Rough Draft Ventures Launches The RDV Academy
The RDV Academy aims to connect top tech students with internships at high-growth startups.
Rough Draft Ventures officially kicked off The RDV Academy this month with two treks that introduced the most promising student engineers with General Catalyst’s portfolio of high-growth startups in Boston and New York. The RDV Academy is our new initiative connecting technical undergraduates with internship opportunities at emerging tech companies.
“The Academy is an opportunity to connect young tech talent who aren’t necessarily ready to start a company today with tech startups in Boston and New York,” said Peter Boyce, co-founder of Rough Draft Ventures.“We view it as an important opportunity to inspire even more future founders.”
This year’s participating companies include Giphy, Oscar, Kensho, Cadre and B12 in New York, and HubSpot, Drift, LAUNCH, Black Duck Software, and Catalant in Boston.
The treks, which took place at the end of January, connected final candidates with founders and engineers at this year’s participating companies for a series of informal one-on-one interviews, office visits, and fireside chats on emerging technology themes like the future of work and disrupting health insurance.
The RDV Academy is a platform to deliver on Rough Draft’s larger mission of supporting and inspiring students to pursue paths in technology and entrepreneurship.
Students pursuing careers in tech are generally classified by three profiles: those who want to found a startup, those who want to join a startup, and those who want to join a large company.
Over the past four years, Rough Draft has been fully dedicated to supporting that first profile of students — we’ve backed more than 150 student founders who have started nearly 100 companies.
Along the way, however, we’ve learned these profiles are not mutually exclusive: Students often want to work at a startup for a few years until they’re ready to start their own.
While Rough Draft remains committed to student founders, we also recognize the value of industry experience. Beyond strengthening their technical skills, experience working within an early-stage startup is an opportunity for students to learn how productive teams operate and what makes a successful manager. These skills may help provide students with the foundation to start their own companies in the future.
“We view it as an important opportunity to inspire even more future founders.”
One of the biggest challenges students face is simply identifying a startup they want to join. By virtue of being startups, these companies are lesser known, and don’t have the resources to actively recruit on campuses alongside their large-company peers. Students are left effectively playing the role of VC — scourings news articles and AngelList to identify the most promising opportunities. Overwhelmed, many decide to take a more stable offer from a large tech company.
Powered by General Catalyst, a venture capital firm with a portfolio of high-growth startups, Rough Draft is uniquely positioned to help ease this tension. By connecting students with inspiring founders of startups that have the infrastructure to mentor and support a recent grad, we hope to catalyze excitement around and lower the risk profile associated with joining early stage companies.
Stay tuned for more Academy updates! We’re excited to announce the first class of The RDV Academy in the next few weeks.
Check out more photos from The Trek below!
