I joined the Navy after graduating from Harvard College in 2016 with a degree in Applied Mathematics. That would include founders taking a leave of absence or recent grads or currents students devoting their summer to growing their startup.As a second year MBA student at MIT Sloan, I have emphasized re-shaping analytical skills honed as a naval intelligence officer into ones that can be applied to venture capital. While Dorm Room Fund and Rough Draft Ventures fund current students, XFund requires that its startups have a full-time team.
ROUGH DRAFT VENTURES INVESTS IN ACENNA TV
XFund has invested in such startups as Rock Health, an incubator for tech startups in healthcare founded by two Harvard Business School grads, and Tivli, a startup that enables college students to watch live TV on their computers. Related: Spreading the Love of Silicon Valley (infographic)Īccording to Chung, about 40 percent of applications so far have come from Harvard, about 40 percent from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and 20 percent from other Boston-area colleges.
Chung says they plan to make four to six investments a year, averaging about $250,000 apiece. Hugo Van Vuuren, who graduated from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and Patrick Chung, who earned a joint degree from Harvard's law and business schools, are partners in the XFund. "The XFund is a big statement that we don't want to chase these people away." "How can you take these brilliant minds and how can you prevent them from thinking the university will not support their activities?" says Patrick Coats, a Harvard junior who sits on the XFund's investment team. Harvard has spawned hundreds of successful entrepreneurs, and VC firm New Enterprise Associates hopes to spur on more with The Experiment Fund (XFund for short), which it launched January 2012. In evaluating applications, Kleinow says, the investment team asks such questions as: "How interesting is the market? Is the potential there to build a big enough business? What kind of actionable things have they done to take their company from an idea to an actual business?" Related: Ken and Ben Lerer Share Their Top 5 Secrets to Success for Young Entrepreneurs The investment team itself includes a mix of students from Penn and Drexel University. So far, the Philadelphia branch has announced investments in three startups: Firefly, a co-browsing tool founded by three University of Pennsylvania undergrads Dagne Dover, a handbag and accessories brand led by several soon-to-be alums of Penn's Wharton School and Whamix, an interactive tablet video company co-founded by a Wharton MBA student.Īlthough the initial investments all have ties to Penn, Derek Kleinow, a founding member of the fund's Philadelphia team and a Wharton MBA student, says the fund is open to student-run startups throughout the greater Philadelphia area as long as at least one company founder is a current student or graduated within the past six months. "We want to bring capital and other resources closer to campus and give them that option to test their hypothesis."ĭorm Room Fund's average investment is $20,000. "We've seen what great things students can build, but raising capital while you're in school is really difficult," says CeCe Cheng, the fund's director. VC firm First Round Capital, which has invested in student-driven startups including Birchbox and Warby Parker, launched Dorm Room Fund in Philadelphia last fall and is expanding it to New York City and San Francisco. Rough Draft invests up to $25,000, Hamed says, and at least one founder must be in college in the greater Boston area. Related: For Financing and Mentorship, Would You Forgo Future Income? "He has two apps, and he's trying to roll out more." " the prototypical example of the entrepreneur we're trying to fund," says Zachary Hamed, a Harvard junior who co-founded Rough Draft with Boyce.
In March, Rough Draft announced its first investment: $20,000 in Balbus Speech, which was founded by Tufts University junior Jack McDermott to create apps for speech therapy.
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