Interview #3: Adit Damodaran
Gets it eventually
are three words Adit Damodaran, Junior at the University of Chicago and intern at Chicago Ventures, uses to describe himself and his growth mindset. I had the opportunity to learn about his thoughts and experiences within venture capital:
What’s your role at Midway Ventures and what accomplishment are you most proud of through your involvement?
We’re really proud of our flat structure at Midway Ventures where we each take on projects that we find interesting, whether internal (like member education, website updates, event planning, etc.) or external (like working with startup clients). Personally I’ve been doing a lot of both — so recently I lead fall recruiting, helped organize a regional pitch competition we co-host with Princeton, and began working with ElecTrip, a startup based in Austin, TX that offers business travelers intercity rides in Teslas.
The accomplishment I’m most proud of is when I was working with a client on a motorsports marketing deal (essentially finding sponsorships for a racecar driver), and organizing a meeting with a UChicago alumnus at who was the Director of Marketing at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. It was cool to drive down there to meet him and other executives in formula racing during the Indy 500 kickoff weekend. I am also really proud to see Midway turn 5 years old this year — it’s still a young organization but it’s grown a lot in both capacity and size.
You are currently an intern at Chicago Ventures. Tell me what a typical day looks like for you.
It has been an incredible experience to work with Chicago Ventures. My days vary quite a bit, but I typically take on projects ad-hoc each week alongside a longer-term project that I’m working on to help Chicago Ventures optimize the way it sources deals from other cities across the Midwest beyond its more immediate purview in Chicago. I also conduct due diligence and market research on various startups we are looking at. Occasionally I’ll have the opportunity to listen in on pitches which is a really valuable experience to have as a college student.
Venture capital is known for having its highest activity on the coasts (California, NY/Boston). How would you describe the state of the VC scene in Chicago?
The VC scene in Chicago has grown a lot in recent years and I think this Bloomberg’s graphic really helps put that growth into perspective at least for 2017, where you can see it climb up into the top 7 metropolitan areas nationally for total VC financing in terms of dollars invested. Hyde Park Angels also has some useful graphics to visualize Chicago’s scene in the context of the Midwest. A quote from that report:
“In the Midwest, the Chicago Metro area received more venture capital investment than all other Great Lakes states combined, with $1.94B invested in 227 deals in 2017. This was a marked increase from 2016, where $1.34B was invested in 171 deals.”
Generally speaking, the coastal markets have historically accounted for the largest share in the VC landscape, and will continue to do so in the near future. However, the non-coastal markets are steadily growing (especially when you look at the number of deals). I’d attribute this not just to a lower cost-of-living, but also a less saturated market for accessing university talent. I also highly recommend reading Living the Silicon Valley Dream. In Chicago. to get the perspective of a startup founder on why he is building his company in Chicago instead of Silicon valley.
Give me your boldest and craziest prediction on a trend or technology that you expect to emerge in the next few years
It was a bold prediction back when Microsoft first announced xCloud last fall, but with Google formally announcing Stadia literally this morning, it’s no longer such a crazy idea — cloud gaming will soon enable you to play graphically intensive games on any mobile device. Basically the graphically intensive game experience is rendered in the company’s cloud servers and then streamed to whatever device you’re on (like an iPhone for example).
Especially with the advent of 5G, I think this could be such a cool development in the gaming industry. When we think of mobile gaming right now, we usually think of titles like Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, Clash Royale, etc. — essentially really simple games. I’m personally excited to be able to play titles like Forza on the bus ride to work.
So I guess since that’s no longer a bold “prediction” so to speak, here’s one I imagine is a bit more contentious: social media driven by follower/following models (Twitter/Instagram) will be abandoned in droves.
Social media driven by community models (Reddit/YouTube) and messaging (Snapchat/Discord) will rapidly grow in the coming years. Here’s why: in the follower/following model, while you have the ability to “mute” accounts you’re not interested in, you don’t really have any agency or control over the content you consume. This loss of agency means for example that while you think you’re “keeping up with your friends” you’re actually comparing your own life with someone else’s highlight reel, and we already know that causes anxiety and depression at unseen levels in human history fueled by short hits of dopamine.
On the other hand, when you have agency over the content rather than the creators (think YouTube channels or Subreddits), you know what to expect and you get exactly what you sign up for. Messaging apps are somewhat independent of this issue though Snapchat and Facebook toe the line with Stories and Newsfeed. Facebook will also probably stick around, but my bet is that people are no longer going to be browsing their timelines as they once used to
What’s a misconception you had about venture capital before you got involved?
I thought VC’s were primarily focused on sourcing new investments and drafting term sheets, but there’s so much more that goes into running a successful firm including fundraising, consistent communication with LPs, and portfolio company development
Learn more about Adit!
