Hi everyone! André here. Just wanted to share a quick update on what I’ve been up to and a reflection of what I’ve learned throughout the summer. Let’s dive right in.
I first came to the US with a dream a lot of us internationals have: build something great. I left my home country of Costa Rica with hopes of building a game-changing company. Coming from a background where software development was not top of mind, all my friends back home were either going to be mechanical or electrical engineers. I dreamed of something more, and made the move to the US searching for that.
Freshman year I decided to build a startup in the ClimateTech space, called Pulsonics. This early attempt at building a company would leave me with powerful learnings around what it takes to build successful products and powerful execution plans. I’ll save my learnings on this experience for another article.
When my startup failed, I felt profoundly lost. I had this deep desire to build and innovate, but had nowhere to take it. This is where Illinois Tech’s Kaplan Institute changed my life. They were planning on building a Venture Capital Immersion program to support student founders in their fundraising efforts. Having experienced what being a student founder was, I started work as the first Venture Analyst for the Kaplan Institute’s Genisys Venture Immersion Program (this deserves an article of its own, stay tuned)
Throughout this program I learned about the world of Venture Capital and its key activities. I performed deal sourcing, created 14 investment memos for student startups in our accelerator program, spent 80+ hours advising founders on how to build product for ther companies.
And somehow, my deep desire to innovate and build groundbreaking products was satisfied through helping others. At this time, I realized a career in Venture Capital is what I had been looking for.
Breaking into venture became my new goal. It is no secret that breaking into VC is not easy, and being an international student (who is not coming from an Ivy League school) did not help my chances. I wasted no time in pursuing this goal. Scoring fellowships with GenZ Scouts, Republic’s Venture Fellows Program and finally Dorm Room Fund’s Blueprint Investor Track. These programs taught me deep expertise on the key activities Venture Analysts perform.
Given I’m graduating on May 2023, this summer was very, very important for my future. I was convinced the next step in my journey to break into venture was an internship at a VC fund. All throughout the spring semester, I had been working hard to secure an internship with any VC fund that would take me in. I would religiously apply to five internship openings on LinkedIn every day. I was lucky enough to get to the final interview for two generalist funds, but was not selected. Something was missing.
Like with many products in the startup world, the most successful ones are the ones who have a very differentiated value addition. With all the experiences I had with startups this truth was more than evident, but I did not apply this to my career search.
A typical VC interview question I would get throughout the interview process:
Interviewer: What do you do in your free time?
Me: I do Mixed Martial Arts and watch YouTube videos about crypto mining
This did not seem to be a great fit for a generalist VC. My interest in blockchain technology and web3 goes back to 2019, when I first learned about Bitcoin mining from a fellow Physics student. Until recently, I didn’t see my deep interest in Web3 and ideological alignment with the decentralization movement as a differentiator. I spent hours watching YouTube videos about the newest way to profit through crypto mining, yield farming, NFT collections? I went down the rabbit hole back in 2020 and thought of it as merely entertainment.
After failing at securing internship opportunities in top generalist funds, I seeked help from my close mentor: Nik Rokop. Professor Rokop is the Director of the Master of Technological Entrepreneurship program here at Illinois Tech. Through my work at the Kaplan Institute, I had worked closely with him and managed to build a close mentor-mentee dynamic. One day he asked me how my internship search was going. I shared my failures. He told me something I will never forget:
“If they won’t give you an opportunity, build your own opportunity.” - Nik Rokop
I put together a proposal with my top Chicago-based VC funds I’d love to work with. Professor Rokop mentioned that maybe the reason my interviews were not successful was because I lacked a unique differentiator, a focus area, something I was deeply passionate about. Then it hit me…Web3 Venture Capital!
I found Decasonic. A $50M, early stage digital assets/web3 native fund based here in Chicago. Luckily Professor Rokop was directly connected with the founder of Decasonic: Paul Hsu. We shared the proposal on a friday morning, one week later I was starting my internship at Decasonic.
10 Research Reports in 10 weeks
This was an ambitious goal given that in the past a research report would take me two weeks to complete. There was a hard road ahead of me, and it would involve streamlining my market research methodology to a point where I could half the average time it took me to create said content.
200+ entrepreneurial students
2 company tours: CoinFlip, Tegus
1 Happy Hour @ Web 3 Investor Day
1 Pitch at the Lollapalooza Stage for the Civic Tech Challenge
As part of my collaboration with Decasonic Labs, I went through the process of ideating:
5 Concepts in DeFi Payments Sector
5 Concepts in DeFi Lending Sector
3 Concepts in Open Metaverse Sector
10 Concepts in DAO Sector
Selected ten concepts based on the ones we created and built one pager proposals for 10 of these concepts.
Selected final top two and designed a full-fledged development plan and prototypes for both concepts using Figma.
Product Development
It is very important to be very precise when defining the target user for any new product under development.
The value proposition needs to feel almost obvious when putting it together.
It is very important to keep iterating on previous work as fast as possible.
Whitespace identification can be done by carefully mapping where current solutions are, user friction and key bugs in each space.
Ideation is best done when it is user-centric, this way the value propositions are stronger, and the product is better.
Perfected thesis-creation formula resulting in an average development time of 3 days. This is a significant streamlining of the thesis-writing process that would take me two weeks to complete prior to this internship:
Step One: Scrape
Step Two: Read
Step Three: Create an outline
Step Four: Classify each data-point into each number category
Step Five: Transfer data points to my thesis template
Step Six: Write down my rationale/opinion on how said data points are connected
Step Seven: Get Feedback
Career Learnings
Time budgeting is the key to high performance.
It is important to shift working times to match my own productivity levels. Work when I’m most energetic.
Constant reflection leads to accelerated improvement.
Having a routine and sticking with it is key to a balanced life.
It is very important to be strategic about social media reputation building, specially as a VC. Plan out content release and maximize interaction through DMs, replies and shoutouts.
Always push yourself beyond what you think you can do.
Always ask: How can I take this to the next level?
Start an Investment Club: create one of the first sourcing and research-focused, student-led digital asset investment clubs: The Link (more updates coming soon!)
Venture Scout: Curate dealflow for Decasonic.
Host a city-wide Blockchain conference for students
Continue to pursue a full-time role as a Web3 Venture Analyst
Finally, I’d like to tie this all together with the quote below.
It is imperative for each one of us to pursue our own path in everything we do. Often times the best path is the path that had never been travelled. We must push onwards and upwards. Thank you for reading my journey. I deeply appreciate your attention.