Welcome to Illuminated, a biweekly curated newsletter featuring must-read content by Rice Ventures, Rice University’s student-led startup accelerator and entrepreneurship club. We’re aiming to become the BNOC (big name on campus) for anything and everything entrepreneurship at Rice. In this curated newsletter, you’ll find how RV operates, ways to engage in entrepreneurship at Rice, and insights into the Houston startup ecosystem. Please like this issue above if you’ve enjoyed reading! If you’ve been sent this email and you’re not a subscriber, you can join by clicking on the button below.
Happy holidays! This is the last issue of Illuminated of 2020! It’s been a pleasure looking for interesting things to share with y’all. We hope you enjoy this last one, and we’ll see you in the new year! Stay happy and healthy! ❄️
Rice Ventures Reports
Looking to do some reading to prep for those Q1 meetings in the new year? Check out Startup & VC, they provide free reports on various industries and trends for free! You might need them for the Prediction Game too… (check out the What We’re Following section below).
Maybe you’re using some of this time to do user research. Mike Adams wrote up this founder’s guide to understanding users, so that you don’t make the mistake of launching a product that nobody actually wants. 😳
Paraj Mathur at BIP Capital wrote up his guide to how he broke into VC! If you’ve read a few of our issues in the past, there’s a lot of people writing about how to really break into this industry. Something they all have in common? You can do the job without the title. Do your market research, come up with a thesis, and start scouting deals, fantasy or otherwise.
Houston Happenings:
There aren’t too many events happening for the remainder of 2020, but here are some events in early 2021 to look out for!
Houston Exponential’s Venture Houston 2021: Feb 4-5 2021, 8AM-5PM CST
Rice University’s Rice Business Plan Competition: April 5-9, 2021
Liu Idea Lab’s Napier Rice Launch Challenge: April 22, 2021
Internships/Jobs:
Looking for some of those sweet, sweet, internship opportunities? You’ve come to the right place! Check out the Topl opening (the cofounders are Rice grads! And they just raised a $3MM seed round!) 💸
If you represent a company and want us to promote an open position, send us an email at team@riceventures.org.
Emerging Venture Capitalists Association (EVCA) Fellow
IDEA Fund Partners Venture Fellow
Paladin Capital Venture Capital Research Intern
Starburst Aerospace Venture Analyst Intern
Future Perfect Ventures Spring Crypto Intern (email hire@fpv.vc with resume + cover letter)
VCI Fellow (for first-time BIPOC fund managers)
Topl’s Content Marketing Specialist
What We’re Following:
So ya girl might’ve gone viral last week…
RIP to my Twitter notifs (and Insta mentions… and FB mentions…). Thanks for the love! ❤️
SEC vs Ripple
This one is a doozy. Ripple is a digital payment or remittance network for instant fund transfers. It’s based on blockchain tech and has their own cryptocurrency (XRP). The SEC brought a lawsuit against Ripple, claiming the company violated laws against selling unregistered securities when it sold XRP to investors. Katherine Wu at Notation Capital wrote up a few of her thoughts on this case, and provided her annotations! Check it out here. Even if you don’t fully understand SEC documents, this is a pretty interesting read.
So you think you can predict stocks?
Welcome to the Prediction Game. The Everything Index is a $1,000 fund invested by friends of the Everything bundle. Each person picked an asset that we'll buy on January 1st. At the end of 2021, the winner of The Prediction Game will win the full value of the fund. Do some research and make some predictions! You might win something 👀
Hey! We’re Rice Ventures, Rice University’s student-led accelerator and entrepreneurship club. Thanks for reading Illuminated! We’d love your feedback - feel free to email us at team@riceventures.org. Like and follow our Facebook page and LinkedIn. For more content, check out our Notion and website.
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