Hi friend!

I'm a big fan of bootstrapped ventures, but this week I delved into the venture capital arena just a little bit with a good colleague of mine, Jorge Torres. Jorge is someone I work with in my full time job at Yale and has worked in innovation in several different ways. He started out as a patent attorney, then as a partner at a VC firm, and now teaches venture capital 101 at Yale.

If you're someone that has a STEM background or is nervous to take a little risk in your career, this episode is a good one to watch or listen to!

Let me know what you think by replying to this email!

Here's this week's episode:

One of my favorite parts in talking to innovators is that their pathways are rarely linear.

Jorge Torres is one of those innovators.

Jorge has always been around innovation, but it’s looked different in different stages of his career. He started out studying science at Yale, became a patent attorney, then a venture capitalist aka a VC, and eventually found himself back at Yale teaching venture capital 101.

There’s a lot of good discussion in this episode. We talk about how people have affected every step of Jorge’s journey, diversity in venture capital, and how impactful Jorge’s teaching is.

​Learn more about Jorge and how he helps students take enough risk in their career:​

What I'm loving from others this week:

​Creating traffic to a website before having a money making product​

Really cool LinkedIn post about how Magical, an automation tool, generated traffic with organic traffic before they even had a product they could sell. If you're not sure how you're going to monetize yet, it never hurts to get the marketing engine spun up. Especially if you know what area or industry you want to solve problems in.

​No code for entrepreneurship centers presentation​

A couple weeks ago, I participated in a webinar all about no-code tools, specifically for helping entrepreneurship centers run more effectively. I talked a lot about how to build systems in Airtable which I think are still applicable to those not working in entrepreneurship centers!

​Pava Marie LaPere Center for Entrepreneurship​

An awesome post to see from a mentor of mine, John Hill, who I just call the Chief Networker at Techstars. John Hopkins renamed their entrepreneurship center after Pava LaPere who might have been one of the most passionate founders and startup ecosystem builders I've ever met. Pava tragically lost her life within the past year. I didn't know Pava well at all, but I met her at a conference a few years ago and she was a person you just knew was doing great work. Kudos to John Hopkins for honoring Pava, her contagious energy, and the incredible work she was up to.

Another newsletter I'm loving:

Sam Vander Wielen 7-figure founder. Author. Podcaster. Lawyer-turned-entrepreneur. Sam’s Sidebar is the must-read weekly newsletter that translates “7-figure strategies” into simple next steps for people who’d be happy with a steady income and weekends off. “Possibly the best emails I’ve ever read from someone I’ve not met IRL.” - Phil, Sidebar subscriber. EVERY TUESDAY ⤵️ Subscribe​

Thanks for reading!

Matt

P.S. Looking for recommendations on software or content? Check out my personal recs here.