The No Cap Newsletter (027)
A biweekly newsletter by the RippleX Fellowship covering key program insights and updates, industry news/events, fellow spotlights, and internships/jobs.
🌊 About the RippleX Fellowship
The RippleX Fellowship is a remote 16-week program powered by Ripple Ventures that connects students across North America, providing them with valuable coaching, resources, and networking opportunities to enhance their skills and knowledge in startup building and venture capital.
Learn more about our program at our RippleX Fellowship website!
Are you a student or first-time founder building in the B2B SaaS space? Check out our RippleX Fellow Fund!
Enroll in our free, public, online course here.
Interested in being featured in the No Cap Newsletter? Looking to share exciting news? Please reach out to Isabelle at isabelle@rippleventures.com or Katie at katie@rippleventures.com.
🚀 Cohort 15 Recruitment
If you haven’t heard yet… Cohort 15 applications are open! 👀
We’re recruiting the brightest talent across Canada and the United States for our next cohort of the RippleX Fellowship.
Our 16-week remote program teaches a close-knit cohort of curious students about the fundamentals of venture capital — better equipping them as founders, leaders in tech, and aspiring VCs 🙌
Applications close today! Apply here by July 21, 2023 at 11:59 PM ET ⏳
📣 If you know anyone who’s a great fit for the RippleX Fellowship, feel free to forward them this email 📣 We appreciate you helping us find our future fellows!
💬 RippleX Fellowship Testimonials
Curious to learn about the experience of being a RippleX Fellow? We’ve got you 🤝 Hear from a few of our current RippleX fellows and alums ⬇️
📝 Written Testimonial from Laurence Liang (Cohort 14)
Meet Laurence, a fellow from Cohort 14! He’s currently building in stealth and he’s part of the 2023 cohort of NEXT AI 🚀
Laurence shares about his unique takeaways as a founder in the RippleX Fellowship program:
📝 Written Testimonial from Lydia Estreed (Cohort 14)
Lydia is another fellow from Cohort 14! She’s currently working as an investment analyst at Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC) 👏
Read about how the RippleX Fellowship enhanced her experience working in venture capital and how being around founders deepened her perspective as an investor:
🎥 Video Testimonial from Alexa Grabelle (Cohort 5)
Click here to watch Alexa share about her experience with the RippleX Fellowship and its influence on her path in venture capital! Alexa completed her undergraduate at Wharton and is now working as an analyst at Bessemer Venture Partners 🙌
🫶 Wall of Love
More RippleX Fellowship testimonials are featured on our Wall of Love! Feel free to reach out to the Ripple team and alumni if you have any questions.
🥳 Event Recap
🤩 Ripple Ventures: AI Founder Get-Together with Braden Ream @ Voiceflow
We hosted our AI Founder Get-Together last Friday! Big shoutout to Braden Ream for sharing his insights from building Voiceflow. As pre-seed investors in the company, we are thankful to be a part of their journey as they scale 🚀
During our fireside chat, Braden dove deeper into his journey in entrepreneurship, provided insights into how he sold to enterprises at scale, and shared his views on generative AI and his outlook on the broader AI industry.
🎯 Here are some key takeaways:
1. Recruiting an all-star team ✨ and building culture as a fast-growing startup 🌱: Hire intrinsically motivated and curious people. Your first few hires are instrumental in establishing the foundation for the company’s success. Leverage your network to find the best talent “daring” enough to join your venture.
2. Building and selling into enterprises 💰: Know exactly who you are selling to, and determine which end-user can champion your product in their organization. Learning the distinction between the end user and the decision-makers is important as this informs your sales strategy and distribution. Putting a price tag on an enterprise contract can be difficult, so have confidence in your product and what it is worth, and conduct thorough customer validation to understand where your product’s value truly lies.
3. Technology adoption curve 📈: Knowledge and intuition of where the industry you’re building for is headed is crucial. In light of the boom in voice technology (Alexa and Siri), Voiceflow made the bet that conversational AI voice bots will become the future. As gen AI becomes more widely adopted, a fundamental understanding of how your company fits into the broader picture can help with product prioritization at the early stages.
Thank you to all who attended! We plan to do more events with founders & funders — sign up and be in the know about our future events here, and if you’re interested in sponsoring our future events, get in touch here 🙌
🤗 Stay in Touch
Future Events Mailing List ➡️ Want to be in the loop about future events hosted by Ripple Ventures or the RippleX Fellowship? Sign up for our mailing list and be the first to know: https://airtable.com/shruNRpP3IZ3uVqyO 📧
Instagram ➡️ We launched our Instagram page this summer! Give us a follow and stay in touch with us there: @ripplexfellowship 🤩
Email ➡️ Have questions about this edition of the No Cap Newsletter? Please reach out to Isabelle at isabelle@rippleventures.com or Katie at katie@rippleventures.com 🙌