Find Mentors/Believers & Community is Everything
1) At United States Military Academy at West Point I drank the drink of choice which was branching infantry and at Stanford University Graduate School of Business & Stanford Law School I drank the drink of choice which was startups and venture capital (VC). At Stanford in 2012-2014 I literally chased down VCs to try to land internships and job offers. Btw, this actually works and maybe this is why I like running: it’s not only a healthy sport but it can help one land opportunities AND can help one get to meetings faster when one’s crunched for time. To this day, I have a healthy number of meetings with entrepreneurs and Context VC limited partners via walk and talks or jogs.
2) Breaking into VC has been roughly a decade long process from operator at Pocket, to startup founder at Media Mobilize, to angel & seed investor at thredUP, Proterra Inc, The Hustle, Morning Brew, Secureframe, FabFitFun, and many others. When I graduated in 2014 I wanted to be a VC and interviewed at several firms and was disappointed that no offers materialized. In hindsight the market was absolutely right and I wasn’t ready to be a VC. But at that time it didn’t mitigate the hurt I felt. But it did add fuel to the spark I had in wanting to get into VC.
On campus I had a chance to work with David Hornik. I read every blog post of his at VentureBlog (https://lnkd.in/gMbp2v54), and his firm took a chance on me as a military veteran and gave me the opportunity to interview with every partner. I didn’t land the position but MORE importantly I had a lifelong friend and mentor. When I decided to start Context VC he was one of the first VCs I asked to be an adviser. I'm grateful for his friendship and mentorship. David is profiled in Adam Grant's famous book Give and Take.
3) Yesterday Equal Ventures (Rick Zullo, Richard Kerby, & Simran Suri) hosted the VERY best VC event I've ever attended (https://www.emcsummit.com/). This event covered the nuts and bolts of starting and scaling a fund. It was fantastic to see Neil Devani, one of my closest friends from Stanford. I had a fantastic time reconnecting with old friends and forging new friendships: Michael Cardamone, Lisa Cawley, CFA, Sara Zulkosky, Michael Duda, Zach Posner, William McClelland, McKeever (Mac) Conwell,II, David Jones, and many others). I’m grateful to Timothy Young (another fantastic mentor) and Nihal Mehta for connecting me to the incredible Equal Ventures team.
I’m thankful that the Equal Ventures team provided me with the very last seat at the event. It was inspiring to listen to Fred Wilson talk about his VC journey. It was great to meet him after having read every single post on AVC (https://avc.com/). I left the event hungry, motivated, and ready to do some strong work. The event had the highest ratio of amount of wisdom dropped per minute of any VC event I’ve attended!