A key component of the Tuck experience has always been student-led treks covering various industries and geographies. After hearing about the travels and experiences of past students, Caitlin Bolnick T’19 and I decided to organize an entrepreneurship and venture capital-focused trek in New York City. We led a group of 20 first- and second-year students across two days visiting a diverse set of startups and venture capital firms. We found great value in exploring different industries, stages of growth, and employee functions as well as hearing the personal stories of both startup founders and later stage employees. We also appreciated getting investors’ perspectives on the startup space, recent trends, and the investing process.
We kicked off the trek by heading to Flatiron to visit IrisVR, a startup focused on delivering virtual reality solutions to the architecture and real estate development industries. We all tried on virtual reality headsets and toured through a building environment that was constructed from standard architectural plans.
Next up, we headed to midtown to RRE Ventures, where we received an overview of both the firm, their investment principles, and general commentary on venture capital and on startups from an investor’s perspective.
Following that, we visited another VC firm, Great Oaks Ventures. Great Oaks focused on more earlier stage investments than RRE, and duly requires a different investment approach of lower expected success rates but greater magnitude of returns for those few successes. Deal volume is typically much higher with smaller check sizes. Hearing the difference in diligence process between the two firms and real-life anecdotes helped add depth to our understanding of different venture investment stages.
We rounded out the day with two later-stage startups, Managed by Q and Casper. We had a whirlwind session at Managed by Q, an office management platform, that included a tour of their offices, talks by their founder and an early stage employee, and briefings on various divisions by their respective employees.
We followed that with a visit to Casper, a startup mattress retailer that has experienced explosive growth. We received an overview of the company and its history from the COO and briefings on different functions and divisions within the company.
Daniel Newmark T’19 explores 3D architectural renderings using a VR headset with the COO at IrisVR
On Friday, we started the day in Brooklyn at GoTenna’s offices, a connectivity hardware startup focused on devices that can create ad-hoc network connectivity in areas otherwise without connectivity. We spent an hour with the founder, who told us the genesis of the company was rooted in experiences at concerts where he would not be able to get in touch with friends due to congested cellular networks. While attempting to solve this problem, he realized a much greater need spanning hikers and adventurists and most recently and prominently, militaries around the world. He spoke to us about how hardware-focused companies face fundamentally different challenges than software focused startups. For example, you cannot deploy a patch to a hardware product the way you would to a software product, highlighting the importance of starting with a strong product. Hardware typically does not work on a subscription model, so you also need to plan longer term monetization in different ways than a software-focused firm.
We followed that by a visit to East Village where we visited CoverWallet, an insurance tech company. The co-founder, president of Insurance, VP of product, and several product managers spoke to us about reinventing the user experience for small business insurance. The co-founder shared her view that you don’t need to be passionate about a particular product or service to create a business in the space, you simply need to be passionate about the processes of building, improving the status quo, and helping people and teams grow—a perspective on entrepreneurship which many of us found refreshing. We rounded off the trek with a visit to Betterment, a personal wealth management platform, where we had a panel discussion on topics ranging from startup customer acquisition to optimal methods of investment allocations.
Tuck students during their visit to Casper
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