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The Hallway That Changed Everything
Bianca Schilling had a clear path: University of Pennsylvania, translational biomedical research at the Institute for Regenerative Medicine, a focus on female-biased autoimmunity, studied through a murine model of lupus erythematosus.
The work mattered to her because autoimmune disorders disproportionately affect women, and that disparity drove the lab she was in.
But during meetings, she kept asking different questions than her peers.
She wasn't asking about the assays. She was asking about commercialization. How does what they were developing at the bench actually reach a patient at the bedside? Who funds the translation? Who decides which technologies get a chance to scale?
Her PI noticed, and she got placed in a tech transfer internship at an organization right across the street from the lab. That hallway, the one between bench research and commercial licensing, turned out to be the most important hallway of Bianca's career.
Because that's where she made the decision that changed everything.
"I realized I could have far more impact at scale as an investor than as a provider as a doctor," she says.
That sentence is the start of her VC origin story.
She still didn't know what venture capital actually was.
Wisconsin, Singapore, San Francisco, Philadelphia
Bianca grew up in Wisconsin. She moved to Singapore. Then San Francisco. Then Philadelphia, where she lives now with her wife.
That mobility shaped her view of community. She knows what it feels like to land somewhere new and have to build a network from scratch. That instinct would later define how she showed up in Venture Institute, and how she shows up as an investor today.
Wait, Who Pays for the Science?
Like a lot of people who didn't grow up around investors, Bianca thought her career options were doctor, lawyer, or professor. VC wasn't even on her radar.
"I just feel like I was robbed of a chance because I wasn't able to learn about this when I was younger," she says. Now she laughs at her younger self. "Who did I think was funding all of these innovations?"
She started piecing it together in Singapore, then again at Penn. She joined the Penn Undergraduate Biotech Society as Director of Finance, partly to immerse herself in how funding moves innovation. She took a patent law course at Harvard during the pandemic and used the lack of a commute to be in many places at once.
Through that Harvard course, she met a bioengineering PhD student. Together with peers from Wharton, the engineering school, and the medical school, they built Penn BioLaunch, a pre-accelerator that trained scientists to think like business operators. All of them were aspiring VCs. None of them had the same path. They were building the network they wished existed.
Penn BioLaunch was later absorbed by Nucleate, now a global biotech accelerator.
Bianca added a Mini MBA certificate from Harvard. She also built a startup of her own around mycelium-based packaging, because she believes the world can always be better and she wanted skin in the game.
"I didn't think any founder would take me seriously if I hadn't understood what it's like to build things."
She had stacked the credentials. She had built the networks. She had founded the company.
She still hadn't found a way into VC.
A LinkedIn Post and a Decision
One afternoon Bianca was on LinkedIn, sitting with a decision. Should she go to law school? Take on hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt for the patent law credential? Or find another way?
"I just needed to make the thing happen for myself," she says.
That's when she saw Connor's post about Venture Institute.
She reached out. He took the call. She applied.
"And the rest is history."
Inside the Program
Bianca was warned: new markets, high intensity, late nights. A program designed to push her.
She did the work. She showed up. Her goal from day one was to earn a residency, and she did everything in her power to land one.
What she didn't expect was the people.
In a program where every cohort member is in a different time zone, scattered across continents, Bianca found community. When her cohort members in India were waking up and trying to figure out Decile Hub in its early days, Bianca stayed up to help them. She got on calls with the engineering team to learn what was breaking, then passed that information back to the cohort.
"Life is a team sport. We're all in this together on a rock going through the void of space. We need each other to function and work well."
That is the part of the program that every Venture Institute alum talks about. The community. The active WhatsApp groups. The peers who keep showing up for each other years after the program ends. People joining each other's funds. People co-investing. People organizing meetups in cities across the world.
Bianca did not just complete a program. She joined a network of people who keep choosing to invest in each other.
The Residency
Bianca made it through the program. She got an interview for a residency, then a match.
She expected to land in a healthcare or biotech firm. Instead she got matched with Apprentis Ventures, a firm modernizing legacy industries using AI and machine learning. On the surface that didn't fit her bio. But sitting with the thesis, she realized her interest had always been in systems. Horizontal, integrated systems. And legacy industries are exactly that.
Over two months she did the things VCs actually do:
- Helped host an LP event at a New York Liberty WNBA game
- Supported one of the firm's venture partners on a major AI conference
- Wrote deal memos
- Looked at deals
- Met with founders
- Engaged LPs
"I have an ownership mentality. Without a doubt. Just take the thing and run with it. I'm open to feedback. I'll keep correcting and iterating as I go along."
Two months in, she had her answer. This was the right career.
Bianca Today
Bianca is now a full-time investor at Apprentis Ventures. The residency converted into a full-time offer.
She looks at every deal with a scientific lens. The intellectual rigor she built at the bench transfers directly to deal evaluation. She runs every thesis through the same kind of skeptical, structured analysis she once applied to murine models, asking what would have to be true, what the mechanism is, where the data ends and the assumption starts.
That rigor pairs with the systems thinking she developed at Venture Institute. AI and legacy industries is a dense intersection: regulatory complexity, operational depth, and technical specificity all live in the same deal. It is exactly the kind of terrain where a scientist who can read a paper, structure an analysis, and own an outcome end-to-end will outperform a generalist.
"It's a perfect medium for someone like me."
She talks like someone who finally got to do the work she was always going to do, just with a path she had to invent.
Why Bianca's Story Matters
Bianca didn't grow up in finance. She didn't grow up in Silicon Valley. She didn't have a parent in the industry.
She made her own networks. She paid attention when other people in the room weren't asking commercialization questions. She walked across the street to a tech transfer office and changed her trajectory.
That kind of path is now the default, not the exception.
The traditional VC profile of an MBA from a top school, two years at a bank, and a referral from a college roommate used to be the only way in. Not anymore.
A scientist asking commercialization questions can become a deal lead. A founder who built a packaging startup can become an investor. A student in another country can join a residency. AI has lowered the cost of becoming proficient at the analytical surface of the job. What is left is judgment, taste, hunger, and the willingness to do the work.
Bianca has a clear warning for anyone hoping to land in VC by sending cold applications on LinkedIn:
"Don't rest on your laurels and just apply cold. You need to get out there. You need people to know who you are. Not just your name, but how you think. What drives you. How you will look at deals. How you will interact with founders and LPs."
For Bianca, getting out there looked like Penn BioLaunch. It looked like reaching out to Connor. It looked like staying up for cohort members in India. It looked like ownership over every project at Apprentis Ventures. It looked like the bias for action that runs through every chapter of her story.
That is the kind of person Venture Institute is built for.
The Through Line
If you read Bianca's story closely, there is one move she makes again and again.
She sees the door. She doesn't wait for a key. She knocks. If no one opens, she finds another door.
The lupus research. The tech transfer hallway. Penn BioLaunch. The Harvard course. The LinkedIn outreach to Connor. The late nights in Venture Institute. The residency at Apprentis Ventures. The full-time offer.
Every one of those was a door. Every one of those was opened by Bianca, not for her.
The four traits that make Bianca an investor are visible in every chapter of that story:
- Ownership of every outcome, from the bench to the residency to the deal memo.
- Intellectual rigor built on a decade of scientific training, applied to every thesis she evaluates.
- Community as a discipline, not a side effect. She invests in the people around her, and they invest back.
- Bias toward action. She does not wait for permission. She moves, and corrects as she goes.
That combination is what makes a VC.
And that is the path Venture Institute is here to teach.
Want to break into VC, just like Bianca? Apply to Venture Institute today.