8/11/2023 0 Comments Rough draft ventures academy![]() And what better role could we play than to build an ecosystem around young people starting businesses?” “And the way we wanted to bridge that gap,” he said, “was to form a group that focuses on peer support, peer evaluations, and peer decisions. The city still hasn’t hit critical mass when it comes to having a deep pool of company founders to turn to for advice, he says. “Boston lacks a significant amount of mentorship and role models, relative to other cities,” he said. But Rough Draft Ventures has a bigger mission, said David Fialkow, a cofounder and managing director at General Catalyst. Rough Draft’s funds are drawn from General Catalyst’s coffers, and in the scope of the firm’s more than $3 billion portfolio, the money is chump change. In total, these early-stage companies have gone on to raise $75 million from venture firms (General Catalyst has invested in two of them so far), and several have been accepted into high-profile accelerator programs like Y-Combinator and Techstars. Since it was launched in spring 2013, Rough Draft has funded more than 30 companies, typically awarding between $10,000 and $20,000 to a handful of teams each semester. “If you want to think about investing in companies that are relevant to millennials or serving millennials, it might not be too crazy to have millennials be part of that dialogue,” Boyce said. (Facebook, after all, was built on Harvard’s campus.) Together, they saw the stress that student teams would face, so they pitched Rough Draft to the firm as an opportunity to offer guidance to young teams and to get a first look at products that can be relevant to the lucrative college market. ![]() The result is a shift in how students plan their summers: As the end of the semester approaches, these would-be entrepeneurs are increasingly scrambling to secure funding for their startups instead of securing jobs or internships.īoyce began working with startups while an undergraduate at Harvard University, which is how he connected with Banta, a fellow alumnus who was working at General Catalyst. The Dorm Room Fund, backed by First Round Capital, offers a similar model in this and several other cities.Īrea universities have also jumped on the trend, with on-campus venture projects like Harvard’s Xfund and Northeastern’s IDEA Venture accelerator providing funding for student startups. At the same time, Boyce and Banta hope to create a diverse pipeline of young people to feed the venture community, which is o-ften chastened for its insularity and homogeneity.Ĭurrently, Rough Draft is one of two student-centered funds in Boston.
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