110 applications later — why we built Wingman Campus Fund
Over the past weeks, our launch was covered by newspapers such as Sifted, Handelszeitung and StartupTicker. In May 2021, we opened our first application call and received 110 applications from students to join the investment teams of our student-run VC fund Wingman Campus Fund as ‘Partners’. They will soon be responsible for sourcing and investments on their campus. So, now with all the teams being assembled, it feels like a good time to reflect on the launch of the program and explain why it made sense from a strategic and mission standpoints.
Snapshot: What is student-run VC fund
A student-run VC fund is a micro-fund that is entirely run by students; they are responsible for sourcing investments on their campus, qualifying them and taking investment decisions, while following an educative track to learn the role of a VC investor. The student founding teams who receive the investments get initial funding at founder-friendly conditions (generally an uncapped SAFE) and access to a pool of tier-one mentors and VCs to facilitate the transition to their pre-seed round.
Student-run VC funds from a strategic standpoint
Switzerland sits over a unique academic ecosystem: ETH Zürich (ETHZ), EPF Lausanne (EPFL) rank within the top-15 universities in the world (currently 6th and 14th), and the University of St. Gallen (HSG) is one of Europe’s leading business schools. Each of them produces strong student founding teams in software, hard tech and biotech.
Back in January 2021, we discussed how our fund Wingman Ventures could get more involved at ETHZ, EPFL and HSG. The reasoning was simple: our fund invests in pre-seed and seed stage startups, and a significant share of our portfolio originates from the three universities — being more involved, we thought, would translate into making our fund more visible among students (benefiting our brand), and would enable us to spot, support, and back the best student founding teams even earlier in their journey (benefiting our deal flow).
We spent the month of January 2021 evaluating different programs run by tier-one VCs in leading universities, scheduled a few dozen interviews with the program managers and participants, and discovered a universe of possibilities, some of which we listed hereunder:
- Startup contests: Pear Competition, Venture Kick
- Peer student groups: Pear Garage, Venture Challenge
- University accelerators: Cardinal Ventures, Free Ventures
- Internship programs: Greylock U
- Hiring campus associates: Alsop-Louis Partners, Sequoia Capital
- Fellowships: Pear Fellows, Contrary Capital
- Student-run VC funds: Dorm Room Fund, Rough Draft Ventures, Front Row Ventures, G Ventures, Cactus Capital, Student 2 Student
The student-run VC fund program stood out because it is the only one that was achieving our strategic objectives — making our brand more visible on campus, and spotting student founding teams early on — in a way that benefited other stakeholders at scale, that is, student founding teams and student investors (think: positive externalities). As such, it created value not only for us, but also for the campus ecosystem as a whole.
- For students founding teams recipients of our investments:
Student founding teams subject to our investments get initial funding at founder-friendly conditions (generally an uncapped SAFE) and access to a pool of tier-one mentors and VCs to facilitate the transition to their pre-seed round. - For students joining our investment teams as ‘Partner’:
Students joining our investment teams as ‘Partners’ get to secure a first experience in venture capital — an industry that has historically been difficult to break into — while picking up skills through structured training and mixing up with a community of peer students who are in the tech space for the long haul.
Student-run VC funds from a mission standpoint
From a mission standpoint, the latter point was resonating with us because our brand as a VC, which is already known across Europe, can be leveraged to create career paths or startups paths that would otherwise not have been possible. In the context of our student-run VC fund, we see this leverage as an equaliser for diversity and intend to use it to help students from every gender, race, and social background break into venture capital or spin their ideas into startups. Here is why that matters:
- There are only five female VC partners in Switzerland today despite there being 120+ firms (presumably most with multiple partners).
- Female led teams in Switzerland received just 4.5% of invested capital, in 2020.
- There is limited data on many aspects of diversity in the tech ecosystem in Switzerland, showing how far we will still need to go in tackling these issues.
- More broadly, entrepreneurship needs a boost in Switzerland, as just 40% of Swiss see entrepreneurship as a good career choice versus 60% on average for high income countries and 68% in the USA, and only 10% of the Swiss population is involved in setting up a start-up or working with one, a percentage that’s again lower than her counterparts.
We know that to have more diverse funding, we need to have a more diverse set of investors and founders. Our campus-based program means that many more young people can have exposure to entrepreneurship and to investing. We believe that, regardless of whether they go on to choose that as a career path, the experience can only be a net positive for Switzerland.
Recap: What is Wingman Campus Fund
Wingman Campus Fund is a micro-fund entirely run by students from ETHZ, EPFL and HSG. It invests CHF20k SAFEs (uncapped with 20% discount) in 15 student founding teams every year, shortly after idea-stage, betting on teams and big markets. The teams financed not only receive funding but also get access to a pool of mentors composed of some of the best startup founders and operators from Switzerland, as well as VCs to facilitate the transition to their pre-seed round.
It got much easier for student founding teams to start a company
If you look at the Swiss funding ecosystem at the earliest stages, whether university grants (e.g. EPFL Ignition, EPFL Innogrant, ETH Pioneer Fellowship) or outside grants (e.g. Gebert Rüf Stiftung and FIT), programs such as Venture Kick and student-run VC funds like Wingman Campus Fund and Student 2 Student, increasingly more capital is being made available to student founding teams and it has never have been easier to secure the first CHF100k to CHF300k in dilutive and non-dilutive funding. And when student founding teams are ready to raise their first CHF1 million, pre-seed and seed funds such as our own Wingman Ventures are ready to step in at super founder-friendly conditions (see our open-sourced term sheet).
It’s an exciting time to start a company out of a Swiss campus and we’re proud to be a part of a Swiss ecosystem which is getting increasingly more mature and rich in opportunities. Our student-run VC fund starts operating in September and you can follow our news, progress and investments on our Newsletter and LinkedIn Page.
A special thanks to Jennifer Webb for her contribution on the diversity segment of the article!
