Meet Merritt Jenkins, a Summer Associate at LDV Capital

LDV Capital invests in people building businesses powered by visual technologies. We thrive on collaborating with deep tech teams leveraging computer vision, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to analyze visual data. We are the only venture capital firm with this thesis. We regularly host Vision events – check out when the next one is scheduled.

I am excited to join the team at LDV Capital this summer. I’m coming from MIT Sloan School of Management where I study finance and entrepreneurship. Prior to business school, I led hardware at Pattern Ag (a soil genomics company) and robotics at Plenty (an indoor farming company). My formal background is computer vision and hardware in agriculture — my master’s research at Carnegie Mellon focused on vision-based plant phenotyping algorithms. I’m constantly inspired by opportunities for robotics and computer vision to improve the health of our planet.

Merritt wires a robot arm and camera system for contact phenotyping of sorghum stalks.

I was attracted to venture capital this summer because I have spent the past eight years at startups. As an aspiring founder, I want to better understand both the investing process and the landscape of early-stage computer vision companies. At LDV, I am getting my fill of both. In the past two weeks, I have met inventors with expertise ranging from air analysis technologies to video compression algorithms, and I helped a portfolio company redefine its strategy in light of COVID-19.

In my free time, I enjoy road biking, skiing, and brainstorming new product ideas.

I can’t wait to speak to more entrepreneurs who are pushing the boundaries of computer vision and other visual technologies. If you want to discuss opportunities for computer vision in agriculture and other sectors, I’m happy to chat.