Tuesday March 10, 2020 was the day that Harvard students woke up to the news: campus was officially shutting down. The entire student body had 5 days to pack up their lives, say goodbye to their classmates and professors, and leave. Uncertainty was the overwhelming theme of the days that followed. How long would the campus shutdown last for? What did this mean for graduation? How could classes continue? What would virtual learning even look like? When would we return back to “normal” life? And how could we, as students, do our part to contribute to pandemic related responses and innovations?

Harvard Ventures is the leading undergraduate focused, student-run entrepreneurship and venture capital organization. The mission is to encourage active, informed, and meaningful participation in startupland by empowering students with the skills, relationships, and resources they need. In short, Harvard Ventures is a community of builders. And Harvard Ventures members like to solve big problems by building big solutions. COVID-19, however, presented global, unprecedented problems, and it can seem daunting to find ways to innovate solutions in light of these current events.

The team at Harvard Ventures sought for small ways to do our part in continuing to serve the student body — even virtually. Thus, The Bottom Line podcast was born. The Bottom Line is a podcast about entrepreneurship, innovation, and everything in between. Given that students are learning from home, Harvard Ventures hopes to continue to push out meaningful content in a digital context. And given that executives, founders, investors, and other creators are also working from home, these individuals have increased time on their hands to participate in our interview series. Combine these two facts and the power of cold email, and Harvard Ventures was able to secure Mark Cuban as the podcast’s first guest. Following guests have included Gary Cohn, Arianna Huffington, Wendy Kopp, and many more.

COVID-19 is indeed a big problem, bigger than most of us can even comprehend. And a podcast may feel like just a small solution. But it has reenergized the Harvard Ventures community to focus efforts on a new project, democratized lessons from some of the world’s greatest thinkers to be accessible for all students across the world via Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, or Anchor, and served as proof that pivots can happen quickly; it is possible for innovation to rise out of unfortunate circumstances.

Although they represent but a small subset of the inventors of the world, our guests represent a class of entrepreneurs who have succeeded in the face of difficulty. Here, we outline the opinions and advice of several experts in startupland as it pertains to pivoting in response to the “new normal.” We hope that their insights will serve to invigorate our community at large and to encourage innovation despite times of difficulty.

Necessity is the mother of invention

Although first coined by Plato in The Republic during the 4th century BCE, this proverb represents a common theme in our conversations with thought leaders and big thinkers in the field of entrepreneurship. Anne Dwane, co-founder and partner at Village Global, an early stage venture capital firm backed by some of the world’s most successful founders including Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg, likened today’s circumstances to a Sputnik Moment: a time in which we are faced with an interdisciplinary challenge and must put human minds together to share knowledge in unprecedented ways. Through her experience in co-founding Military.com, a network for service members and veterans, during the cash-constrained economy in 1999, Dwane learned to leverage turbulent times into growing her business. In 2004, Military.com was acquired by Monster Worldwide, for $39.5 million.

Like Military.com, Ginkgo Bioworks, synthetic biology unicorn startup founded in 2009, found success during an economic recession. In Episode 3 of The Bottom Line, current Ginkgo Strategy Manager, Andy Gonzales recounts the origin story of Ginkgo, wherein founders Tom Knight, Jason Kelly, Reshma Shetty, Barry Canton, and Austin Che needed to be scrappy to persevere. Although biotechnology ventures are notoriously expensive and capital intensive, Ginkgo founders were able to reduce the barriers to entry by dumpster diving at MIT for used laboratory equipment and scouring Ebay for pipettes. According to Gonzales, this mindset continues to prevail in the company’s DNA.

In the words of Mark Cuban, “heroes are made during times of uncertainty.” Despite not knowing beyond doubt what the future will have in store, these heroes have a vision for what the world will look like on the other side of the pandemic and start businesses in anticipation of these challenges.

For many, the post-COVID vision of the world will demand innovation in the fields of personalized medicine, personalized security, and the highly adjacent field of artificial intelligence. According to Cuban, the ability to tackle current and future pandemics will require the use of personalized solutions according to how the disease impacts individuals and communities. A particularly alluring facet of this solution is the prospect of widespread antibody testing to inform decisions of both individuals and governing bodies pertaining to social distancing protocols and other restrictions according to health status. The importance of developing new ways to collect and share healthcare data seems to be a common belief of Cuban and Gonzales, as well as Bob Langer, a pioneer in the field of chemistry and most cited engineer in history, and Gary Cohn, former White House Chief Economic Adviser and President of Goldman Sachs.

Despite physical and emotional stress caused by the current circumstances and concern for the future, it is important to pivot quickly as businesses and individuals and do our part to combat the pandemic. For some, existing projects have lent themselves well for applications in COVID-19 response. For example, due to the fundamental changes that now face the field of biotech, Ginkgo Bioworks has paused non-COVID work and has been working to orient their next-generation sequencing platform to analyze samples from COVID-19 positive patients. In Episode 5 of The Bottom Line, we interview Bob Langer, academic co-founder of Moderna Therapeutics, who speaks to Moderna’s status as the current front-runner in the development of a COVID-19 vaccine. In particular, Moderna’s experience with mRNA-based technologies has allowed them to repurpose their systems and rapidly produce mRNA vaccine candidates for COVID.

However, for those who may feel powerless to the pandemic born of biology, remember that innovation can be born of uncertainty. To channel the negativity in the world into something positive, Anne Dwane recites the words of J.K. Rowling: “rock bottom was the solid foundation upon which I built the rest of my life.” We hope that through these lessons, we can re-energize our community and build solutions up from rock bottom.

Necessity is the Mother of Invention: Lessons from The Bottom Line Podcast was originally published in Harvard Ventures on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

What is Acceptitas?

Acceptitas is a near-peer mentorship service that provides students with college application mentorship and passion project development from current Harvard undergraduates.

We believe that all students should have access to excellent and highly-personal assistance and mentorship so that they can realize their full potential, pursue their passions, and submit with confidence.

We leverage the first-hand knowledge of Harvard students with the effectiveness of near-peer mentoring to create an incredibly personal and accessible college admissions experience.

Through a wide range of fully virtual services, students work closely alongside Acceptitas’ team of trained Harvard students to craft their most compelling college application narrative. This unique, customizable, program allows for students to interact directly with current Harvard undergraduates who can offer assistance with anything ranging from summer passion projects to last-minute application editing.

What’s the founding story of your startup?

Acceptitas started out of the frustration with online learning and the uptick in anxiety from parents, students, and counselors about how a virtual world would change student’s lives and college admissions.

Our founder, Emmet Halm, saw that these pain points were overwhelming school counselors and that current solutions were either inaccessible to most people due to cost, and were often only helping students in their final years of high school. Acceptitas was created to help a wider range of students and their families earlier on in their education. Intervening early and shaping a student’s journal is much more effective than waiting until senior year to find a way to describe it.

Acceptitas started with Emmet in September, out of his childhood room in Texas. With the help of a few design-savvy friends and a personal business mentor, Emmet grew Acceptitas until he could no longer handle all the clients by himself. That’s when Emmet brought Acceptitas to Harvard Ventures, where he met Tom DiPietro, now the VP of Marketing for Acceptitas.

Since then, Acceptitas has experienced initial growth and success, serving over 50 students and their families across the country and growing to a team of a dozen Harvard students. Acceptitas also provides quick college application tips and tricks to a combined total audience of over 130,000 across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and TikTok.

What sets Acceptitas apart?

There are three key factors that set Acceptitas apart: our near-peer model, our emphasis on passion projects, and our Harvard quality. First off, because our mentors are all current Harvard students, they understand how stressful college admissions is, know what top schools are looking for, and can connect with students in ways that older counselors cannot. Time after time again, psychological and education studies show the incredible impact of mentoring from a slightly older and more successful peer in every field. Having a near-peer model allows us to keep our services extremely person, relevant, and cost-efficient.

Secondly, our emphasis on passion projects truly set us apart from other companies. Our conviction that passion projects were the single largest overlooked category in college admissions drove us to conduct a randomized study of Harvard students early on in our venture. Our data showed that nearly 75% of Harvard students completed an independent project in high school and felt that it significantly impacted their college application. Acceptitas helps students take advantage of this extremely powerful opportunity to build their own projects, explore their interests, and significantly strengthen their applications.

Third, being a team of Harvard students allows Acceptitas mentors to give students and parents the most up to date information on what top schools (like Harvard) are looking for and what kinds of people thrive in this environment. People also know that they can trust us, as all our teammates have succeeded to the highest level. Additionally, we’re able to connect students with the resources and network of Harvard, which is valuable when building passion projects, helping students find summer opportunities or network with like-minded peers.

What is your vision for your business in 5 years time?

There are millions of hardworking, motivated students who are largely not being served in a personal and high-quality way by the current market. Our goal is to scale the highly personal, near-peer model of Acceptitas to reach these students. In order to do this, we’ll have to move away from strictly 1-on-1 sessions towards our own edtech platform. Right now we are developing a holistic digital program that will exponentially expand the number of students we can provide with high quality, personal mentoring.

In addition to this, we’re also developing a free-lancer platform for essay feedback, that will allow top-college students to get quickly trained and work on demand. Our goal is to help as many students as possible while creating on-campus jobs.

Our ultimate 5-year goal is to be the leader in the near-peer mentoring and admissions space.

What is your Hottest Take? That is, an opinion or belief that you hold core to your company’s mission statement that may be unexpected or controversial.

Peers are more persuasive and influential than adults.

People tend to trust and listen to the advice of people who are similar to them, especially if they seem like a more successful version of themself.

If your parents tell you to do something, your automatic reaction is to refuse, but if your cool older cousin who goes to Harvard tells you, you’re much more likely to take their advice. This belief that near-peer mentors can connect in ways that older counselors or admissions experts cannot is central to our mission.

Startup Spotlight — Acceptitas was originally published in Harvard Ventures on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Like many recent graduates, I am begrudgingly preparing for the deletion of my university email and its accompanying files. I spent an hour during a lazy Sunday afternoon transferring class notes and old papers from one virtual location to another. During this process I stumbled upon spreadsheets filled with opportunities that I had assembled in preparation for each summer of my college career. Several descriptions were highlighted in green; nearly all of them were for fellowships.

What is a fellowship?

A fellowship is really an internship with an added layer on top of it. Rather than applying to intern at startups directly, students can apply to programs run by the firms that fund them. Firms effectively pre approve candidates who they then match to work with their portfolio companies. There is some variation between programs, but that is the general gist of it.

Why not just apply to internships directly?

This is a really good question. The answer depends on your candidacy.

Venture run programs are rarely role agnostic. A strong product designer may be ineligible for most technical fellowships, but they could still be hired independently by portfolio companies. Many candidates simply have no choice but to apply directly, but others have options. Being part of a program offers several advantages:

1. Firstly, you belong to a community outside of a single workplace. This amplifies the number of people who you interact with and the amount that you can learn.
2. Secondly, firm affiliation enables access to investors and industry leaders that would be nearly impossible otherwise. Fellowships can grant you knowledge and opportunities beyond the scope of the work that you’re completing as an individual.
3. Lastly, participating in a fellowship can give you great flexibility in terms of personal branding. Your resumé can include both the name of the supporting firm and the company that you interned at. This sets you up well to pursue both technical or investing roles.

If fellowships are so fantastic, then why haven’t I heard about them before?

Another great question. I’m glad that you asked.

1. Smaller fellowship programs necessarily yield smaller alumni networks. Even if every former participant widely publicized the opportunity the message still may never have reached you. Similarly, participants often cluster around the same set of schools, which further concentrates the exposure.
2. The people who are typically in charge of fellowships do so in addition to their regular jobs, so there is rarely adequate bandwidth to launch large marketing efforts. On a related note, running a program well requires extensive time and energy that may not be offset by the value added to portfolio companies. Many firms have opted to shut down their fellowships rather than to continue them.

Despite these benefits, most of the materials that I found on the topic were either not comprehensive or very outdated. I had been taking notes on the matter for nearly four years. Why not share them?

Before we begin examining each opportunity, I would like to take a moment to share why I picked these particular programs.

1. All of the firms have strong name recognition and portfolios.
2. Fellows are fairly compensated for their time.
3. The deadlines are quickly approaching.

Note: the following list is in no particular order.

True Ventures Fellowship

Silicon Valley based True Ventures has invested more than $2 billion in early stage startups since its founding in 2005. The firm is run by former entrepreneurs whose risks have certainly paid off. Notable exits from the past 5 years include Peloton, Fitbit, Ring, and Blue Bottle Coffee.

The True Ventures Fellowship pairs talented college students with portfolio companies to gain experience and grow their personal networks over the summer. Rising college juniors and seniors are eligible for the program; current sophomores and juniors should apply. The upcoming class of fellows will be between 12 and 15 students. The 2021 program will take place entirely online; it will begin in June and extend until mid August (10–12 weeks). There is no travel or housing stipend available. However, the online nature of the 2021 program will likely alleviate the cost burden of Bay area housing.

True's Commitment to Diversity & Inclusion

The newest iteration of True’s fellowship places a particularly large emphasis on diversity. The website states, “Moving forward, our program will focus on students from historically marginalized and underrepresented backgrounds within the technology and venture capital industry, including women, Black, Latinx, and Indigenous communities.” This commitment is restated several times. If you’re nervous about being the only person in the room who looks like you, then this may be an especially good option.

The True Ventures Fellowship Program

There are a number of components to the True Ventures application, including both a personal statement and video of yourself. The process is far more reminiscent of applying to college than simply dropping a resumé. Plan accordingly.

True Ventures Application: due on November 6th

8VC Fellowship

8VC describes themselves as “a different kind of VC firm.” They encourage entrepreneurs to rethink entire systems, rather than solve problems in a vacuum. The fund is led by serial entrepreneur Joe Lonsdale, co-founder of Palantir and founder of Addepar. 8VC wrote early checks to some of the coolest companies you probably never have heard of. Other investments, such as Asana and Oculus, are household names.

The 8VC Fellowship sources university technical talent and connects them to their portfolio companies. While the application does not explicitly state that you must major in computer science, all of the roles are in software engineering. If you’ve never written a line of code, then this is not the program for you. 8VC expects to assemble a group of 14 fellows for the 12 week program.

It is unclear whether or not the program will take place entirely online in 2021. In years past, fellows were paid competitive salaries and given a partial housing stipend. If fellows are not expected to reside in the Bay area then the stipend may disappear or shrink.

The application does not currently have a formal deadline, but I suspect that applying earlier rather than later will be beneficial.

8VC application: no formal due date

Bessemer Fellows

In an industry filled with new entrants, Bessemer Venture Partners is a veteran. The original iteration of the firm dates back to 1911. For context, the Titanic sank in 1912. This longevity has led Bessemer to refer to themselves as “the world’s most experienced early-stage venture capital firm.” They boast 120 IPOs in the last 5 decades alone, including LinkedIn, Yelp, and Pinterest. However, they aren’t afraid of recognizing where they went wrong. The “anti-portfolio” section of their website is dedicated to investments they passed on initially that ended up being wildly successful.

Anti Portfolio

Bessemer’s summer program is similar to 8VC’s and True’s in a number of ways. Students who are currently in their third year of college are eligible to apply. Internships last between 8 and 12 weeks. Additionally, they have committed to hiring students who come from underrepresented backgrounds in tech. However, Bessemer is explicitly looking for applicants who have strong backgrounds in engineering, product, or data science. Students who want to spend their time focusing on other topics should look elsewhere. Lastly, the program is slightly larger than others; an estimated 20 fellows will join for the summer of 2021.

It is unclear whether Bessemer is planning to conduct their upcoming program entirely remotely. Prior summer fellows have been able to shadow internal Bessemer teams and attend educational and social events.

The Bessemer Fellows website states that interviews began in August. However, it looks like the application is still open.

Bessemer application: due dated passed, but form is still open.

Kleiner Perkins Fellows

Slack, Google, and Amazon. What do these three companies all have in common? Kleiner Perkins invested early in all of them. Their offerings for students and new graduates match the robustness of their portfolio.

The firm runs two different summer fellowships: one in design and the other in engineering. These should not be mistaken for the post grad fellowships of the same name. Absent an absolute miracle, both 2021 fellowships will be entirely virtual. Engineering fellows must have formally studied a field related to software development, but design fellows can have academic backgrounds in any subject. Individuals can apply regardless of their year in school. The program may serve as a unique entry point for particularly ambitious students who simply aren’t far enough along in their studies to qualify for other fellowships.

2021 Kleiner Perkins Fellows

Notably, Kleiner Perkins is one of the only programs without a diversity statement. This is especially surprising considering that they faced a widely publicized gender discrimination suit and all five of their current partners are male. This does not mean that Kleiner Perkins ignores diversity in their selection process, but rather that they have not made a publicly facing statement declaring so. If you are a candidate whose background is well represented in tech, then this is a program worth taking a look at.

Kleiner Perkins application: due on October 19

Accountability

All four of these programs state that fellows can expect community, access to the firm networks, and additional programming. However, this commitment is rarely substantiated. In reality, there may be vast differences in programming among fellowships.

The Matching Process

Gaining admission to a fellowship is only the first part of the equation; you still need to be matched with a portfolio company. One fellowship that I was admitted to several years ago went so far as to send me a link to a private blog post outlining their pairing process. The endeavor was so complicated that they didn’t want it to deter candidates from applying.

Programs conduct the exercise slightly differently. While some firms commit to pairing you with a company, others do not. In other words, you can be admitted to a fellowship but ultimately become ineligible due to lack of interest from portfolio companies. As harsh as it sounds, the firm can’t give you a spot if none of their companies want to hire you. This is an uncomfortable part of the process that is often hidden from applicants. If you are admitted, don’t be afraid to ask the difficult questions upfront.

The Waiting Game

Even when run efficiently, this process is a long undertaking. Once you have applied, you will have to wait weeks or months to hear back from the fellowship itself. Then, if accepted, the firm will either introduce you to portfolio companies directly or send your resumé around to them. From that point forward the timeline is completely out of your hands.

In my case, I only heard back from interested companies after I had accepted a different summer internship with an exploding offer. What I interpreted as lack of interest was really just delayed communication.

Pay

Each fellowship effectively says the same thing about compensation. All fellows can expect to be paid “fairly” or “competitively.” This can take a number of different forms:

1. Each fellow receives a flat salary, regardless of the hours they work, the company they work at, or the role they take on.
2. Each fellow receives the same hourly rate.
3. Fellows negotiate their pay directly with the portfolio company. Fellows at the same company can receive different salaries.

It’s difficult to ascertain how much pay variation there is both within and between fellowships. If pay is role and company specific then candidates may be without compensation information until they receive an official offer letter months into the process. What is a minor inconvenience for some applicants may be prohibitive to others who rely upon summer income to support themselves or their families.

A closing note on diversity.

Many fellowships have shifted their efforts to focus on recruiting and employing individuals who are underrepresented in tech. This sentiment is great, but it alone is insufficient. Helping a student secure a summer internship does not ensure that their work will be valued or that they will be treated with respect. Merely allowing someone inside is distinct from giving them a seat at the table. While there are initiatives throughout tech to hire individuals from non-traditional backgrounds, there are notably fewer efforts to keep them there.

Applications by due date:

Kleiner Perkins application: due on October 19

True Ventures Application: due on November 6th (focus on underrepresented applicants)

8VC application: no formal due date (all software roles)

Bessemer application: due dated passed, but form is still open (engineering, product, or data science)

All ad revenue generated from the article will be donated to Black Girls CODE.

Want to work in tech? Follow the money. was originally published in Harvard Ventures on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Nearly every week I receive some variation of the same message via LinkedIn, “I’m interested in venture capital. How can I explore it while in college?” Halfway through our early morning conversation, one current college student asked me if I had ever written down my thoughts on the matter. I hadn’t. This is my first attempt to do so.

What’s the deal with VC?

It is well known that the venture capital industry is difficult to break into. Generally speaking, there are far fewer opportunities to work in venture investing immediately following graduation than there are in other areas of finance, such as banking. Venture capital firms are smaller, and this is reflected in their relatively limited hiring needs. Prior investing experience is certainly not required to be a compelling candidate for full-time positions, but it can be helpful.

A number of programs are designed to provide students with exposure to the venture capital industry. To my surprise, many of the individuals who reached out to me for advice were unaware that the fellowships existed or that they were eligible. Accordingly, I have chosen to highlight 6 different student investing opportunities throughout the United States.

Before we begin, it’s worth noting what this list does and does not include.

1. These fellowships are specific to venture investing and are distinct from programs which focus on the stock market or other asset classes.
2. These programs are not college or university specific.
3. These are term-time positions, rather than summer ones.
4. MBA students are also eligible for many of these programs, but there are other opportunities exclusively available to MBA students.
5. All of these programs have open applications. If I was unable to find an application then I did not include the fellowship in this list.

Note: I have spoken to at least one current or former participant in each of these programs. In many cases, I consulted multiple people. I used these insights to supplement publicly available information.

1+2) Rough Draft Ventures and Dorm Room Fund

I have chosen to group these two programs together given their similarities. Both “RDV” and “DRF” were established in 2012 and have each invested in upwards of 150 companies since their inception. Students are tasked with sourcing companies, completing diligence, and making funding decisions. Neither of the initiatives are freestanding; they are both funded by larger entities. RDV is supported by General Catalyst, while DRF is backed by First Round Capital. Dorm Room Fund grants $20,000 checks and Rough Draft opts for $25,000. In both cases the investment takes the form of a SAFE, which is largely considered to be the most founder friendly type of early investment. These relatively small check sizes mean that students can expect to see their deals materialize quickly.

Update (9/12): RDV announced that they will be expanding to the Midwest, Mid-Atlantic, South, and the Pacific Northwest.

Both programs recruit student investors who attend universities in and around Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. Despite similar regional focuses, the number of students they enlist differs. As of August, RDV listed 24 fellows on their website, while DRF named 58. In summary, both RDV and DRF have been going strong for nearly a decade. These two well established programs deploy a high volume of small investments.

DRF application due September 22

RDV application<— use this one. The link on their site is broken.* The article states that the deadline is September 18, but the application itself says September 14.

3) Contrary

Contrary, launched in 2016, differs from RDV and DRF in a number of ways. Firstly, they are their own venture fund, rather than a program run by one; they raise their own independent capital. This distinction alone might not matter much for those seeking investment, but it has real consequences for their student partners. Due to the fact that undergraduate involvement is central, rather than auxiliary, Contrary leadership is able to dedicate a great deal of time to educating and mentoring students. This differentiating factor surfaced in nearly every conversation I had with current and former Contrary partners.

Contrary partners collectively source a large number of prospects, but only a select few ultimately result in investments. Funding a smaller number of companies allows for more comprehensive diligence than would be possible on a larger scale. Additionally, this focus enables the team to deploy more capital with each investment. A single investment made by Contrary can reach up to $500,000. This means that most participants can expect to spend their entire college career at Contrary and never get their own deal closed. However, those who successfully source and close a deal personally receive a small piece of equity. While Contrary makes fewer investments than their rival programs, it works with students from a record number of universities. Notably, it provides one of the only opportunities open to individuals who attend school in the midwest.

Contrary application due September 12

4) Pear VC Fellows

Pear VC wants to find potential before anyone else does. The Palo Alto based early stage venture firm boasts an impressive track record. Despite this, almost none of the students I spoke with were aware that they led an initiative for students. Pear’s fellowship program information is hidden under a nondescript hamburger menu on their website.

There are a number of differences between Pear and other venture capital focused fellowships. Pear fellows do not have control over any distinct capital; they serve in an advisory capacity. Students are asked to report on startup trends and offer input on firm deal flow, but there is no avenue for them to make investment decisions. A deal sourced by a Pear fellow could theoretically materialize into an investment, but that is not the stated goal of the program. Pear began on the west coast and has since expanded to include UC Berkeley, Harvard, MIT, Penn, and Stanford. Pear is less structured than RDV, DRF, and Contrary, and the time commitment is lighter.

Given these factors, the opportunity may be particularly advantageous for students seeking to gain exposure to a real VC environment, rather than one simulated for students. Lastly, Pear fellows receive a modest stipend for their work. This is, unfortunately, an anomaly (more on that later).

Pear application due September 12th for Penn and September 15th for others

5) Unshackled Ventures

Eric Yuan was denied a U.S. Visa 8 times. He would later gain entry to the United States and found a company called Zoom. His story is not unique, but it should be. Unshackled Ventures is an early stage venture fund focused on investing in immigrant founders. The firm itself was founded in 2014, and the fellowship program is entering its third year. Anyone in the latter half of their educational career can apply. Fellows can be located anywhere in the world, provided they are able to participate in mandatory calls no matter their time zone.

The fellowship is centered around the activities of the fund itself, rather than venture investing more generally. Fellows work with Unshackled’s existing deal flow; they are not responsible for sourcing their own companies. While the opportunity is not limited to students who are immigrants, individuals who identify as such are particularly encouraged to apply.

Unshackled application due September 10, 12 pm PST

This deadline was not posted on the application-I found it on a related article. I suspect they might end up extending the deadline given the ambiguity.

6) HBCUvc

Venture capital has a diversity problem. Less than 3% of venture capital decision makers are Black. The goal of HBCUvc’s yearlong program is to develop the investing skills of Black and Latinx college students. Individuals from any participating college who have completed their first year of college can apply. Given that many programs enlist students from overlapping lists of universities, HBCUvc is positioned to access an enormous wealth of untapped talent.

The first year of HBCUvc consists of training and leadership development. Exceptional participants are invited to return for a second year to manage the VC fund and support its investments. I could locate little information surrounding the investment process or assets under management. What is clear, however, is that HBCUvc is poised to shape the future of the industry.

HBCUvc application due September 26th

Room for Improvement

While participating in one of these elite programs can be incredibly transformative, the selection process is not without its faults. Referrals play a large part in nearly all of the recruiting processes; candidates who can be vouched for by current or former participants have an immediate advantage. In this way, the programs which build aspiring venture capitalists can be exclusionary in the same way as the industry at large.

Even if one is admitted into a program, this does not necessarily mean that they will be able to participate. All but one of the fellowships I listed do not pay their participants. While there are surely perks, such as coffee budgets and lots of swag, stipends are rare. Many universities require that students on financial aid contribute a certain amount toward their education in order to remain enrolled. Students who have to fulfill financial obligations may effectively be disqualified as a result.

Given the number of students willing to work for free, some may argue that there is no clear incentive for firms to pay their fellows. However, venture capital firms are generally not short on capital. If cost is an issue, then perhaps stipends could be rationed based on term time work expectations or financial aid percentages.

While the structures of the programs may not change overnight, my hope is that the number of students exposed to the opportunities does.

Applications by due date:

Unshackled application due September 10, 12 pm PST

Contrary application due September 12

Pear application due September 12th for Penn and September 15th for others

RDV application< — use this one. The link on their site is broken.* The article states that the deadline is September 18, but the application itself says September 18.

DRF application due September 22

HBCUvc application due September 26th

All ad revenue generated from the article will be distributed equally to BLCK VC, Black Girls Code, Black Innovation Alliance, MLT, and Black Girl Ventures in support of racial equity in entrepreneurship. This is in partnership with the greater Amplify initiative.

So You Want to Be a Student Investor? was originally published in Harvard Ventures on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Starting in 2017, I’ve always spent one week of my summer teaching girls to code through Girls Get IT. It’s been a fun side hustle and way to give back to my community, but I hadn’t ever considered its potential as a profitable business.

Lately, however, I’ve been making a conscious effort to identify what ventures cause me the greatest joy and to pursue those more fiercely. Simply put: each summer, Girls Get IT was the highlight. So my best friend and business partner Angelica and I decided to turn Girls Get IT into our full time business over summer 2020.

When we made this choice back in December 2019, little did we know what summer 2020 would have in store for us and that we’d actually be starting our small business at the height of a global pandemic…

Nevertheless, we pivoted to a Zoom classroom model and adjusted our scholarship outreach to target families affected by COVID-19 and those who identified as BIPOC. We identified that now more than ever there was a need in our world to give hope to and cultivate creativity and problem solving skills in the minds of young people.

The resulting eight weeks were some of the best I could have asked for. I got to spend my days sharing with young girls two of my greatest passions: computer science and feminism. Of course, we had our fair share of “Oops your mic is on mute!” and “Can you please put other devices away?”, but overall we were blown away by how much our campers were able to teach us, the teachers.

Here are the greatest lessons I learned from spending 200+ hours on Zoom with 7 year olds…

Lesson 1: You are never too young (or even too old!) to get started coding.

To anyone out there who is considering getting started with learning computer science, let this be your sign. Get started! I promise you that’s the hardest part, taking the first step. My campers were as young as 7 years old, and they were able to do it, so you can too. We all are, in some way or another, reliant on technology (just look how quickly our world had to shift to be virtual). Learning to code is one of the greatest superpowers and gifts you can give not only to yourself but also to the future of our world.

Lesson 2: Resilience comes in all shapes and sizes.

A camper of mine cried on day two. After all, it was only inevitable that we’d have a few meltdowns. When I took her into a private Zoom breakout room to ask what was wrong, she said only 5 words “I just can’t do it”, referring to her first coding challenge. Upon looking at her screen, I saw that she had no code even written. I tried my best to empathize with my camper and understand how she could feel so defeated when she hadn’t even made any attempts yet. But then I remembered a Ted Talk from Reshma Saujani, founder of Girls Who Code, where she had described a similar phenomenon with a student of hers.

Reshma cited that oftentimes when students express feelings of helplessness around problem solving it goes back to a fear of being vulnerable. And, in fact, in many cases if you were to hit undo enough times on the student’s screen you would see many attempts (sometimes even correct attempts!) at solving the problem.

Yet, students, especially those who identify as female and have been socialized towards perfection, would rather show no work at all with a blank screen than show a teacher any attempts towards progress that may be imperfect.

For this reason, at Girls Get IT, the number one thing we emphasize is growth mindset. Resilience is an exceptionally difficult concept to teach; it happens day by day through an ongoing process of tearing down narratives that girls should strive for perfection.

After two weeks in our growth mindset focused classroom, my camper who cried on day two was actually offering to lead lessons herself and take other girls, who may have been feeling overwhelmed, into Zoom breakout rooms to answer their questions. You see, we work to rebuild systems and communities that encourage failure and imperfections and celebrate vulnerability and bravery.

Lesson 3: Mindfulness Matters.

We open each day of camp with a mindfulness exercise. Although my campers would often push back on this and call it “boring”, I asked them all to give me five minutes each day. That’s all. And the rest of the day would be theirs. But for five minutes each and every day, we took a moment to be present with one another and find peace.

Our mind is a muscle, just like any other muscle in our brain, and it deserves exercise and care.

And, with a little coaxing, by the end of each camp session, meditation seemed a little less boring (or at least I hoped it did) :).

I am so grateful to have been able to spend my summer working with curious and caring minds, and I’m hopeful for the future of our world. Thanks for reading!

For more info on our upcoming fall programs visit girlsgetit.co.

I Spent 200+ Hours on Zoom Teaching 7 Year Olds to Code was originally published in Harvard Ventures on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Venture capital investor and Accel partner Andrew Braccia is busy to say the least. In 2020, Mr. Braccia ranked as the #2 investor on the Forbes Midas List, an accolade in the investing world equivalent to winning an Academy Award at the Oscars. The concept of the Midas List is an allusion to King Midas, a king remembered in Greek mythology for turning anything that he touches into gold. Mr. Braccia certainly has the golden touch as a leading partner at Accel, a top-tier venture capital investment firm known for funding companies such as Facebook, Slack, Spotify, and many others. He began his career at the beginning stages of Yahoo, where he met several star entrepreneurs he partnered with such as the founders of MyFitnessPal and Slack. Braccia is known for leading the first investment round of Slack in addition to every subsequent funding round for the unicorn startup which went public in June of 2019 with a market capitalization of $19.5 billion. Mr. Braccia has a history of executing successful venture capital investments during his time at Accel, including investments in Cloudera, Squarespace, Vox Media, and much more. Braccia compares venture capital investing to golf, explaining how in a high risk investing scene, there can be a lot of bad shots, but it’s the great shots that keep him coming back for more. Braccia has certainly made various great shots in venture capital, attributing his success to spending a significant amount of time on the entrepreneur front in addition to thorough due diligence on market trends.

Virginia: What have been the most defining moments of your career?

Andrew: Venture capital centers on the creation and formation of companies that naturally have their own stories to tell and their own journeys to travel down or travel through. The destination of those journeys are rarely obvious on day one. There are a lot of moving parts, and it takes a long time to figure out whether or not an investment you made in an early company is going to end up being an investment in a great company, and thus, subsequently a great investment.

I’ve been at Accel for close to 14 years. It’s been an incredible journey and one where I’ve been so fortunate to work on an awesome platform that’s also global — in addition to our team here in the States, we have partners in Europe and India, enabling us to invest in exceptional teams everywhere.

At Accel, I’ve been able to work with some incredible entrepreneurs, who unequivocally deserve 99.999% of any success in the companies that they form and that they build. In many cases, we’re just very blessed to be a part of the ride.

Virginia: What is your investment philosophy, and what are the top three attributes you look for in startups?

Andrew: What really drives technology, investing, and value capture in venture capital is being able to pick the right market — the market that has the right tailwinds that will enable a really interesting company to be created and then to also find the right entrepreneur to guide that journey. You could have a great market and just not the right go-to-market approach or the right products or the right people around you to be able to deliver the success that’s required to build a really large company. So I would say, I am not a contrarian investor.

I tend to make sure that it’s a market that I like and I understand, and I think has a lot of momentum behind it. And then I spend a lot of time getting to know the entrepreneur and understanding the elements or ingredients that I think are going to be required to be successful. I’ve been so blessed to work with some of the greatest entrepreneurs in technology such as Stewart Butterfield at Slack — multiple companies that he’s created are defining companies in their categories in their timeframe. Anthony Casalena at Squarespace is just a force of nature. Lynda Weinman at Lynda.com is a creator and someone that had a dream and an incredible imagination of how people should learn creatively with software — she was at the forefront of that. And it took her 17 years to build the business through many ups and downs.

Overall, for me, it has got to be a great market coupled with a great entrepreneur. In my role, I spend so much time on the entrepreneur front because that in the end is to me, the differentiator. 20 years ago, capital was harder to come by. It was expensive to build technology companies. And thus the number of new companies in any one segment was somewhat by definition limited: how many new companies were going to be created when there’s a limited amount of capital or a limited amount of entrepreneurial activity? That’s not the case today. You take any sector and you do your consulting 101, 2x2 graph around whatever, in terms of the different players in the market, the market map, however you want to characterize it — and there’s hundreds of companies. So what is required for one of those companies to break out? What’s required for a business messaging product to break out and become Slack? It’s obvious in hindsight, but at the moment in time, it can be very daunting. You have to really trust your instincts and deeply get to know the entrepreneur and understand what’s unique about how they’re going to approach the problem.

Virginia: How do you go about developing and maintaining relationships with founders, and how can investors best support portfolio companies like the ones that you engage with at an early stage?

Andrew: What it really comes down to is connecting with people and understanding what motivates individuals, what intimidates them, and their fears. I think where I thrive and where I do really well is on that human aspect of the job and really connecting with people and understanding them and having empathy. Also, not being afraid once you’ve developed that relationship of being completely honest and not having to beat around the bush when there’s issues, and to be able to challenge them in their thinking and not having them take it personally because they know that we have a strong relationship.

Virginia: What noteworthy trends are you currently paying attention to and how they shape the VC landscape?

Andrew: If you think about Cloud software, for example, I think there’s still hundreds of billions of dollars that are spent in IT around on premise software. As you can imagine, probably over the next 20 years, the vast majority of that is going to transfer its way to Cloud enabled solutions. And some of that’s going to be through existing software companies and much of it’s going to be developed and delivered through new companies that find new ways of addressing old problems. I think the movement of enterprise software and moving on premise to Cloud and every vertical and every horizontal platform that’s going to require that, is still very much an underestimated opportunity. Remote work, internet security — those are a couple areas that are illustrative of just how much room there is and gradual growth of Cloud software.

Financial services is also going to continue to go through a lot of evolution. I don’t talk about it so much to the extent of cryptocurrencies and that world, but more from whether it be banking, insurance, real estate transactions, investing, payments or how you procure goods. I think we’re still very much in the early innings of innovation for financial services and as infrastructure grows and the capabilities of that infrastructure grow, I think there’s going to be a lot of innovation in those spaces.

Lastly, if you look at e-commerce in the rise of a lot of these direct to consumer brands, whether it be brands like Away Luggage in the travel space or Harry’s in the men’s space, or even Robinhood right now in investing, I think we’ll increasingly see new brands being created that put the customer first and build great experiences for consumers.

Virginia: How do you traditionally source startups?

Andrew: I think that question can be answered in different ways, depending upon the firm that you’re in. But given that Accel has been around for nearly 40 years, we have a really strong network — it’s a people business. So much of it is driven off of people that you’ve made a positive impression on through the years and people from the companies that you’ve invested in who are now either starting companies, or are friends with people that are starting companies. I think much of Silicon Valley is driven off of that. It’s the first order, second order network effects where everyone sort of knows one another because we’ve worked in companies together. I mean, just look at a lot of the investments that I’ve made: Slack, I worked with Stewart Butterfield at Yahoo. Yahoo bought Flickr, which was his first company. And then when he left, Stewart took a year off, came back and started a company. We had a discussion, I wrote him an $800,000 seed check and said, “Go for it.” And that was because I had a relationship with Stewart for five years prior. I invested in MyFitnessPal, founded by brothers Albert and Mike Lee. I worked with Albert at Yahoo for many years. Cloudera was also founded by one of my former colleagues at Yahoo, Amr Awadallah. He ran all the data science for my group there. And then these other investments that I’ve made in many cases are some node that’s connected to another person that I know.

Virginia: The bottom line is that Andrew Braccia is not only a luminary in the venture capital world, but also a firm supporter in the journey of each entrepreneur. He takes the time to understand all markets that he makes investments in, offer invaluable and honest feedback to founders through the ups and downs of their scaling process, and advance innovation not just through the capital he provides for each firm, but also through extensive contributions to each startup team. It is safe to say that Braccia holds the “Midas touch” because he loves the process of investing in great people with ideas that are innately bound to highly impact the world.

Andrew Braccia Wins Academy Award of Venture Capital: 2020 Forbes Midas Investor was originally published in Harvard Ventures on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

humanID is an open-source, non-profit startup tackling the internet’s biggest problems: fake news, accountability, and anonymity. The startup found its beginning at the Harvard Innovation Lab and was co-founded by Bastian Purrer (HBS MBA class of ‘20), Shuyao Kong (HBS MBA class of ‘20), and Sidiq Permana. humanID was a Semifinalist for the 2020 Harvard President’s Innovation Challenge and the winner of the Navab Social Impact Fellowship Fund 2020.

This is only the beginning for humanID. I had the opportunity to have some questions answered by the humanID team about the service they provide, the challenges they’re tackling, and the future that they hope is in store for their company. Read that conversation below:

What is it exactly that humanID offers and how does it work?

“Each time you log onto a website or app, you are prompted with options for signing in to your account, ie “Login with Facebook”. humanID is a Login option that benefits you as a user by keeping your data completely anonymous, and it benefits apps by reducing the number of bots, fake accounts, and abusive users on their platforms. After selecting humanID as your way to log in, you are prompted to enter your phone number, which you will then verify by entering the 4-digit verification code sent to you. After completing that simple step, you have successfully logged in! humanID then generates a “hash”, a random identifier that cannot be reversed. Your number is permanently deleted from our servers, such that you have complete anonymity. The app you just logged into has a verification that you are actually a human, not a spam or bot account, without ever receiving any personal identifiable information.”

Tell us about the founding story of humanID.

“humanID started when Bastian got upset about fake news.

He lived in Indonesia at the time, and had worked in consumer tech/e-commerce for years. He quickly realized how easy it was to build bot networks, to buy followers, to fake popularity, and to manipulate algorithms. During the 2019 Indonesian elections, he worked with one of the political parties and discovered that every party used and still uses bot networks like a normal marketing tool. People rioted and died on the streets because of rumors they read.

Research shows that fake news is driven to a major extent by fake accounts. Facebook & Twitter don’t address that at all, since they can’t afford to lose “users” or undermine the credibility of their MAU numbers… The solution would be a one digital ID per human, while also protecting users’ privacy!”

What was the decision making process behind forming as a non-profit and being all open-source?

“humanID is all about trust.

Users trust us not to store, transfer or sell their phone numbers and personal data. Users have been given this promise by private enterprises many times (WhatsApp…), and they know that it can only be trusted until the next quarterly report or leadership change.

humanID’s claims can be trusted for two reasons: we’re a 501c3 non-profit working under the binding terms of our vision with no incentive to focus on profit, and we’re open source, which means everyone can see exactly what we do with your data.

The same trust extends to our partners, who trust us to manage their users’ identity, and, most importantly, to the team. We’re all volunteers — only a non-profit setup guarantees that our creation will not be abused for malicious purposes in contradiction to our vision in the future.

Open source is powerful because it lowers the barriers to adoption and collaboration, allowing people to spread and improve projects quickly. Developers can take on projects, review them to give feedback, or build on something better on top of existing code.”

What’s it like for a college student to intern at humanID or for a recent grad to work there full time? Tell us about humanID’s company culture and what the team looks like.

“Our team is composed almost entirely of volunteer college students and recent grads. In fact, humanID was founded by grads from Harvard Business School’s Class of 2020. Given the nature of everyone volunteering their time, we are a team of people that are genuinely committed to humanID’s mission of building better online communities and fixing the Internet.

As an international team, spanning many continents, we have weekly bonding and gaming sessions that are a part of our collaborative culture and are always looking for new ways to foster camaraderie among our the humanID community. 90% of the team joined after life went ‘socially distant’, so we have had to actively handle the challenge of forming a team on Zoom.

Most recently, we hosted a team mindfulness and meditation session and have a weekly “All Hands” meeting to discuss all elements of the work that is occurring at humanID.”

Given that humanID is an open-source non-profit run by a team of volunteers, your team seems very committed to online privacy and internet safety. Tell us about some of the other initiatives that humanID has launched that reflect this commitment.

“Our goal is to do everything that we can to keep people informed of and engaged with online privacy and its importance. Beyond working on our Sign In option, accessible by everyone on github (https://github.com/bluenumberfoundation), we have a content team that produces great content each week!

On our Blog (https://medium.com/humanid), we publish articles about bots, disinformation, and related content.

Additionally, we have launched a podcast, “humanVoices” (https://anchor.fm/human-id), where we speak to experts in the cybersecurity field to hear their takes on the latest news in tech.”

What new partnerships are you excited about? How should companies or individuals looking to integrate humanID into their work reach out to you?

“We’re preparing a long list of collaboration for launch within the next few months, including health apps protecting the most vulnerable, apps that support anonymous reports for immigrant labor, and collaboration and communication forums.

If any company wants to offer more privacy to users, ensure full compliance with recent legislation, or cut down cost for moderating spam, they should talk to us (reach out to Bastian: bastian@human-id.org, or reach them via their website! — https://www.human-id.org).”

What is the main challenge humanID faces now and what are your plans to address it moving forward?

“Our main challenge is fundraising. In times of Covid, philanthropies and charities are focused on much needed short-term help.

humanID is a high risk, high reward investment, like other startups. Donating and supporting humanID will “pay” back supporting a better, accountable, and secure internet. Platforms built on humanID will see significantly less data leaks and breaches, less fake news, and much less hatred and spam.

An accountable, secure web can bring humanity together and fulfill the initial vision of the internet. We are more than 25 volunteers donating our time and are incredibly grateful for each minute by our rockstar team! We hope to soon find similar support among donors (donations to humanID can be done at https://www.human-id.org/donate).”

What is the vision for humanID in 5 years time?

“humanID will be the standard a better internet will be built on. Human interaction and communication is broken — it is not safe and mostly not even human.

But a functioning society requires security and accountability — one voice per human. With bot networks spreading fake news, humans being surveilled by governments and private companies alike, and everyone afraid to share anything sensitive online, society had to break.

The new internet will be built using humanID’s ideas. Better social media, better online decision making and voting, and better protection of minorities and the vulnerable — all those require an independent identity standard: a better foundation.”

How has business been affected, if at all, by the COVID-19 pandemic?

“As a global company with a universal mission, the entirety of our work, including internal and client meetings, has always been done remotely. Thus, the COVID-19 pandemic has not impacted the traditional humanID working structure. However, this arrangement allows us to build a unique team of volunteers from across many universities and geographies. With the world becoming increasingly reliant on the internet, and the resulting growing awareness of data concerns (like news of Zoom security issues and the recent uproar with TikTok), we believe that now, more than ever, we need the humanID solution to restore an individual’s right to privacy and civility on the Internet.”

What’s your company’s “hottest take”? That is, an opinion or belief that you hold core to humanID’s mission statement that may be unexpected or controversial.

“Anonymity is good!

Pundits like to blame anonymity for all the problems on the internet, like hatred and bullying. But the real problem is the lack of accountability. Some people turn into monsters online due to the lack of consequences of their behaviour. If they get banned, they just create another email and come back one minute later under a new account.

If users only have one online identity each, that can be rewarded or penalized by a platform or connection; they will be held accountable to their behaviour, just as we are offline. So, we will be able to rid of stalkers, bullies, and haters and build a better community.

Anonymity on the other hand actually helps protect the most vulnerable. Voting is anonymous. Whistleblowing is. Seeking advice on sensitive topics should be.

Anonymity is good, misbehaviour without consequences is bad.”

Startup Spotlight — How humanID is Revolutionizing Online Interaction was originally published in Harvard Ventures on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Those are hard weeks, we all know it. The pandemic has changed our lives and, most noticeably, it has changed the way we think about our future. Sometimes, I believe this is not necessarily a bad aspect. During quarantine, we are all forced to literally take an unexpected break and to reflect on what would be coming next…

Personally, I’m facing a dilemma on the minds of nearly all liberal arts college students. What’s next is a big decision: doing a year of Zoom classes or taking time off to explore new opportunities in a gap-year.

The problem is that it is so hard to make defining choices when the information we all have is imperfect. We don’t even know how long we will be away from college. Yet, I would love to share with you some reflections on how to approach the coming year and on the implications of taking online classes.

First of all, we have to understand what doing an entire year of online classes means and the consequences that this choice can have on motivation and personal enrichment. College, as stated by Harvard itself, is meant to be a “transformative experience”, in which we grow by constantly learning, experiencing, and engaging. In this regard, it is important to recognize that the foundations of this experience are human interactions between students, faculty members, and generally the whole university’s community.

Unfortunately, recreating this environment virtually is incredibly challenging. There is no such thing as walking through the campus corridors virtually or sharing a meal with friends at the dining hall or having an engaging discussion at 4 AM after a long night spent working on an assignment with a heroic study group. Moreover, there is no such thing as being always there, always in the loop, always around college buildings.

Most importantly, college life doesn’t have an “end meeting” button which, when inevitably pressed, teleports you back to your homeroom and makes you realize that you are in another city, in another state, or even in another country with a 6h time zone difference (this, unfortunately, is my current situation).

Yet, there is some value in an online experience as it is still possible to be academically challenged and, with the right flexibility and motivation, I am confident that certain students will be able to do equally well in this different environment. Furthermore, colleges are trying to adapt and to make the online experience more engaging by changing the way students interact with faculty members and by adapting the lectures to make them better suited for an online environment.

Therefore, although taking online classes, from an academic perspective, can be similarly valuable, it is important to recognize that it is going to be an entirely different experience. Hence, this year is inevitably going to be atypical as the college experience as we know it won’t happen, at least for the time being.

In this light, the gap year idea is less radical as it appeared. Thus, I encourage all college students to at the very least explore potential opportunities and to compare them to the perspective of online classes. Then we can all make a choice with the goal of making the most out of this year.

To further help you make your decision, we’ve published a special podcast episode, “To be or not to be enrolled” wherein we discuss other important factors to consider as you think through your options. We hope this can be helpful to you and alleviate some of the stress surrounding the fall semester. We wish you the best of luck!

An Atypical Fall Semester was originally published in Harvard Ventures on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

But the coronavirus pandemic has forced everyone to adapt in one way or another, and business pitches are one of the many casualties. Pitch competitions are no longer held in person, and venture capitalists rely on videoconferencing tools like Zoom to decide where to invest their money. This situation has created a whole new paradigm for presentations — everything that entrepreneurs have learned about the most effective presentation strategies needs to change with the times, so here are some tips for presenting your business like a pro on Zoom.

Lighting

Lighting is a whole new dimension to presentations that many people struggle with at first, often washing out their face or casting weird shadows that contribute to an unprofessional-looking pitch.When lighting your meeting, make sure to have any lamps, overhead lights, or windows behind your camera to ensure your audience can easily see your face. Also, stay cognizant of the angle of your lights — the best approach is to position them slightly above you. Natural or white lighting also tends to work better than yellow, so if your pitch is during the day a good strategy is to simply face toward a window.

Position

The position of the camera relative to your face is also an important new factor to consider. Ideally, you want your camera to be directly at eye level, so try mounting your monitor a bit higher or, if using a laptop, you can stack books or papers underneath to raise it to the correct level. If possible, raise your desk and stand as you present to create an environment you are more used to — just be sure to not move too far away.

“Eye” Contact

This one should be familiar to anyone who has ever given a presentation, but flip on cable news and you can see that even trained media professionals are still getting this wrong on Zoom. Though it is tempting to maintain eye contact with the image of the person on your screen, it is critical to remember that the correct way to maintain eye contact on Zoom is to look directly at your camera! This is incredibly easy to forget while you are presenting, since at this point we are all conditioned to look at the person we are speaking to, so try to consciously think about eye contact occasionally as you are delivering your pitch.

Dress to Impress…

…at least on the upper half. Zoom meetings are no excuse to dress poorly, and just like in-person pitches, dressing professionally conveys seriousness and poise. The best bet is probably just to dress exactly the same as if you were going to deliver your pitch in front of your audience — at least for any part of your body that you expect to be in frame.

Connectivity

Even if you follow all of the advice above, there is one thing that can erase it all — bad connection. If your audience is having to complete your sentences from context or seeing a stuttering image, it can be nearly impossible to really leave them with a good impression. If you notice that you are consistently having issues with connectivity while on Zoom, try asking others in your household to tone down their internet usage during your presentation. You could also try moving to different rooms, or setting up a wired ethernet connection. If nothing seems to be working, you could go further and upgrade your router or even call your ISP, god forbid.

Follow us on Instagram, Medium, and Facebook. Listen to our podcast TBL. And for more information check out our website.

How to Nail Your Pitch on Zoom was originally published in Harvard Ventures on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Harvard Ventures had the opportunity to interview Gary Cohn, the former President and COO of Goldman Sachs and Chief Economic Advisor to President Trump on The Bottom Line podcast. As the Director of the National Economic Council, Mr. Cohn managed the coordination of the President’s domestic and global economic policy agenda. Since leaving The White House, Mr. Cohn has been highly involved with venture capital, focusing on cybersecurity and cryptocurrency investments. Below are the highlights of our interview covering Goldman Sachs, The White House, and venture capital done by Georgia Messinger ’22, Virginia Tiernan ’22, and Jessica DeVilla, ’21. The interview has several takeaways: it takes followers to be a great leader, the private and public sector are diametrically opposed in various ways, and future venture capital investments will likely be focused on the workplace environment and telecommuting.

Georgia: You were President and COO of Goldman Sachs, which is a lot of responsibility. What leadership style did you implement and what was the inspiration behind it?

Gary Cohn: I think my leadership style is pretty simple. I always believe that a good leader requires you to have followers. In fact, I don’t believe you can be a great leader unless people follow you. So my style was always to surround myself with the best people, and when I mean the best people, people that I always felt were smarter, better, more talented, and knew more about the topic than I did. I would always try and get as many of those people around me, as many of those people in the room, as many of those people involved in the decision-making process. I would ultimately act as, I guess, the referee or the umpire, if there was a referee or umpire needed.

Virginia: As you transitioned from being the President and COO of Goldman Sachs to Chief Economic Advisor to the President, you went from operating a for-profit enterprise to serving the American people. What similarities and differences between these roles stood out the most to you?

Gary Cohn: As you said, sitting on top of Goldman Sachs, which is a highly motivated, very customer-facing organization that lives and dies on the success of its clients, and in many respects gets financially rewarded by successfully executing transactions for their clients, the motivation is to have great relationship with your clients and be able to get things done, come up with clever ideas and get them executed. That’s no different for anyone in the service industry, whether you’re in a legal firm, an accounting firm, or a financial services firm. You really get paid upon completion and execution, and the better job you do, the more repeat business you get from your clients. That’s a pretty simple-to-understand business model.

When you go into the government, the motivation is almost to make no mistake. Remember, to get anything done, you’ve got to get the House, the Senate and the President to agree to legislation. So you need 235 House members, 50 or 60 senators to vote on it, and the President to agree to something. So in a sort of complete opposite of trying to get things done to serve your client, the path of least resistance in Washington is to not do something. I’m not criticizing the government. In many respects, it was designed to be slow.

Georgia: Our team at Harvard Ventures works mostly with founders and aspiring founders. So what advice do you have for these early stage entrepreneurs when it comes to building out their own teams?

Gary Cohn: There are thousands of great ideas in the world. There really are, so it comes down to really, I’ll say, two things. Sometimes it really is one and the same thing. It really comes down to surrounding yourself with the best people, because the best people will tell you the truth. They’ll stop you from making mistakes. They’ll be very candid with you. They’ll be very forthright with you. They’ll be part of a team that wants to work together and wants to solve problems. Most companies start out going down one path and end up in a different place. Either they turn 180 degrees because they realize going down path A is completely wrong, but it opens their eyes to a path that goes the other direction, or they keep making adjustments as they’re going down the path.

Jessica: When you were at the White House, were you inspired to pursue any other investment opportunities?

Gary Cohn: Not really. It’s interesting. You spend 25-plus years at Goldman Sachs, and you see the way one of the premier investment banks does things from a technology standpoint, from a security standpoint, from a cyber standpoint, from all of the different aspects that they have. You assume that their systems are pretty good, but you always assume, “Hey, maybe there’s a better way to do this, or someone else is doing it better.” So when I went into the government side and I got my security clearances and all that, and I started getting involved in very secure, high-level communications, I said, “Okay, I’m going to really learn how, you know, the best country in the world protects the most important, most secure data in the world.” I guess I was shocked to learn, in many respects, that the private sector in the United States, and around the world in many respects, actually does as good a job and maybe even a better job in thinking about data security and protection of data, and security rights, and who and how can see data.

Jessica: In general, how do you think the venture capital landscape will change over the next 10 years?

Gary Cohn: I can say something that I know is true: it’s going to change. Everything is going to change in the next 10 years. There will be a whole new wave now, I assume, of personal security, personal hygiene, environmental security companies. By the way, I’m investing in one of those as well. I clearly got into that one too early, but again, great management team with great execution. Now, they’re having their day in the sun. Hopefully, their day in the sun lasts a long time, because they’re in the right business. But I think there’ll be a lot more money being spent in those areas. There’ll also be a lot more money being spent in the whole workplace environment, telecommuting, how we work, how we work together, how we share data. Which it’s not new, it’s not new at all. We’re just evolving it at a very fast speed. So as venture capitalists start looking at new businesses and new opportunities, they’re going to need to… and they’re doing this already… they’re going to need to evaluate what they think the economy looks like 5, 10, 15, and 20 years from now, and how the new business opportunity they’re looking at fits into the new landscape.

Listen here for the full interview: https://anchor.fm/harvard-ventures/episodes/Episode-6-Gary-Cohn-on-Goldman-Sachs--The-White-House--and-Venture-Capital-ee6k4s

Gary Cohn on Goldman Sachs, The White House, and Venture Capital was originally published in Harvard Ventures on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.