If you know a lot about pharmaceuticals, look at pharma companies or participate in venture backed early stage companies. 

This is a not a for profit venture, this would be to help people via non-profit.If there are pieces of how I've imagined this that could be problematic for a prospective tenant/homeowner, I'd want those things to be avoided SPECIFICALLY to make sure people aren't taken advantage of. 

Also the tech eco system of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists is huge here and generally the rapid emergence of many companies big and small happened at a blistering pace in the Bay Area.

There are so many awesome people out there willing to joint venture with you. 

I would venture to say your biggest issue is marketing .

You can mitigate your potential loss by entity, operating agreement, be fully funded, have insurance, and just like you would for any other venture.

I would look at either Joint Venturing (e.g. partnering up with someone) or being an investor and as ask the Sponsor can I have some responsibilities to learn. 

If you have never developed a property you might want to look at doing a joint venture with a developer or hiring a fee for developer.  

My goal is to learn the city well by participating in it for a couple of years, and perhaps later on focusing on private deals / venturing out on my own .Thanks .

Once I have a little bit saved up from this a  more constant flow rolling with the flips I would like to transition to buy & hold in the Northern Virginia/Fxbg markets ideally but will likely venture closer to Richmond where I think it would be less cost prohibitive to scale up.