Just a Quintessential MBA Story
With our final semester at Berkeley Haas upon us, our MBA experience is coming to a bittersweet end. Our time at Berkeley has been quite hectic to say the least — relocating from other cities, coming back to the classroom for the first time after nearly a decade hiatus, thrust into new friendships and friend circles as professionals, and navigating career pivots, all in the midst of a global pandemic. Yet, we wouldn’t trade this experience for anything. Our time at Haas has laid the foundation for the next stages of our lives and careers, and cemented a set of core principles that will buttress our professional network and journey forever.
We are three close friends who want to carry a legacy long after leaving the walls of Haas, and we all just so happen to be pivoting careers into venture capital. Before stepping foot on campus, we were given all sorts of advice on how to “break into VC” and the steps we needed to take during our MBA program to effectively manage a career transition into one of the most competitive industries. We absorbed every bit of advice and feedback and did not waste time in utilizing the amazing resources made available to us not just at Haas, but across Berkeley. We took the necessary, perhaps even prescribed, steps to achieve our goals, and hopefully helped our Haas peers achieve theirs too.
Along the way, we worked with an amazing group of leaders (shout out to HVCC and BEA leadership teams) to create engaging programs on campus such as the Berkeley Entrepreneurship Summit and PitchNight, where we brought student founders and VCs together to hone their pitching and diligence skills.
We sought to create a more inclusive and united community by bringing peer MBA schools together with the Haas/GSB Venture Capital Networking Nights. We developed classes like Mike Devlin’s (Principal at Touchdown Ventures) Sand Hill Prep Workshop for students to learn about being an associate at a venture fund. And we brought to our campus world-renowned investors to speak to students about their career journeys and recipes for success in venture capital and entrepreneurship.
We have maximized our time at Berkeley and have strived to make the university a launching pad for the next generation of great entrepreneurs and investors. Given our mantra of questioning the status quo and wanting to go beyond the prescribed steps to breaking into VC, we have no intention of slowing down these efforts even as graduation approaches and passes us by. We are committed to shining a spotlight on Berkeley and Haas, and keeping a pulse on the university’s robust startup ecosystem and further bolstering its ties to the venture community.
As such, we have created this forum, VC Spotlights, to do just that. Beginning with this platform, and adding additional mediums as we develop and grow the initiative, we will frequently and consistently provide updates on the diverse array of programs that we have planned, as well as all other exciting events going on across campus. Additionally, we will offer thought leadership across an array of sectors and curate compelling content to support our efforts.
We appreciate and welcome any feedback and commentaries on future posts and programs, and we are grateful for your support of our mission and of the Haas/Berkeley community.
Forever, Go Bears!
