When not busy building a company and being full-time college students, founders gather for breakfasts and community events, where they hear from special guests, local founders, and investors. Rough Draft’s portfolio founders stay connected via a slack group, sharing best practices, advice, and opportunities with one another. “Providing it across multiple campuses is a special opportunity for us.” “Peer connectivity is essential,” he said. Most importantly, said Boyce, Rough Draft creates a community. And, if advice is needed, Boyce’s team can help make the connection. Founders also can connect with Rough Draft’s impressive array of mentors to chat fundraising, press, and product launches. These resources and partnerships enable teams to accomplish more without having to spend additional capital.
Rough draft ventures full#
Starting at the foundation, Rough Draft provides portfolio companies with early legal and financial support and connections to the fund’s full suite of partners, including HubSpot, WeWork, and Silicon Valley Bank. Beyond the capital, Rough Draft offers a network of support and connectivity that Boyce believes is crucial for first-time and early-stage founders. Backed by General Catalyst, RDV provides student entrepreneurs with funding of up to $25,000 to work on their ventures and has funded more than 100 startups to date. That thought dovetailed into the creation of Rough Draft Ventures during Boyce’s senior year. “I thought, how do I create connectivity between investors, CEOs, and student entrepreneurs?” “Students didn’t have access to advisors, mentors, or capital to work on their ideas,” he said. Though HackHarvard succeeded at bringing student teams together, Boyce noticed there was something missing. The Ideaįor Rough Draft’s co-founder Peter Boyce II, it began at Harvard.īoyce helped create HackHarvard, the university’s first on-campus accelerator program. Above all, it encourages entrepreneurship and creates a community of student founders that have gone on to launch successful ventures after graduation. This peers-funding-peers model gives young entrepreneurs access to equity-free capital and resources, and gives students access to learning about the VC industry.
RDV is a team of students backing fellow students at the earliest stages of their ventures: the “rough draft,” so to speak. Like many of today’s most successful companies-Facebook, Microsoft, Google, and WordPress, to name a few- Rough Draft Ventures (RDV) was founded at a college.īut, for Rough Draft, college is more than just the place where the idea was born campuses are where the idea thrives.
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