Market News with Rodney Lake
"Market News with Rodney Lake" is a show offering insightful discussions on market trends and key investing principles. This program is hosted by Rodney Lake, the Director of the George Washington University Investment Institute.
Market News with Rodney Lake
Episode 23 | A Conversation with Bill Collier about AI, Valuations, and Advice for Aspiring VCs
In Episode 23 of “Market News with Rodney Lake,” Rodney Lake, Director of the GW Investment Institute, sits down with Professor Bill Collier, a seasoned venture capitalist and GW alumnus, to explore the world of entrepreneurship and venture capital. Professor Collier discusses key indicators of product-market fit. He also shares insights into the hype versus reality of artificial intelligence in the investment landscape. Professor Collier also offers actionable advice for students and aspiring VCs, including leveraging internships, networking intentionally, and adding value to relationships. Tune in to learn more!
Rodney Lake
Thank you for joining *Market News with Rodney Lake*. This is a regular program for the GW Investment Institute where we talk about timely market topics. I'm Rodney Lake, the director of the GW Investment Institute. Let's get started. Welcome back to *Market News with Rodney Lake*. I'm your host, Rodney Lake. Today we have a special guest in the studio, one of our own, Bill Collier.
Rodney Lake
Delighted that you're here. So a couple of things. Let's get yourself introduced properly. So please introduce yourself. One of the things I want to say thank you for at the top of the show is that in addition to being a VC in the market here, you're also, you know, kind enough to spend some time here on campus with our students in running our venture capital class as part of the GW Investment Institute.
Rodney Lake
So I want to say thank you for doing that, but maybe you could give us a little bit more of an introduction for yourself. And maybe part of that is your origin story, because you're also a double GW alumnus.
Bill Collier
That's true. That's correct. Yeah. No, thanks for having me, Professor Lake. Really appreciate it. I still want to call you Professor Lake. Out of respect here, you know? But, you hit the nail on the head. I think this is my fifth semester coming up this spring, teaching the venture capital course at the GW Investment Institute.
Bill Collier
It's a lot of fun. Super rewarding. I mean, I love working with the students, helping them kind of understand the VC lingo, how to be a venture capitalist, how to identify promising companies, kind of walk them through the diligence process. It's it's a lot of fun. And I really I really enjoy it. As I mentioned you before. Yeah, it's the highlight of my year.
Bill Collier
Like I really enjoyed to you but my origin story. So I'm a Washingtonian, born and raised great. I was actually born there.
Rodney Lake
That's a really a rarity.
Bill Collier
So I was actually born at Columbia Women's Hospital, which is literally a few blocks from here now. It's like Trader.
Rodney Lake
Joe's.
Bill Collier
Right now and Trader Joe's now Trader Joe's and Condos. But, born and raised in DC, love the city. Left for a few years for undergrad. Ended up coming and transferring to GW.
Rodney Lake
Oh, nice. I didn't know that, actually.
Bill Collier
Yeah, as an undergrad. And I graduated in 2010. My major was environmental studies and geography double major, very different from what I'm doing today.
Rodney Lake
Absolutely.
Bill Collier
As a venture capitalist. But when I got out, I really didn't know what I wanted to do. Right?
Rodney Lake
And it's so many people are in this, you know, area.
Bill Collier
Yeah, yeah. So, you know, fast forward today, I'm a principal with Noble's Ventures. We're a corporate fund. Our parent company is noblest. We invest in the best ideas for the best of reasons. That's our tagline, right? And, yeah, and as a strategic investor, what we look to do is, invest in companies that better support our parent company's customers.
Bill Collier
Okay. Right. So noblest, we're about half a billion in revenue. Our goal is to get to a billion in revenue by 2030. Right. Our CEO, Emily Corrigan, is part of our 2030 vision to get to that goal. There's three prongs. There's three levers that are helping us achieve that. That goal of a billion in revenue. It's organic growth, M&A and venture.
Bill Collier
So ventures, we really kind of launched in 2023 a new initiative, a new program for noblesse, under the leadership Emily, who's great. And yeah, we are investing in everything from space tech to AI to non-clinical life sciences to critical infrastructure.
Rodney Lake
All the exciting.
Bill Collier
Things, all the exciting things. And it's great because you have a really broad aperture. And we're looking at a lot of different stuff, from, from a velocity perspective. And velocity means like number of deals per year. We're looking at doing 3 to 5 deals a year. We're typically pre-seed to series A,
Rodney Lake
And these sound are very strategic in line with the mission of the growth for the renewables overall. Correct?
Bill Collier
Correct. And I think that's the difference between a pure financial VC versus a, CVC or a strategic, firm. What we're looking to do is to identify trends or identify technology that helps us expand revenue for our existing customer base. Right. And obviously, we want to invest in sound businesses that are going to receive future funding and continue to grow at a nice clip in a nice rate.
Bill Collier
But really the the, the, the value and the driver for us is trying to expand revenue with our with our current customer base.
Rodney Lake
Excellent. And we're going to come back to the VC space here in a second. But let's take a small, path down to the class. And so just want to talk a little bit about the class. As you mentioned, you've been teaching it for quite a few semesters now, which we're super grateful for. Again. Could you maybe just let everybody, the viewers and the listeners know?
Rodney Lake
You know what? What is in this VC class? It's part of the GW School of Business in the finance department and associated with the GW Investment Institute, just for everybody to know sort of the set up in the context there. But maybe talk a little bit about the class and how you approach the class and the students.
Bill Collier
Totally. You know what the real the goal for the class is for students to understand what an attractive investment is. And then the second phase of the class is to come up with a startup concept. Okay. So and it's actually it's actually inverse. It's, it's coming up with a good startup concept and I help them incubate that idea okay.
Bill Collier
You help them. Hey nice idea. But, you might want to think about something that's a little bit more scalable and venture bankable, and we help the students kind of understand what that means. Yeah. So the first half of the class is students come up with their own startup idea, right? Right.
Rodney Lake
Which I'm sure is a lot of fun.
Bill Collier
It's a lot of fun. It's the most fun. I love, I love, I love doing that and helping the students, bring their ideas to vision, bring that vision to reality. Right. So they come up with their own startup concept. We help them, pivot and and focus on, on what might a good concept be. They develop it.
Bill Collier
We bring in subject matter experts and guest lecturers to help also vet and give their feedback on these concepts. Right. We do it in conjunction with the OIC, the Office of.
Rodney Lake
Entrepreneurship and Innovation.
Bill Collier
Entrepreneurship.
Rodney Lake
And.
Bill Collier
Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Because then shout out, shout out to them. And the reason being is GW actually hosts one of the largest student pitch competitions in the nation. Right. So.
Rodney Lake
We which is a great feather in our cap here at.
Bill Collier
GW and it's amazing. And we take advantage of that with the class. Right. So students come up with their concept. They enter the competition. It's part of the part of the curriculum. So that's kind of the first half. The first phase, phase two is when students kind of build their own concept. They identify a company that's raised venture funding, okay, that's sort of in the same vertical or space that their startup concept is.
Bill Collier
And they build a full, investment memo.
Rodney Lake
Right?
Bill Collier
So they they do their diligence on this company. They talk about their previous fundings and how they've been growing or what, challenges they faced. And then they come up with a hypothetical scenario of what should happen next for that company. So it's kind of a cool kind of wing wing view of coming up with your own startup, incubating, developing that idea, but also what my day to day job is finding companies and doing diligence on companies and writing investment memos for my investment committee.
Bill Collier
They're going through that entire process as well. So it's kind of cool to see both sides of the coin.
Rodney Lake
And for my knowledge, this remains a very popular class.
Bill Collier
I mean, I think so. I think we always have, we always have a waitlist.
Rodney Lake
I think so I think it's full. And I think you're very popular as a professor, so thank you again. Thank you for doing that. I do think it's important, at least some of the class in here in the education, obviously that's part of what we do here at the Investment Institute are a big part rather. And so let's let's come well let's this in.
Rodney Lake
But let's now move on. Or back to you rather the venture capital business. And so you're a venture capitalist. You've been, you know, doing this for quite a while now and you're certainly, one of the well known and recognized, members of the venture capital business in the DC region here, BCD, DC, can you talk about maybe something that you're excited about?
Rodney Lake
So the market is, you know, changing pretty dramatically? What excites you? What's new or what's interesting? What has changed? What are your.
Bill Collier
Thoughts? Yeah, no, I think look, with the the fundraising market is, is a lot slower today as it was in 2021, 22. Right. Right now our portfolio is performing well. What I'm really excited about is the renewed interest in space. Okay. I think a lot of it has to do with all of the activity around space.
Bill Collier
And of course, the reusable rockets, I.
Rodney Lake
Think is a catch of the rocket, I think gets everybody fairly pumped up. Right.
Bill Collier
It was literally it was insane. Right. Like it looks not real like it looks like CGI. It's it's a super important accomplishment. But what I'm excited about is the renewed interest. It seems like folks are coming back into the into the, market. Folks are putting more money in behind companies. And I think it's it's definitely needed.
Bill Collier
I also think what we're seeing especially, in the space vertical, is a renewed focus on, what I call, less like, less sexy industries. Right. There was a lot of money being poured into, you know, futuristic 3D printing, manufacturing.
Rodney Lake
In local units.
Bill Collier
In space. Right. And, and, other very like, capturing and, refurbishing satellites in orbit. Yeah. But I think we're coming back.
Rodney Lake
James bonds. Yeah. I'll set up a little James Randi.
Bill Collier
But I think we're coming back to Earth, no pun intended. And I think we're trying to focus on some of the more tactical, impactful things. One of our portfolio companies scout space. What they quite literally do is provide eyes for satellites. Oh, wow. And they're agnostic to platform. You can put a Scout sensor on any satellite, any bus.
Bill Collier
And it's a very scalable model. Okay. And I think, just focusing on those sort of like meat and potatoes type issues that, that, we're seeing in orbit with, you know, conjunctions which are like almost collisions or collisions and debris. Right. You're going to need, to do those little things before we can do the James Bond stuff right in orbit.
Bill Collier
Does that does that make sense?
Rodney Lake
Exactly. No, it makes a lot of sense. It's sort of like the blocking and tackling. If you like to use a sports analogy here, you know, we got to do these, these things first before we can move on to the more glamorous things or the more, let's say, high tech things, that involve sort of a foundational layer, that need to be built first.
Rodney Lake
So let's move on a little bit to like, particular companies. You don't have to talk about any particular company, in the portfolio. But could you just talk about, in general, for viewers who are maybe not as familiar with a, you know, startup, like what are some of the common challenges that you see as a venture capitalist and, and what are some, some of the common opportunities as well?
Bill Collier
Yeah, no, I think a challenge like going to the challenges and we were talking about this earlier, I think in the early 2020s there was a lot of free flowing capital.
Rodney Lake
Okay.
Bill Collier
I think, a lot of, startup founders saw that as sort of a land grab opportunity to raise large.
Rodney Lake
Let's let's get out there.
Bill Collier
You know, like, let's let's raise that $50 million, $75 million round. And I don't think they were super intentional in how they were going to leverage that funding. Okay. To get to an inflection point that, validated the valuation they were raising their money at. Right? So, what was the question?
Rodney Lake
You know, the challenges and opportunities. So so you continue on the challenges here, if you don't mind.
Bill Collier
Yeah. So so that's definitely a challenge, right? What we're seeing out in the market is companies that are raising, that have raised a ton of money that are raising bridge rounds, just trying to kind of survive to get to that next catalyst. At the same valuation they raise these huge rounds at or even significantly lower valuations.
Rodney Lake
So some are doing down.
Bill Collier
Round, some are doing, some are doing down rounds. And we're seeing a lot of consolidation. We're seeing a lot of aqua hires like companies absorbing other companies and bringing in folks, you know, to have an exit, but not the most attractive kind of exit for all investors. So those are sort of the challenges. I think the good news is, is if you're able to from an investor standpoint, if you're able to identify some of those companies that are capital efficient, those are the ones that we're really seeing shine, seeing succeed.
Rodney Lake
And when you say capital efficiency, let's can I. Yeah. Follow up on that. Just a second here. So for people who are not familiar with what that means in a, in a VC world, what does that mean? Could you give us a few details or maybe an example?
Bill Collier
Yeah, that that means that they're raising significant less money. Yeah. Than some of the companies that have raised these larger rounds. And they're able to, grow at a nice rate and grow at a nice clip. And what it, what it means is that the people that are working within these companies are wearing lots of hats. They're doing lots of jobs instead of hiring up and having heads of different business units and having a full team under each of those business units.
Bill Collier
People are kind of doing lots of different stuff, okay? And it allows them to, function and grow without spending, a lot of money. So, for instance, you know, I, you know, we have, another portfolio company called CDO, and they're doing they're doing great. Another example of a company that's been capital efficient. They've only raised $2.5 million in dilutive funding.
Bill Collier
The CEO is the sales person. Oh, wow. So he's running the company. He's overseeing strategy and growth. And at the same time, he's the the guy who's taking all the meetings and closing the deals, which is which is great. Right? From a from a capital efficiency stamp.
Rodney Lake
Absolutely.
Bill Collier
But when they go and raise their next round in Q1, they're they're aiming a series A, we're hopefully going to bring in someone to kind of take that up to help out so he can so he can do CEO things. Right. But that's what I mean by,
Rodney Lake
Being more efficient. And it maybe talk about is there it sounds like, with this in mind that investors are, you know, getting more rational about, you know, what it means to invest in these companies. Is there a bigger push to be profitable earlier now, or are people giving a lot of runway? It sounds like that's not the case anymore.
Rodney Lake
Or is there an expectation that, you know, companies are going to be profitable earlier in their life?
Bill Collier
I don't think they're necessarily is a expectation that they're going to be profitable earlier. I think what what investors are looking for is, securing a large pipeline of opportunities and having a high rate of, of winning those opportunities. I think, if you're profitable, it's great. It's it's, it's good for you as a founder.
Bill Collier
Yeah. I think, what's more important is that there's a large enough market that this, startup is kind of trading that's that it's entering the market, and they're they've got a nice pipeline for future revenue. I think that's kind of the the key that a lot of VCs are looking for. And I want to go back to earlier, you mentioned something about like the DC specific market.
Bill Collier
The DC market's great. I think, we're seeing a lot of folks kind of moving into DC painting a flag in DC. I don't know if you heard like Anderson Horowitz is opening an office.
Rodney Lake
I did not hear that.
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Bill Collier
I think at 10,000 square foot. Oh, really? Was downtown excellent. Which is super exciting to me.
Rodney Lake
So we have it right here.
Bill Collier
Yeah, yeah. And then, who else we've got? Point72, which is Steve Cohen's firm in New York. We have a few folks down in DC. I think DC is a very, underestimated market. Interesting. I think the proximity to all the three letter agencies in the government is also beneficial, making it and regulatory like we've got the ear to the ground in terms of what's coming down the the pipe.
Rodney Lake
Right. What's happening. Yeah.
Bill Collier
Of a regulatory standpoint, Peter Walker, who's the head of insights for Carta, recently said that DC was the number five venture market in the.
Rodney Lake
I didn't see that. Yeah.
Bill Collier
Which is super exciting. And I love the data that.
Rodney Lake
That he I think you sent that out on LinkedIn.
Bill Collier
Yeah. Yeah. No, I think.
Rodney Lake
That's how I saw it. I think.
Bill Collier
It's great. And and I love the content they're putting out. But, in addition to working with Noble's Ventures, I'm a volunteer for a group called VC in DC. Yeah. So, we've been kind of volunteering and supporting this group for the last eight, eight and a half years. Membership is up to over 550 members. Oh, wow.
Bill Collier
Memberships free. It's all institutional VCs. So of those, 550 represents about 230 or so venture firms, all institutional venture rounds. Two thirds of them are in the region. So there's an active market here. There's a bunch of, active firms here. And it's it's funny because you sit down with folks and they're like, oh, I'm raising around.
I got to, I got to fly up to New York or I gotta go down to Miami, or I got to fly to Silicon Valley to raise that round. Now, there are so many active VC firms here, and, I'm really bullish on the DC market.
Rodney Lake
And what do you think about the changes? Why do you think that this is happening? Why why are people more interested, than they were before?
Bill Collier
Well, I think there's there's a big push for dual use and defense tech. Okay. So I'll and I'll kind of break that down because someone the other day said what does dual use even mean. So it's it's companies that are interested in selling to commercial clients. Okay. Like your standard, you know, enterprise B2B or the government. Right. The government.
And that is a tough one to crack.
Rodney Lake
Right? Right. So let me just to clarify, this would be like enterprise software. So Oracle sells both to companies and they also sell to the government.
Bill Collier
Exactly.
Rodney Lake
That's the dual use you're talking about.
Bill Collier
Exactly. Okay. And then defense tech is, you know, defense related technology companies.
Rodney Lake
To the most high profile in the region are like Lockheed Martin as.
Bill Collier
An example.
Rodney Lake
There you go.
Bill Collier
And the big stuff.
Yeah. Lockheed, SAIC, Booz Allen, all of them venture arms, and they've got great teams. Noble's venture is what we do as well. But yeah, it's a tough nut to crack. And because it's a tough nut to crack, I think it's important to get strategic investors on the cap table.
Rodney Lake
Right.
Bill Collier
Because investors like Noble Ventures, our parent company, has contracts with some of these agencies.
We know what their needs are. We know how to interact with them. We know how to get, you know, portfolio companies into the fold in terms of getting a seat at the table to kind of pitch these folks. But I think that whole ecosystem is why DC, I think is, is seeing a lot of interest from some of these larger firms that are trying to increase their presence here in the in the region.
Rodney Lake
That's excellent. Yeah. I'm going to follow up on one of the comments you made. So people often ask, you know, when they're trying to learn about VC, you know why. You know why is it important who I partner with? Is it just one check versus a different check. And you were highlighting a little bit about, okay, there are differences and the things that you would want as an investor.
Rodney Lake
You know, there are certain things that you're looking at. But then as a company like, let's say I'm the CEO of a company, you know, could you explain to a CEO why they should invest with either noblesse or any other type of company, what advice would you give a management team about how they should fill up their cap table, how they should partner with these VC firms?
Rodney Lake
Because it sounds like it's not just capital?
Bill Collier
No. That's a good that's a great point. I think you're going to want to first of all, like fundamentally like you want to work with people that you enjoy working with. Right? So I think this is useful.
Rodney Lake
Yeah.
Bill Collier
The the door opening, the introductions, the network, all those things are obviously super important. But I think fundamentally you want to work with with good folks. Right. And that's sort of our thesis. We, we do, have a investment criteria. And part of that criteria is strength of team. Is that team receptive to feedback. So like you want to have kind of, on both ends, respect for the, the startup founder, you want them to, have respect for the, the VC and for them to fundamentally get along as people.
Bill Collier
Right. But but as you mentioned, yeah. You want people on the table that are going to work for you, right? You're going to want, people on the cap table that have, robust network of other investors that have, investment theses that fit your company. Right. You don't want to just make blind introductions to all these different firms and then have.
Bill Collier
Yeah, the founders spin their wheels and none of these, introductions closed, to checks written. Right. So you got to have that network built. What else? What else? I think for the strategic, it's really, as we mentioned, the visibility to to the customer base. Yeah. Right. And I don't, I'm not going to say the specific customer of Noble's is, but we wrote a check into, sedan.
Bill Collier
So it's a digital twin simulation platform in June. We've already closed, a deal with one of our customers and Sierra was part of that deal, which is pretty unheard of for, like, less than a six month investment window to actually closing, closing a deal. But being able to do those sort of things, effectuate revenue for the company, introductions to capital.
Bill Collier
Yeah. All those things are the.
Rodney Lake
Positive flywheel effect.
Bill Collier
Exactly. The positive flywheel effect. And, it's really easy to do when you have, respect and enjoy working with, with those founders and their teams as well. Right? Yeah.
Rodney Lake
Excellent. But that's super important. And thanks for mentioning that. Now sort of maybe let's move on. If you're giving advice and this is the same kind of category, let's say, rather than moving on advice to entrepreneurs like if you have an idea, and this is for anybody that's watching or listening, like, what advice would you give to a startup?
Rodney Lake
It is, you know, as a VC, they came to you and said, hey, I got this idea. I'm going to do, you know, whatever it is, X, y, z. What would you say to them first?
Bill Collier
I would say do do your research. Right. You know, as a VC, we, we dedicate so much time to diligence and research. I want before you bring something to me, an idea concept. I need to see that you, as a founder have done your your research on the market size. What, what the total addressable market is, what the serviceable addressable market is?
Bill Collier
Any sort of competitive landscape, like what other other competitors are out there? What are they doing? You need to have product market fit. You need to do some surveys, talk to customers, understand the customer needs. Right. If you do those things, those are some of the fundamentals. And there's other things as well. But basically in a nutshell you need to put in the work upfront.
Bill Collier
Yeah. Also I don't think you necessarily need to raise money to build an MVP, a minimal minimum viable product, right? If there's enough need from the customers, you can, you know, maybe it's a little bit less automated, maybe it's a little bit more, of that founder doing the work. Right. But I feel like you can at least do enough to get some, feedback from potential customers, maybe even a letter of intent that says, hey, once this is built, we will be a paying customer.
Bill Collier
I think if you do all those things, you're just setting yourself up for success later down the road.
Rodney Lake
One follow up there. Yeah, lots of people talk about product market fit in your words. Could you explain what that means?
Bill Collier
Yeah, that means that there's a real, need from a customer standpoint. Right. It's not a nice to have. It's a must have or it's I'm willing to make a sacrifice for other things to, dedicate resources to, to acquire that, that product.
Rodney Lake
But it's not just an interesting idea. It's an actual solution that somebody is willing to pay for it.
Bill Collier
Exactly, exactly, exactly. And, you know, I, I'm not just saying this like, I'm, I put this into practice. So I've been speaking to an entrepreneur owner for three or so months now, very early stage, she's raised no dilutive funding, so she's just bootstrapped. This company has a really interesting product. It's an AI powered platform. I'm not going to get into any other details other than that.
Bill Collier
But she came to me and she said, I want to raise this amount at this valuation. I said, hey, I think what you're doing is really interesting. I think we can I think we should continue this dialog and I'd love to learn more about what you're doing. I think you should raise a lot less money at this valuation, just given the stage of your company right.
Bill Collier
And what I think would justify the valuation that I'm putting on the table for you is you need to get some letters of intent and some commitments from potential customers, because you're telling me you're talking all these folks and that's great, and they're excited about it. But until you have some sort of signed document that says, hey, when we go live, we will sign on as a customer.
Bill Collier
Yeah. So in the last four months, this entrepreneur, this founder has secured $4 million in letters of intent. Nice. And purchase orders for the product that she's developing. And now we can much more justify a reasonable valuation that makes sense for us. It makes sense for her and her company. But yeah, that goes kind of with that product market fit. Like, are people willing to sign on the dotted line and say, hey, once you have the product and it's fully baked, we will pay? That's important.
Bill Collier
You mentioned artificial intelligence. That's obviously, along with space, being super interesting. Again, artificial intelligence seems to be dominating all the conversations about business and investing. Could you maybe talk about it from your perspective? What do you see out there from AI? And what’s investible? What’s not, what’s hype, what’s reality?
Bill Collier
That's a good question. Professor, that's a very good question. I think there's a lot of hype. And it's tough because a lot of these companies, we went back in the beginning, we were talking about capital efficiency. A lot of these companies are raising a ton of money, burning through a ton of money. And it's difficult for a smaller, earlier strategic like us to really compete with some of these large, huge firms.
Bill Collier
So I think there's a lot of hype. I think there's a lot of quality deals out there. I think you got to sift through them, and that's why I feel lucky being where I am, because part of our diligence process is we're able to reach back into No Places' deep bench of subject matter experts. Synovus is about 3,000 employees. Sixty percent are advanced PhDs. So we've got experts in AI and space and all these different critical infrastructure and autonomous vehicles. So when we're doing this diligence, we’re able to reach back into, hey, is this actually legit?
Bill Collier
Long story short, I think we're seeing a lot of hype. I think we're seeing a lot of insane valuations. I think there is some really impactful work to be done out there, but what I enjoy more are companies that have AI as part of their solution but that they don’t lead with it.
Bill Collier
They're not like, I’m an AI company. No, we're a digital twin simulation platform with a component of AI that helps us automate things. But to me, it's a red flag if you're leading with it. And there are some companies that are pure AI where that makes sense. But to me, it’s something to be mindful of.
Bill Collier
All right. So now let’s move to wrap up here. So thanks, Bill. This has been a great conversation, Professor Collier, very much appreciated. So now maybe pulling this all together and then really talking about advice here. If you’re giving advice to a student or anybody for our viewers or listeners out there that want to get involved in either the entrepreneurship side of the business or the VC side of the business, and they haven’t done any work on that yet, what advice would you give them on how to actually get started?
Bill Collier
Yeah, no, that's a great question. I think you have to be very intentional in how you spend your time. I think something that I did, and we didn’t cover this on the origin story, but I took advantage of my time as being a full-time undergraduate student. And also when I was getting my MBA—it’s a full-time MBA here at GW, great program. Leverage that time to get really impactful internships that align with your story and what you’re trying to achieve. And also network, network, network.
Bill Collier
It's super important because when you’re a student, you have an excuse to try to interact within and talk within relationships with folks that are much later in their career journey. And that might be at the executive level because you’re just exploring and you’re trying to learn, and people are much more receptive to having that conversation, willing to help out.
Bill Collier
What I would say is, leverage your time to try to secure great internships, build the network. And be intentional in building your network and also try to add value. It's easier said than done to try to, like, find deals to send over to a VC, to try to be a sourcing agent or sourcing partner for some of these VCs. That’s not super realistic, but I think if you are keeping your ear to the ground, if you see any super interesting companies that might be a good fit for one of these people you’re trying to network with—if they're a VC—send them the deal. I think they’d be much more receptive to building that relationship.
Rodney Lake
I think that’s excellent advice. I think that's a great place to stop. I want to say thank you for being on the show. Hopefully you’ll come back to the show another time. Very much appreciated. With that, we’re going to close here. That’s a wrap for this episode of *Market News with Rodney Lake*. We’ll see you back on the next episode.
Rodney Lake
If you have comments, we’d love to hear about them. Tell us what you want to hear about. Obviously, we have a limited scope that we’ll cover on the show, but thank you and see you next time.
Rodney Lake
Disclaimer: The content shared between these two podcasts is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice. The opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the host and guest and do not necessarily reflect the views of the GW Investment Institute or the George Washington University. Listeners should not act upon the information provided without seeking professional advice from a qualified financial advisor.
Investing involves risks, including the loss of principal. The George Washington University and the podcast hosts do not assume any responsibility for any investment decisions made based on the content of this podcast. Always conduct your own research and consult with a financial advisor before making any investment decisions.
