Harvard Ventures

2014 in Review

7 min readDec 8, 2014

Mission

Harvard Ventures aims to foster Harvard startup community by providing students with the resources, skills, and community to learn about and engage with entrepreneurship and venture capital.

The 2014 Board

Harvard ‘15: Brian Truong, Iva Milo, Jordan Harshman, and Aditi Ghai | ‘16: Alan Xie, Lisa Wang, and Roger Zurawicki | ‘17: Ben Pleat, Catherine Le, Eric Ouyang, Tomas Reimers, Constantin Knoll, and Andy Tran

‘15: Ibrahim Sheikh, Josh Shih, Kelly Ren, Talitha Kirchner, Xiao Yu | ‘16: Carl Fernandes, Preston Hedrick, Sierra Fan | ‘17: Angela Jiang, Chuyue Zhou, Helen Cummings, Isabella Chiu, Jacques van Rhyn, Jayant Sani, Lyon Qiao, Patrick Siaw-Asamoah

By the Numbers

From February until December 2014, here was our progress:

1490

more subscribers on our newsletter and email lists,
bringing the total count to 2125 (compared to 635 in 2013)

65

entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and executives
came out to speak at our events (compared to ~15 in 2013)

27

events hosted (compared to 8 in 2013)

1200+

attendees at our events

8.5x

increase in sponsorship dollars raised (over 2013)

16

new Associates (compared to 0 in 2013)

61

students signed up to work on projects in the group in the fall
38 Freshmen, 7 Sophomores, 9 Juniors, 6 Seniors, 1 Grad Student

10

all-star Advisors joined our newly minted board
(see below)

1

HackHarvard joined our team

Keynote Events

Harvard I/O: Each of the 7 speakers had 7 minutes (Harvard time) to speak about a big idea that they had. Partnering with the other student groups in HITEC, we brought in all-star founders, faculty, and students to speak about their experiences.

Speakers:

Daniel Nadler (Co-Founder of Kensho)
Akhil Nigam (Founder/President of MassChallenge)
Krzysztof Gajos (Professor in EECS at Harvard)
Perry Hewitt (Chief Digital Officer at Harvard)
Sujay Tyle (Thiel Fellow)
Saagar Deshpande (Former President of HCS)
Amy Yin (Former President of WiCS)

(4/25/14) From left to right: John McCallum, Alex Wirth, Jonathan Marks, Avin Bansal and Aaron White

Harvard Ventures $1000 Pitch: We hosted our very first ever pitch competition this past April, where student startups presented their ideas to a panel of VCs in speed rounds of 3 minutes. The winners, SprayCake (John McCallum and Brooke Nowakowski) and Quorum (Alex Wirth and Jonathan Marks), each took home a $500 prize.

Teams:

BairSKIN: Tyler Kugler and David Bicknell
GiftGuru: Lili Jiang and Stella Pantela
GoNative.io: John Snyder
InnerCircles: Wilson Qin and Vincent Li
Memora: Merrill Lutsky and Blake Elias
Quorum: Alex Wirth and Jonathan Marks
owlhub: Arne Zeising and Hendrik Makait
Ownly: Dasol Shin and Danni Xie
Padibility: Timothy Hopper, Naji Filali, Angie Peng, Brandon Gerberich, and Will Clerx
SpeakEasy: Eric Wei
Spray Cake: John McCallum and Brooke Nowakowski

Judges:

Aaron White (VP at Venrock)
Avin Bansal (VP at OpenView Venture Partners)

Startups and Mocktails: During Visitas, Harvard’s visiting days for new admits to the College, we hosted a session to show prospective Freshmen what the entrepreneurship scene on campus was like. We had 100+ “pre-frosh” come out! (In other words, the startup scene in future classes at Harvard will be live and well).

Bitcoin 2.0: On this panel, our guests spoke about how Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies work, how they are changing markets and the way we spend, and if they are here to stay.

Speakers:

Anders Brownworth (Principal Engineer at Circle)
James D’Angelo (Founder of World Bitcoin Network)
Walter Frick (Associate Editor at Harvard Business Review)
Max Hoblitzell (Consultant at Deloitte and GovLab Fellow)
Ryan Selkis (Founder of Inscrypto and CEO of Good Benefits)
Mark Williams (Professor of Finance at Boston University and leading Bitcoin critic)

Evening of Ventures: Our team hosted our third annual Evening of Ventures, a one-day mini-conference that kicks off our events for the fall semester and gives students the opportunity to learn about entrepreneurship and venture capital. Topics ranged from best practices when starting a company to industry trends to how to break into the industry as a young person. The event consisted of two main panels, one of entrepreneurs and one of VCs.

Entrepreneur Panel:

Umang Dua (COO and Co-Founder of Handy [fka Handybook])
Tuan Ho (Co-Founder of Philo)
Mike Massaro (CEO of peerTransfer)
Eddy Wong (CTO and Co-Founder of Wanderu)
Chris Yim (Co-Founder of Liberty Teller)

Venture Capital Panel:

Sean Dalton (Partner at Highland Capital Partners)
Gaurav Jain (Principal at Founder Collective)
Tien Anh Nguyen (Director of Market Insights at OpenView Venture Partners)
David S. Rose (Founder of Rose Tech Ventures and New York Angels)
Adam Valkin (Managing Director at General Catalyst Partners)
Hugo Van Vuuren (Founding Partner at Xfund)

E-Commerce Tomorrow: We hosted a panel on the future of E-Commerce. Our panelists spoke about their own stories in founding their companies and dove right into what made them successful: branding, merchandising, marketing strategy, business model, technologies built, and fundraising (or lack thereof).

Speakers:

Aman Advani (Founder of Ministry of Supply)
Heather Marie (CEO and Founder of Shoppable)
Anthony Marino (CMO of ThredUP)
Mike Salguero (CEO and Founder of CustomMade)
Greg Selkoe (CEO and Founder of KarmaLoop)

Moderator:

Alex Taussig (Partner at Highland Capital Partners)

Harvard HackFest: In partnership with the Harvard Crimson, we helped them host Harvard HackFest, the first campus-wide hackathon at Harvard. After 24 hours of building, the hackathon awarded $500 per person to the winning team. We also had our very own Advisor, David Chang (COO of PayPal Media), speak as a keynote at the event!

Public Safety Hackathon: Sponsored by Evidence.com, we held our second annual Public Safety Hackathon at the i-Lab. Students had the opportunity to interact with law enforcement and develop solutions for police officers and other members of public safety. The first place prize was a $1000 cash prize and a trip to Evidence.com headquarters!

Speakers:

Frank Cousins (Sheriff of Essex County)
Scott Greenwood (General Council to ACLU National)
Marcus Womack (General Manager of Evidence.com and CEO of Familiar)

Graduating into Your Own Startup: On this panel, students had the chance to hear the stories of five entrepreneurs and how they built their companies from their dorm rooms. We learned lessons on how to hustle as a young person, the do’s and don’ts of starting a company, and how to know when you’re onto something.

Speakers:

Daniel Ahmadizadeh (Founder of Rentity)
Chris Coleman (Founder of SavySwap)
Ofo Ezeugwu (Founder and CEO of WhoseYourLandlord)
Cynthia Haas (Founder of Dear Little Girl)
Iqram Magdon (Founder and CEO of Venmo)

Moderators:

Steve Anastos (Associate at Bain Capital Ventures)
Caitlin Strandberg (Associate at Flybridge Capital Partners)

HackNights (times 4): This year, HackHarvard relaunched HackNights, a weekly session to meet similarly-interested people (in computer science, software, tech, and entrepreneurship), share ideas, and hack on projects together.

Winter Xcelerate: We are in the midst of planning a week-long incubation program in the i-Lab for students to build out their projects during Harvard Wintersession. During the week, we will host daily talks from veteran entrepreneurs and venture capitalists as well as workshops on business development and technical skills. The program will culminate in a Demo Day for the public!

Workshops, Coffee Chats, and Other Events

Coffee Chat with Geoff Ralston (Founder of Imagine K-12; Partner at YCombinator)
Coffee Chat with Avin Bansal (VP at OpenView Venture Partners)
Breakfast Chat with David Chang (COO at PayPal Media; Leader of StartTank)
Coffee Chat with Elissa Shevinsky (Founder of Glimpse)
Afternoon Talk with Saeid Hejazi (CEO of Wally)
Dinner Talk with Josh Reeves (CEO of ZenPayroll)
Idea Workshop with Andrew Magliozzi (Co-Founder of AdmitHub)
Product Management Talk with Facebook Engineers
Brunch Chat with Snapchat Engineers
Workshop on “How to Be an Awesome Startup Employee” with Venture for America
Coffee Chats with the Artsy product team
Coffee Chat with Michael Baum (CEO of Founder.org)
Startup Trek and Dinner Chat with the Yesware team
Workshop on Helpful Startup Tools with Aaron Fuchs (CEO of iXperience)
Afternoon Talk with Bob Xu Xiaoping and Victor Wang Qiang (Co-Founders of ZhenFund and New Oriental)
Workshop with Scott Crouch (CEO of Mark43)
Startup Mixer with the HBS Entrepreneurship Club