Value of Venture
Dive into these resources so that one day... you too can be featured on @VCBrags
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.
We’re hella focused on venture capital resources this issue! If you’re into that, great! We hope it’s helpful. ❤️ If you’re not, then don’t worry, we have plenty more content in other issues to satiate you. Give us feedback if you’re interested in any one particular career track or industry trend! Product management? Private equity? Cleantech? *insert “you got it” TikTok audio*
This is also the last issue of Illuminated before the semester ends! Rice’s fall semester is short this year, so we have effectively three weeks of Dead Days before finals. We’re gonna go ahead and keep the newsletter running over the break because we want to keep y’all ~in the loop~!
Rice Ventures Reports
Join The Wiress’ Women’s Student-VC Directory here if you’re currently in a venture fellowship or internship role! This includes women or nonbinary individuals who are student-partners, fellows, co-ops or interns that are currently employed at an institutional fund, corporate fund, impact fund, accelerator fund, etc!
Saddle up and check out Cowboy Ventures’ Breaking Into and Thriving in VC article to learn more about breaking into venture, what to prioritize in your first year, and sourcing strategies, all compiled into three slide decks!
Hunter Walk shares his thoughts on what 4 qualities you’ll need to break into venture capital and get hired by a firm. Although Hunter’s never been hired by a VC firm himself, he is the partner at Homebrew, a seed stage venture fund based in SF.
Pietro Invernizzi also has shared his thoughts on breaking into VC, into a Notion page. He has five main hacks, and a whole host of other resources to click through and learn from!
Most of y’all are Gen Zers, so let’s see if you relate! Meagan Loyst from Lerer Hippeau tweeted about Gen Z VCs, and that led to dozens of conversations with young investors working in VC + growth equity. She’s compiled a dope article on Medium here about top trends Gen Z VCs are watching, and some of their favorite companies.
If you’re already interested in venture, but you don’t know where to start, start writing! The great thing about VC is that you can do the job long before you have the title, so start going to pitch competitions, developing a fantasy portfolio, and writing investment memos. Here’s Michael Dempsey’s investment memo template to get started.
Finally, if you are simply just trying to invest NOW, well… you got it. Republic is pioneering a new wave of private early-stage investing so that you can invest in vetted private companies. Now, Reg CF’s regulations have changed to even further democratize investing. On the investor side in 2021, accredited investors will have no investment limits under Reg CF, & all other investors (non-accredited folks) will be able to invest in any 12 month period up to the greater of net-worth and income, or net-revenues and assets for all others! Click on the Twitter thread below to learn more!
Houston Happenings:
So… they’re not all Houston events. But you should totally go anyway! And definitely register for the first one. It’s a must-attend. We’re not biased. It’s not like we’re cohosting the event or something. 🙊
Rice’s Women in Tech + Biz Panel: Nov 12, 6-9PM CST
SoGal’s Breaking into Venture Capital Webinar: Nov 13, 10-11PM CST
Houston BizJournal’s Building Value in Your Business: Nov 17, 1-2PM CST
Princeton’s Breaking Into VC Beyond Silicon Valley Panel: Nov 18, 7-8PM CST
Kiwitech’s SportsTech Venture Fair: Nov 18, 10AM-12PM CST
Insight Capital’s 2022 Summer + Fulltime Analyst Info Session: Nov 18, 4:30-5:30PM CST
Houston Exponential’s The Listies: Celebrating the Best of HouTech: Nov 20, 3PM CST
Internships:
Still recruiting? We gotchu! You are crushing the recruiting game, so check out these fellowships (and two fulltime PM roles!) to see if any of them would be a good fit. If you represent a company and want us to promote an open position, send us an email at team@riceventures.org.
645 Ventures’ Investment Fellowship
GGV Capital’s NextGen Fellowship
Laconia’s Spring + Summer Internships
Amasia Research + Writing Fellowship
New Stack Ventures Spring Fellowship
RippleX Winter 2021 Fellowship
Peloton’s Associate Product Manager- Fulltime
What We’re Following:
We honestly get most of these from Twitter and friends sending us interesting links, so if you think something is neat, let us know! Nafisa is super bullish on Twitter, and Samuel has one too, so DM us with stuff you want to see. We’re working on converting the rest of the RV team to Twitter too, don’t worry.
MSCHF, a venture-backed creative studio, is launching their app Push Party, valued at $200MM! The invite-only networking app allows users to push a button that sends a notification to all the users on the app. Like most of what MSCHF does, the idea was born with virality in mind, perhaps to poke a little fun at the venture industry. Would you want an invite?
Tech Consulting Resource Guide
Emily Inestroza is an analyst at Deloitte’s Technology Consulting practice, and she sat down with Ladder to share her secrets to success in landing her dream job. She shares, “Network, network, network. Knowing people who are working at these companies is how you’re going to get in. I know networking can be difficult, but you really just have to remind yourself to be aggressive, put yourself out there,” she said. “If you reach out to 100 people, at least 5 of them are going to get back to you. So you have to keep pushing, that network will take you really far in your career.” Check out her free resource guide on GDrive!
Bennett from The Bachelorette 🌹
The man. The myth. The legend. The Harvard grad has captured America’s hearts, and hopefully he can do the same for the new Bachelorette Tayshia Adams. This would normally be news for the Bachelor Nation groupchat, but Bennett Jordan is the Managing Director of Wealth + Alternative Asset Management at Whitney Partners, one of the oldest specialist search firms dedicated to financial services! So we feel like he’s relevant to the world of tech + biz. But also we (aka Nafisa; all Bachelor opinions are my own and do not reflect those of Rice Ventures) want him to win!!
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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