Tag: kauffman fellows
The Venture Deals course is free and starts on June 20, 2023.
This is the fourth time we are running the new version of the course (v2!) that was co-created with Techstars and Kauffman Fellows.
If interested, sign up now. I hope to see you in one of the AMAs we will host for anyone who takes the course.
The course is free and starts on March 21, 2023.
This is the third time we are running the new version of the course (v2!) that was co-created with Techstars and Kauffman Fellows.
If interested, sign up now. I hope to see you there in one of the AMAs we will host for anyone who takes the course.
Registration for the Venture Deals Fall 2022 course is open.
The course is free and starts on September 20, 2022. This is the second time we are running the new version of the course (v2!) that was co-created with Techstars and Kauffman Fellows.
If interested, sign up now. I hope to see you there in one of the AMAs we will host for anyone who takes the course.
Venture Deals Online Course – Spring 2020 Registration Is Open
We are running the Venture Deals Online Course again. Registration is now open and it runs from March 8, 2020 – May 1, 2020. It’s produced by Techstars and Kauffman Fellows.
We’ve run the course six times now and have had over 25,000 people take it.
It’s free, although it’s recommended that you have a copy of our book Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist. The 4th Edition is out with plenty of new and improved stuff.
The course runs for seven weeks with the following syllabus.
- Week 1 – Introduction of key players/Form or join a team
- Week 2 – Fundraising/Finding the Right VC
- Week 3 – Capitalization Tables/Convertible Debt
- Week 4 – Term Sheets: Economics & Control
- Week 5 – Term Sheets Part Two
- Week 6 – Negotiations
- Week 7 – Letter of Intent/Getting Acquired
If you are interested, sign up now and tell your friends who are interested in venture deals.
Techstars and Kauffman Fellows are once again running the Venture Deals online course that Jason Mendelson and I put together several years ago.
If you’re an entrepreneur who wants to raise capital and grow your business, this online course teaches you the basics you need to know for working with VCs. And, if you are starting off as a VC or a lawyer for venture capital deals and you want a refresher on the core issues in a term sheet, this online course is for you.
Venture Deals is a seven-week, collaborative, “learn-by-doing” online course where you will watch videos from us along with doing project work as virtual teams. The workload for the course is about four to six hours per week, includes several live video AMAs with me and Jason, and covers the following topics.
- Week 1 – Introduction of key players/Form or join a team
- Week 2 – Fundraising/Finding the Right VC
- Week 3 – Capitalization Tables/Convertible Debt
- Week 4 – Term Sheets: Economics & Control
- Week 5 – Term Sheets Part Two
- Week 6 – Negotiations
- Week 7 – Letter of Intent/Getting Acquired
The course is a great accompaniment to our book, Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist, which is about to come out in a new and improved 4th Edition that will be available by the time the course starts on September 8, 2019.
It’s free, and you’ll be joining over 23,000 people have taken the course in the past. Sign up for the course here!
Kauffman Fellows and Techstars are once again running the Venture Deals online course.
https://youtu.be/RWUx5qm-xrg
This time it runs from May 6th to June 26th. We’ve now had over 10,000 people take the online course and have been delighted to meet or email with a bunch of them over the past few years.
If you want to learn how to be smarter than your lawyer and your venture capitalist, sign up for Venture Deals now. Yup – it’s free!
Last Chance to Sign Up For The Fall 2017 Venture Deals Course
Kauffman Fellows and Techstars are running another cycle of the Venture Deals course with me and Jason Mendelson. Signups close tomorrow as the course runs from 9/24/17 – 11/13/17. The course is free to everyone.
The seven-week course, which is about five hours of work each week, has the following agenda.
Week 1 – Introduction of key players/Form or join a team
Week 2 – Fundraising/Finding the Right VC
Week 3 – Capitalization Tables/Convertible Debt
Week 4 – Term Sheets: Economics & Control
Week 5 – Term Sheets Part Two
Week 6 – Negotiations
Week 7 – Letter of Intent/Getting Acquired
Over 10,000 people have taken the course at this point. We’ve gotten universally strong positive reviews and have made plenty of new friends from people who have gone through the course and connected with us.
If you are interested in raising venture capital, I encourage you to sign up and take the course. I hope to see you online.
In September, I joined the board of Kauffman Fellows.
If you aren’t familiar with the Kauffman Fellows Program, it recently celebrated its 20th anniversary. I was around at the beginning, spending a day a month in Kansas City with the Kauffman Foundation as an entrepreneur-in-residence when the program was originally created by a team at the Kauffman Foundation to identify, develop, and network the next generation of global leaders in the venture capital industry using a two-year apprenticeship program. In 2003, it was spun out of the Kauffman Foundation into a separate non-profit but, at the 20th reunion in Kansas City, the Kauffman Foundation made a new gift to the Kauffman Fellows Program to accelerate the midwestern venture capital ecosystem.
Kauffman Fellows now has almost 500 Fellows in 40 countries across the world. The power of the network and how it impacts both the venture capital industry and the startup ecosystem is profound. Some of the early Kauffman Fellows are now leading major firms. Consider a few people from the first three classes, including Jason Green (Emergence), Rob Coneybeer and Ravi Mohan (Shasta Ventures), Susan Mason (Aligned Partners), Jennifer Fonstad (Aspect Ventures), and Bryan Roberts (Venrock).
As someone who is now 20 years into his own journey as an investor in companies as well as other VC funds, when I was approached about joining the board by Jeff Harbach, the CEO, it was an easy yes for me. After spending some time with Jeff, who recently took over the CEO reins from long time CEO (and now Chairman) Phil Wickham, I realized that by engaging with Jeff and the board I could support a new CEO running a non-profit organization to train the world’s future VCs. Jeff blew me away with his vision and energy, which is the primary driver for me – beyond the mission of the organization – when I engage with a non-profit.
In one of our longer conversations, Jeff focused on the non-investment activities that he viewed as critical to the success of investors. We talked about topics like authenticity and mental fitness. We talked about a common paradox – the more you learn, the more you realize you don’t know – and how difficult it is to acknowledge and process this concept in whatever context it appears. I’ve experienced this many times in my career and have deep empathy and understanding around the challenges. I believe that peer-mentorship, one of the key activities of Kauffman Fellows, is essential here.
Anyone who knows me knows I’m a strong advocate for diversity across all dimensions. This is not new for me in business – when I was at the Kauffman Foundation, I heard it, among other values that I cherish, as being attributed to Mr. Kauffman. When I looked around the room at the Kauffman Fellows Reunion, it was easy to see why they are having a huge impact on diversity in venture capital, with over 30% of the most recent class being women, 11% being African-American, alongside numerous participants from all over the world.
Kauffman Fellows is not necessarily for people just entering the venture industry but for experienced VCs looking to accelerate their growth. The program is centered around established innovation leaders – if you are looking to grow and become a better investor you should think about doing this program.
I talk often about being intrinsically motivated by learning. It’s the primary driver of most of my activity. When I struggled with a depressive episode in 2013, I realized that I had a glitch in my thinking about my own motivation. I had separated learning and teaching into different concepts. As I have gotten older, I am spending a lot more time teaching, which was taking away from time I had previously spent learning, and that was bumming me out. When I thought harder about this (with the help of my therapist), I realized that I learn an enormous amount in contexts where I’m also teaching. Consequently, I was able to repair the glitch by linking the concepts of learning and teaching as the core of my intrinsic motivation.
By joining the board of Kauffman Fellows, I get to do both. I’m now a node on another network – one shared by 20 years of experienced VCs around the world as they work together to help identify, nurture, and develop the next generation of VCs. I expect I’ll teach a lot, but as with many things in life, will learn even more.
Jeff – thanks for asking me to be a part of things. I’m honored.
I attended the 20th Reunion of the Kauffman Fellows on Monday and Tuesday. I’ve recently joined the board of directors and enjoyed spending two days in Kansas City immersed in things with the Kauffman Fellows, a bunch of friends, and a number of LPs and GPs that came to the event.
As part of it, I gave a talk and did Q&A with Lesa Mitchell (now the Managing Director of Techstars Kansas City). We covered a lot of ground around startup communities, investing, government, multi-turn games, and other things I can’t remember anymore. Buried in the middle is a story of my experience with Startup Weekend Tehran and a long rant on transcending geographic borders.
If you are looking for a Saturday morning video to run in the background, enjoy.