Milan Koch co-founded MANTIS Venture Capital alongside The Chainsmokers and Jeffrey Evans, positioning himself as the professional venture capitalist complement to a celebrity-led fund rather than taking a typical celebrity-angel sidecar role. Before MANTIS, he ran AngelHack's accelerator program where he helped drive multiple exits including acquisitions by Google and Box, and previously worked as a venture partner at Base Ventures, giving him hands-on early-stage experience before launching the celebrity fund.

• Advocacy for creative capital stacks in frontier technology. Promotes combining traditional venture capital with non-dilutive funding sources like government grants, venture debt, and customer prepayments. This approach allows hard-tech companies to scale manufacturing without giving away too much ownership, as seen in his breakdown of raising a mix of equity and contract-backed debt for defense and energy projects.
• Strong interest in revitalizing American manufacturing and solving supply chain dependencies. Looks for hardware companies building high-rate production lines domestically to address geopolitical challenges, specifically highlighting companies like Neros Tech for their work in drone manufacturing to counter reliance on Chinese supply chains.
• Championing founder-friendly equity structures and sustainable growth over growth at all costs. Argues that minimizing dilution leads to better talent retention and hungrier teams, stating a preference for a smaller stake in a sustainable business versus a larger stake in a cash-burning company.
• Viewing the role of an investor as a capital alchemist who actively helps architect financial strategies rather than just providing funds. Wants to partner with founders to layer different types of capital, such as tax credits and SBA loans, to build successful deals in the hard-tech space.
• Background in consumer technology, sports, and blockchain applications with tangible utility. Values projects that ship working products immediately rather than just hype, evidenced by his early support of sports platform Underdog and blockchain ticketing solutions, often in collaboration with The Chainsmokers and Mantis VC.