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Elizabeth Kraus is the co-founder and Chief Investment Officer at MergeLane. She has been founding, working for, and investing in startups for over 15 years. Elizabeth started her career at the rapidly growing startup Exclusive Resorts and co-founded her own startup, myUsearch.com, at the age of 25. As the CIO of MergeLane, she has invested in 43 startups and recruited a network of over 300 mentors and 600 investors to support this portfolio. Elizabeth also founded Fund81, a platform to support emerging venture capital fund managers, and is the host of the Fund81 podcast and monthly forum.

Prior to co-founding MergeLane, Elizabeth was an active angel investor. She made 22 personal angel investments, and founded and grew the Impact Angel Group before negotiating a successful merger with Investors’ Circle, the largest and most active impact angel investing organization in the U.S.

Elizabeth leverages her love for fitness and the outdoors to create authentic relationships with startup investors, mentors and entrepreneurs while skiing, hiking and biking in both Boulder and the Vail Valley. Elizabeth facilitates the Vail Investment Group (VIG), a community of investors who meet monthly to review private investments and funds across various industries. Along with its sister organization, BIG, the group has over 450 members with combined investable assets of over $6 billion. Elizabeth is also the membership chair of Vail Women Elect, the Vail chapter of a national network of local giving groups working to increase the number of women elected to public office.

Elizabeth earned her B.A. in Marketing from the University of Colorado Leeds School of Business.