UnDemo Day 2026: Applications close this week as investors - and the NVCA - come to Detroit

Applications for the 11th edition of Renaissance Venture Capital’s annual UnDemo Day close this Wednesday, July 29, giving Michigan founders just a few more days to enter and hopefully participate in one of the region’s best-known events. 

UnDemo day will take place on October 1st at The Department at Hudson's in downtown Detroit, and this year it arrives with something new attached: Venture Forward, a non profit arm of the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), will run its Emerging Manager Office Hours alongside UnDemo day this year - the first time the program has made a visit to the Midwest since its only previous visit, in Chicago in May, 2022.

Renaissance Venture Capital is a fund of funds based in Ann Arbor, Michigan with $330 million assets under management (AUM), investing in what it refers to as “top tier venture funds around the country”. The aim of UnDemo Day is to use that network to help bring outside capital to Michigan for a day; the combination with the Emerging Manager Office Hours potentially making this one of the most impactful events in Midwest capital allocation in recent memory. 

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A fantasy draft with 80 tables?

UnDemo Day began in October, 2015, as a side event to Renaissance’s annual meeting in Ann Arbor. With venture funds from around the country in attendance, the idea was to make better use of their time and introduce them to the locals. "We had 12 local startup companies… set up little tables around a room," Chris Rizik, Renaissance's CEO and Managing Partner, told us, "and the venture funds walked around and talked to them. Super informal."

According to Rizik, last year's edition brought together around 250 startups and roughly the same number of  investors from around the country. Startups apply - hence Wednesday's deadline - and their information goes out to attending VCs weeks in advance. Those investors then select the companies they want to sit down with. "It really is like a fantasy draft," Rizik says. "They vote with their draft choices." The companies with the most investor votes get a table, and from mid afternoon the participants rotate every 20 minutes across 80 tables to a personalized schedule received in advance. Companies that miss the cut for their own table are still introduced to any investors who selected them, with open networking spaces to make it happen; nobody pays to take part and, in Rizik's words, "nobody is judged."

Renaissance’s position as a fund of funds rather than a venture fund is part of why this structure can work, and perhaps why it is labelled an ‘UN’ Demo day. The host holds no stakes in the companies that take part and therefore has nothing to steer, plus the guest list is not limited to its own network either - Rizik estimates that fewer than 20% of the attending investors are funds Renaissance has actually backed, with the rest coming simply as guests to engage with local businesses.

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A $3.5 billion import business

Formed in 2008 after a conversation with with what is now Business Leaders for Michigan about the state of investing in the state, it was born from a frustration Rizik says he felt personally: great research universities, deep engineering talent, major corporations… "and yet, with all that, we're a third-tier [startup] community." His proposed solution to that tier level in his home state was to go "one level up in the food chain,” by investing in venture capital funds around the country rather than directly into startups, and then use the network those investments would build to help pull more capital towards Michigan.

According to Rizik, their first fund of $45 million aimed to attract around $250 million into Michigan startups, but ended up attracting over $1 billion - "more than 20 times our money," he says - with Renaissance now putting the total attracted to the state across its five funds at more than $3.5 billion.

Some states have built economic development funds of funds that require local investment as part of their own capital allocation, an approach Rizik believes creates "an adverse selection of funds." His alternative: "I'm all carrot, no stick… You don't have to invest here. All you have to do is agree to look. I think if you look you're going to see opportunities." At the same time, he is emphatic about the limit of that approach: "I don't ever want you [an outside investor] to do a bad deal just because it's in Michigan, because that doesn't do anybody any good." It’s a model he says has since been replicated in Cincinnati, Houston and Madison, with a foundation in New York currently exploring a version for their own region.

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Emerging Manager Office Hours leaves the coasts

This approach has also brought accolades, with Rizik inducted into the NVCA’s ‘Venture Vanguard’ class in 2025. This led him to join the board of Venture Forward, in which he saw an opening to advocate for his state. The Association’s Emerging Manager Office Hours - which will conduct its half-day program in the morning on October 1st, connecting newer fund managers with LPs and experienced GPs - is, in his words, "always [hosted] in San Francisco or New York." So he pitched them on Detroit: Renaissance would host, and an organization whose stated mission is to “democratize access to the venture capital industry “ would be doing so in a city it hadn't been active in previously.

Venture Forward selects 20 to 25 emerging managers - prioritizing, though not requiring, those raising Funds I through IV of under $150 million with meaningful Midwest connections - for fireside chats and four rounds of office hours with LPs, senior GPs and industry advisors. Applications for that half of the day closed on July 15 and came in, according to Rizik, well beyond what the organizers expected, with the emerging managers who will participate finding out if they’ve been selected on August 3.

Having mentored in the program himself, Rizik describes the participants as "managers who just never had somebody to bounce [off]… how do I fundraise, how do I present what I'm doing so that it sounds unique? … there still is a lack of density … in skills and certain experiences … and that [is] the case in the venture space as well.” He’s careful to say this is not a Michigan condition, and in doing so describes a density issue that we have written about many times on the pages of this site. “Therefore, emerging managers don't have the same ability to connect with people who … have done things that they can learn from in a positive way. I think it's that way in all but a handful of places in the country.”

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There is still time to apply for UnDemo day, and you can do so here (by the end of the day on July 29th!)

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