Walnut Venture Associates holds monthly pitch meetings at Babson College that serve as live teaching labs where students observe both pitches and investor deliberations, creating an unusually tight bridge between an angel group and an entrepreneurship school. The group was founded by Ralph Wagner and other Data General/TA Associates-era operators rather than career financiers, and maintains a working group culture of only ~25 members who have collectively made 250+ investments and held 120+ board roles since the late 1990s.