Azzi Agnelli & TMV: Lifecycles: Modeling an investment portfolio for mental health
When venture capital powerhouse Andreessen Horowitz led last month’s eight-figure Series A financing for Slingshot AI, it hailed the AI startup as “the world’s first foundation model for psychology.” Investing alongside a16z was tiny TMV: Lifecycles, a $25 million “proof of concept” fund launched last year by Agnelli, an heir to Italy’s Fiat fortune.
The mental health fund, tucked within the $200 million venture capital firm TMV, has gotten traction and a foot in the door on competitive deals, like Slingshot. “It’s been an active year,” Agnelli, the fund’s sole LP and one of its general partners, told ImpactAlpha over coffee.
Agnelli intends for TMV: Lifecycles to serve as a model for other young heirs looking to have more impact with their wealth.
Rather than stick with charities, donor-advised funds or public equities, she wants to show “next gens” how they can directly invest in founders working on meaningful solutions.
Agnelli discovered her own power — and her passion for mental health investing — only recently. Her father, Giovanni Alberto Agnelli, who was slated to take over the family auto empire, died of a rare cancer in 1997 when she was just a few months old. When she was 18, Agnelli inherited some of her grandfather’s wealth. A privileged situation, for sure, but at the time, she says, it felt like an overwhelming responsibility for which she was unprepared.
She struggled with mental health issues and an eating disorder. In search of answers, she went back to school to earn her masters degree in psychology. With her stepfather, Agnelli set up a foundation, the Azzi Agnelli and John Frieda Charitable Fund, to support cancer research, but chafed at the bureaucracy. The bulk of her wealth, meanwhile, was managed by a “very regimented, classic family office structure,” where she had little say.
It wasn’t until she met Soraya Darabi, a founder and general partner at New York-based TMV, which invests in early stage healthcare and other verticals, that she began to see other possibilities. “It was the first conversation where I felt empowered by women and saw how I could leverage my power,” she says.
Many conversations later, Agnelli teamed with TMV to set up the Lifecycles fund to combine her wealth and clinical knowledge and TMV’s investing chops. Since 2017, TMV has made more than 60 investments, including in unicorns such as CityBlock Health, which provides healthcare to for low-income patients.
