I’m Miles Lasater

Miles is

  • I started my first company while in college. Then took it public.
  • At Yale’s business school, I taught venture capital. And I’ve invested in dozens of startups.
  • Now I run a venture studio Purpose Built where I help founders build great startups.
  • For free, I share my insights and learnings.
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About Miles

Miles is CEO & Founder of Purpose Built

A venture studio. Purpose Built partners with future founders, generates ideas together, builds teams, and invests capital to launch new companies. What sets Purpose Built apart is (a) our focus on human performance including the personal and professional development of our founders and teams plus (b) all our startups help people reach for economic opportunity.

Miles is a Volunteer

Miles is the Chair of the Board of Curious Learning, a nonprofit that creates, localizes, distributes, and optimizes open source mobile software so every child can learn to read. He is also on the board of ConnCorp. As former board member of Yale New Haven Hospital, Venture for America, the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute and MakeHaven, Miles has experience with nonprofits of all sizes. As an advisory board member, he helped design a new job-training program for people with criminal convictions. Previously, he ran a free tax-preparation site and has prepared food for the hungry. He is a former member of the Echoing Green Social Investment Council.

Miles is a Learner

With 100s of books he wants to read and online classes he wants to take, Miles is always learning something new. He is a Kauffman Fellow in venture capital in Class 23. He earned a Bachelors in Computer Science from Yale. He also has studied theater and improv for many years, part of the CFA curriculum and enjoys learning to dance.

Miles is a Community Builder

In talking to students, he saw the need for a Humanist Chaplain at Yale and helped create the Yale Humanist Community. As founding board member of MakeHaven, he helped start New Haven’s leading makerspace which has hundreds of members. He co-created Cluefest which offered a free half-day scavenger hunt for about 200 people for about 10 years which led to at least one marriage. He is co-founder of the Yale Entrepreneurial Society and Yale’s first business plan competition which included a social entrepreneurship category. And he was key in a number of participatory public art projects.

Miles is a Teacher

He runs the Venture Patterns project which identifies and catalogs the mental models and building blocks in startups and venture capital. He is the host of the Startups for Good podcast. At the Yale School of Management, Miles teaches the introduction to VC class. He also co-created and taught a course on managing software development, which was the first of its kind. He has spoken at a number of colleges about the entrepreneurial journey.

Miles is an Entrepreneur

Starting his career as an entrepreneur while still a college student, he co-founded Higher One in his living room. As senior exec and later board chair, he led the company from idea to $200mil+ revenue, 750+ employees and IPO including making multiple acquisitions. He was proud to champion internal culture and values including open communication and client service. Higher One also ranked highly on the national Great Place to Work list twice as well as Inc 500 and multiple other fast growth lists. Miles was an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year regional winner and national finalist.

Miles went on to start two other venture-backed startups: SeeClickFix (SaaS for government) which was acquired by CivicPlus and OneUni (higher education via smartphone).

Miles is an Investor

He has invested in and advised dozens of companies at the earliest stages including Honor, Remix (sold), Notable Health, FreeWill, OnDeck, Balto, 3i, and Forage. Additionally, he has helped seed nonprofits such as Issue One, One Acre, MakeHaven Imagine Worldwide and US Megafire Response. Miles is also a founding general partner of the Y Startup Index.

Miles is a Father

Married with four children, he spends a lot of time repeating himself, cleaning up, answering questions, cleaning up again and reading bedtime stories.

Sample Newsletter Posts

Here are a few sample posts from my newsletter:

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What People Say

Conversations

I host a podcast called Startups for Good. A few samples:

Ross Buhrdorf
(CEO of ZenBusiness)

Ben Chesler
(co-founder of Imperfect Foods)

Tiffany Chu
(founder and CEO of Remix)

Bay Gross
(co-founder of CityBlock Health)

Seth Sternberg
(founder and CEO of Honor)

Marc Tarpenning
(co-founder Tesla)

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© 2022 Miles Lasater