Why a Student Venture Fund?
Last week, Noah stated, “Hillside Ventures was founded to address a gap in the training for UConn students: early-stage, private companies.” While this is true, there are other ways to close this gap in training. Noah and I wanted to create a historical narrative of Hillside Ventures, early in this email list, so I will answer why from my perspective.
Fundamentally, we are witnessing a transformation of UConn, as much as we are witnessing the creation of a student venture fund. My involvement with Noah goes back to Spring 2018 when he first brought this idea to me and a few others. Based upon our engagement with several alumni, including Rich Vogel and Amy Errett, it was clear that The Werth Institute needed a venture capital strategy. Both of them were excited about bringing UConn talent into their early-stage opportunities, but we were not sure how to build a program that would allow for scaling and executing the opportunities for students.
We moved quickly, and helped arrange for numerous students to find internships in venture. Unbeknownst to me, three or four other students had already found opportunities across the venture space. So after the summer of 2018, we had a number of individuals who had actual experience in the industry. It was very limited, but the overall increase in knowledge, allowed us to see what was possible. My education in this space was growing rapidly as well.
Leveraging these opportunities, we placed a larger number of students in the summer of 2019. So, by the middle of the summer, Noah was once again talking about creating a student venture fund. His presentation had tightened up, and his knowledge of the space had grown. He was not alone, he had others talking about it, coalescing. If you are an educator, there is nothing more attractive than talented students wanting to do really ambitious things. My defenses were broken, and my belief that a student fund was possible started to harden.
One of the best qualities about Noah, Zach, Ashley and some of the other early students discussing the fund is that they never waited on my schedule. They brought the idea directly to then-new President Katsouleaus during his student open meetings. Regardless, by that time, I saw their drive, and it was clear that they would not be stopped. Therefore, we arranged to create an independent study with eight students on how to create a venture fund. This allowed the students to bring in more venture capitalists and VC-adjacent experts, like Reed Balmer at Finn Dixon. Alumni were now learning about this initiative, and it was growing quickly. The students provided a live pitch to members of the UConn Foundation.
So Why a Student Venture Fund?
The Werth Institute identified two major problems, and Hillside Ventures began to solve them.
The growth of private capital was inclusive of only the elite universities. UConn could be elite in private capital for a number of reasons, but it needed a spark to move that way. Hillside has emerged as that spark.
UConn alumni engagement is necessary for the success of Entrepreneurship at UConn, and that needs to be far more inclusive than just entrepreneurs. We needed a platform for industry leaders and great students to be able to coalesce around things that mattered to them personally, and Hillside has emerged as that platform.
Former President Susan Herbst set out with the mission to make UConn a top 25 public university, and she succeeded. Excellence demands continually stretching your goals, so when I took over The Werth Institute, I determined that I did not want to just build a top 10 entrepreneurship program. Instead, I wanted our future top 10 entrepreneurship program to be the cornerstone of a top 10 public university when 2030 rolls around.
Hillside Ventures is ambitious. There will be bumps in the road, but it will be a successful part of the growth of Entrepreneurship at UConn. It will help our students prepare to be better entrepreneurs, to build their networks with those alumni that donated to and engaged with Hillside, and those students will go on to significantly greater career opportunities if we did not build HIllside.
Hillside is one of the first visible artifacts of a new UConn, a UConn ready to become an elite university producing elite students for careers that would not be possible without the help of UConn. Huskies helping Huskies excel, what better reason can we have for investment in the future of UConn?
David Noble
Professor & Director of the Werth Institute