headed up the U.S. (new market) expansion for a Danish branding and design firm focused on early and growth stage deep tech startups, and has been the first and only commercial hire at nascent tech businesses, including a cloud startup, and a software development firm specializing in legacy software maintenance and modernization. She leverages a global perspective and network, having lived and worked across the Americas, Asia Pacific, Europe, and the Middle East regions (U.S., Mexico, UK, Switzerland, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Indonesia, and UAE).

Cassandra actively contributes to the ecosystem through advising, angel investing, mentorship, and community building. She is an active mentor and advisor for global accelerators and programs including the Creative Destruction Lab, Alchemist Accelerator, Techstars Industries of the Future & AI, Starburst Aerospace, IEEE Entrepreneurship & Tech Transfer, and Hello Tomorrow. She is also an active speaker, panelist, and writer. Cassandra is dedicated to supporting diverse and underrepresented founding teams, as well as leveling the playing field for funders to support a sustainable and diverse generational transition within the venture capital industry.

Cassandra earned her MBA from the Quantic School of Business and Technology, and a B.A. in International Relations with coursework in cybersecurity and computer science from Brown University, where she played on the D1 varsity golf team. She speaks English (native), German (business fluent), Spanish (conversational; business basic), and Russian (elementary). Cassandra is a lifelong athlete, third degree black belt, and enjoys fitness, the outdoors and extreme adventures.