Meet the Cohort 10 Scholarship Recipients of VC University ONLINE

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We’re thrilled to introduce VC University’s Cohort 10 scholarship recipients – 41 talented, aspiring VCs from underrepresented backgrounds.

 

About the Program:

VC University ONLINE is a highly-reviewed certificate course on the fundamentals of venture capital, created by NVCA, Venture Forward, and Startup@BerkeleyLaw. The course democratizes access to quality VC education. Participants learn the nuts and bolts of venture finance through self-paced lectures, interactive assessments, virtual office hours, webinars with faculty and industry experts, and interviews with leading venture capitalists.

To date, VC University ONLINE has:

  • served 9 sold-out cohorts
  • served 1,640+ participants
  • awarded 264 full scholarships

Cohort 10 started on June 1, 2022, serving 250+ participants, including 41 full scholarship recipients.

The Cohort 10 scholarship recipients were competitively selected from hundreds of applicants, through an application process that considers career goals, commitment to furthering a healthy, inclusive industry, demographic factors, and more.

 

Click “Read More” to meet the Cohort 10 Scholarship Recipients:

 

VC Lab

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VC Lab is the venture capital accelerator guided by the Mensarius Oath. The program was launched in Q1 of 2020 to change the face of venture capital and help humanity finance solutions to our most pressing problems. VC Lab has grown globally to provide advisory services, formation assistance, back office support and a technology platform to run venture capital firms.

For VCs:

  • Apply to Genesis – a free intensive online program that helps talented and motivated venture capitalists to launch Series A, Seed, Pre-Seed, Venture Studio and Accelerator funds worldwide. The goal of the 16-week Genesis program is for participants to complete a close with Limited Partners in 6 months or less. Genesis provides fund-building structure, proven advice, mentorship and peer support to reduce the barriers of entry to the low-transparency and high-cost world of venture capital.
  • Discover free resources to launch your venture capital firm.

 

VC University ONLINE Cohort 9 Scholarship Recipients

Meet VC University ONLINE’s Cohort 9 Scholarship Recipients!

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We’re thrilled to introduce Cohort 9 of VC University ONLINE scholarship recipients – 42 talented, aspiring VCs from historically underrepresented backgrounds.

VC University ONLINE is a highly-reviewed certificate course on the fundamentals of venture capital, created by NVCA, Venture Forward, and Startup@BerkeleyLaw. The course democratizes access to quality VC education. Participants learn the nuts and bolts of venture finance through self-paced lectures, interactive assessments, virtual office hours, webinars with faculty and industry experts, and interviews with leading venture capitalists.

To date, the program has:

  • held 9 sold-out cohorts
  • served 1,640+ participants
  • awarded 264 full scholarships

The Cohort 9 scholarship recipients were competitively selected from hundreds of applicants, through an application process that considers career goals, commitment to furthering a healthy, inclusive industry, demographic factors, and more.

Venture Forward Mentoring Forward

Mentoring Forward

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Welcome to our Mentoring Forward series! We’re highlighting an incredible group of mentors and the positive impact the VC University Mentorship Program has had on VC University scholarship recipients. Since launching in 2020, the Mentorship Program has had four cohorts with a total of 154 new and early career VCs from historically underrepresented backgrounds, each who have been paired with one experienced VC mentor and one peer VC mentor. Thanks to these mentors, we are working together to create a more inclusive and diverse VC community.

Read more from Jeff Clavier of Uncork Capital, Heidi Roizen of Threshold Ventures, Faith Voinovich of Ohio Innovation Fund, Nick Washburn of Intel Capital and Jessica Yi of Norwest Venture Partners about their experiences as mentors and why this is an important program that they support.

VC University ONLINE September 2021 Scholarship Cohort

Welcome to the September 2021 Scholarship Cohort of VC University ONLINE!

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We’re thrilled to welcome 45 aspiring and early-career investors to the September 2021 cohort of VC University ONLINE scholarship recipients!

VC University ONLINE, a highly-reviewed certificate program led by Venture Forward, NVCA, and Startup@BerkeleyLaw, democratizes access to quality education on venture capital. Participants learn the nuts and bolts of venture finance through self-paced lectures, interactive assessments, virtual office hours, webinars with faculty and industry experts, and interviews with leading venture capitalists.

The September 2021 cohort will serve 200+ participants. This marks the 8th sold-out program, which has now served more than 1,400+ participants and awarded 222 full scholarships.

The scholarship program supports the professional development of new and aspiring VCs from historically underrepresented backgrounds, through educational opportunity, mentorship, and more.

Introducing the June 2021 Cohort of VC University Scholarship Recipients

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The seventh sold-out cohort of VC University ONLINE begins June 1, 2021!

Serving approximately 200 participants per course, VC University is an educational certificate course, jointly operated by NVCA, Venture Forward, and Startup@BerkeleyLaw. Participants learn the nuts and bolts of venture finance over the course of several weeks through self-paced lectures, interactive assessments, virtual office hours, monthly webinars with faculty and industry experts, and interviews with leading venture capitalists.

Thanks to the generous financial support of our sponsors, Venture Forward was able to offer 43 full scholarships to attend VC University ONLINE, to underrepresented, aspiring and early career VCs.

In this blog post, Venture Forward provides more details about the program, and highlights the 43 talented scholarship recipients who were competitively selected to participate in the  June 2021 cohort.

Report: Guidance and Best Practices for Investors on Diversity & Female Entrepreneurship

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Guidance and Best Practices for Investors on Diversity & Female Entrepreneurship is a report published by the British Venture Capital and Private Equity Association.

The report was commissioned by the Alison Rose Review and HM Treasury, and includes tactical guidance for investors to create an inclusive pipeline and portfolio. It was inspired by broad recognition in the investment community that diverse and inclusive portfolios have substantially lower risk and better performance.

 

High-level, the report recommends:

  • Implementing specific tactics to recruit diverse talent to your investment firm
  • Adopting specific practices to create an inclusive culture at your investment firm
  • Using tried-and-tested strategies to remove bias from the investment process
  • Engaging with portfolio companies using validated tools and tactics
  • Signing up to the Diversity VC standard

VentureNext

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VentureNext is a professional peer group of rising venture capital investors who work with, manage, and run venture capital investment funds. Our members are based across the country and united by an interest in investing in Midwestern companies.

VentureNext members get access to monthly deal-flow calls, exclusive networking events, educational resources, and mentorship. Learn more at https://www.venturenext.vc/

Opportunities for Engagement

 

Experienced VCs
Experienced VCs are invited to volunteer as mentors to support the rising venture talent of the Midwest. (We welcome mentors from anywhere in the US!)

 

Early-Career VCs who are interested in investing in the Midwest
VentureNext’s core focus is to connect and elevate the next generation of VC investors with an interest in investing in Midwest deal flow. Early-career investors are invited to become members of VentureNext, in order to:

  1. Establish a knowledge network through various programming events and networking opportunities.
  2. Provide mentorship and mentoring opportunities, and
  3. Participate in monthly deal flow sharing calls.

Start the process of becoming a member by submitting your information at the bottom of this page.

 

 

Contact Information

Recruiting for diversity in VC (TechCrunch)

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Like many industries with a high concentration of wealth — and the careers that help professionals accumulate it — investment firms have a severe dearth of diversity in their ranks.

Dan Miller is a Partner at True Search where he leads the firm’s Investment Professional practice, having worked with many top VC & PE firms in their senior hiring efforts. In this article, Dan outlines common pitfalls he sees in talent searches with VC firms in particular, as well as some thoughts on how firms can improve their hiring processes, in order to work toward having more diverse representation within their investing teams.

The Startup Community Way: Evolving an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem

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In their new book The Startup Community Way: Evolving an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem,  Brad Feld and Ian Hathaway explore what makes startup communities thrive and how to improve collaboration in these rapidly evolving, complex environments.

We are in the midst of a startup revolution. The growth and proliferation of innovation-driven startup activity is profound, unprecedented, and global in scope. Today, it is understood that communities of support and knowledge-sharing go along with other resources. The importance of collaboration and a long-term commitment has gained wider acceptance. These principles are adopted in many startup communities throughout the world.

And yet, much more work is needed. Startup activity is highly concentrated in large cities. Governments and other actors such as large corporations and universities are not collaborating with each other nor with entrepreneurs as well as they could. Too often, these actors try to control activity or impose their view from the top-down, rather than supporting an environment that is led from the bottom-up. We continue to see a disconnect between an entrepreneurial mindset and that of many actors who wish to engage with and support entrepreneurship. There are structural reasons for this, but we can overcome many of these obstacles with appropriate focus and sustained practice.

The Startup Community Way is an explanatory guide for startup communities. Rooted in the theory of complex systems, this book establishes the systemic properties of entrepreneurial ecosystems and explains why their complex nature leads people to make predictable mistakes. As complex systems, value creation occurs in startup communities primarily through the interaction of the “parts” – the people, organizations, resources, and conditions involved – not the parts themselves. This continual process of bottom-up interactions unfolds naturally, producing value in novel and unexpected ways. Through these complex, emergent processes, the whole becomes greater and substantially different than what the parts alone could produce.

Why is advancing the next era of venture capital important?

Venture capital is an American national treasure. It has fueled the advancement of innovation, economies, and people. It has created value, jobs, wealth, and life-changing products and services. Though venture capital as an industry may be young and as an asset class may be small, high-growth startups and their long-term investors have truly changed the world.

To continue the success of the industry’s past 50 years to the next 50 years and beyond, we must expand opportunities for people of all backgrounds to access the venture ecosystem and thrive. We must educate future leaders on best practices and help them learn from the industry’s rich history. We must help firms build strong, healthy cultures and values. We must keep the public and ecosystem informed through qualitative and quantitative insights.

By investing in tomorrow’s leaders today, we shape the next era of venture capital.

Learn More
10,000+

high-growth startups—across all 50 states and DC—raised venture funding in 2019 to build and grow their businesses.

42%

of all U.S. IPOs from 1974 to 2015 were venture-backed companies, representing 63% of the market capitalization and 85% of R&D.

2.9 million

is the average net jobs created annually between 1980 and 2010 by high-growth startups, which account for ~50% of gross jobs created in the U.S.

1,300+

U.S. venture firms are active today, managing an aggregate of $444 billion in assets.