Strategic Venture Society

Story

Timing | In 2014, my friend and I were competing in a venture capital case competition. We had NO idea how to do early stage evaluations
Themes | We found several classmates who had an active interest in investing in technology but had the same roadblock. We also had the same time constraints, where we were full-time students who needed to complement our financial academia and technical acumen.
Event | After going through some levels of bureaucracy, there were five of us who started SVS (Strategic Venture Society). Other than being a string of buzzwords, we committed to meeting once a week (maybe every other week) with a VC in New York. The goals of these conversations were to understands investing strategy, technology trends, and how to enter the industry. Some of our events and speakers/mentors were:
1. Andy Kangpan of ffVC.
2. Kevin Hu of Stripes Group.
3. Jerry Hao of NYU Innovation Fund.
4. Jonathan Struhl (General Partner) of Indicator Ventures
5. Stephanie Weiner of Bain Capital Ventures
6. Brian Shimmerlik of Vengo Labs. Brian shared with us about his journey to ABC's SharkTank, how he came up with his startup idea, pivoted, and pitched!
7. A.J. Tus of Technology Crossover Ventures and Credit Suisse. At the time of our conversation, AJ was leaving his role as an investment banking analyst at Credit Suisse and moving to his role as technology investor with TCV. This conversation was focused on how to make that job transition from banking to growth equity.
8. Bryan Crutchfield (Partner) of B-4 Capital. He is also a Managing Director at Accordion Partners - a financial consulting firm and B-4 portfolio company
9. Bobby Leddy of B-4 Capital.
10. Peter Boyce II of General Catalyst Partners.
11. Julian Moncada of Lerer Hippeau Ventures.
12. Adam Besvinick (Principal) of Deep Fork Capital.
13. Michael Eisenberg (co-founder and Partner) of Aleph VC.
14. Charlie O'Donnell of Brooklyn Bridge Ventures. A former analyst at the legendary Union Square Ventures, Charlie is the sole partner of Brooklyn Bridge, where he has invested in companies such as Canary, Ringly and Ample Hills Creamery.
15. Tim Devane (principal) of NextView Ventures and startupguide.nyc author.
16. Sumeet Shah of Brand Foundry Ventures. He told us how hehandles sourcing and managing new opportunities. He has over 6 years of experience across the startup and private equity industries, formerly running new business strategies at Gist Digital and handling business development and project work at Gotham Consulting Partners.
17. Shawn Cheng, Principal ofVayner/RSE.
18. Deepen Parikh, partner of Courtside Ventures.
19. Brett Rochkind (Managing Director) of General Atlantic.
20. Shai Goldman (Managing Director) of Silicon Valley Bank.
We talked to several more firms, including Wamda Capital and Anthos Capital, and hosted recruiting events for students.
Results | We never limited the conversation to just the five of us. Upon graduation, SVS had attracted more than 320 unique students and adults to its events (we averaged 21 people per event excluding the speaker and the five of us). We ended up with an amazing network of VC and entrepreneurial mentors and now we mentor the next generation of SVSers