Apply to Join Rough Draft Ventures!

Update as of September 24th: Applications are now closed.

Applications to join Rough Draft Ventures are open now through September 23rd! Are you a current student who is passionate about startups, tech, and entrepreneurship? Apply now!

Last year, we re-launched Rough Draft Ventures with a new look, new fellowship program, and renewed commitment to backing student founders. 

The year that followed was full of firsts:

• We hosted our first nationwide pitch competition, with Johnny Boufarhat (the founder and CEO of Hopin) as our keynote speaker. 
• We built our first incubator, RDV University, and helped our students learn from founders across the General Catalyst portfolio. 
• We hosted our first hackathon, RDV Hacks, in partnership with Major League Hacking (a General Catalyst portfolio company!).
• We organized our first community summit, RDV IRL, gathering the full power of the RDV and GC community in NYC.

and so much more!

It was a busy year… and we have so much more on the horizon! None of this could happen without the amazing fellows we recruit every year. 

That’s why we’re excited to announce that applications to join Rough Draft Ventures as either a Venture Fellow or a Platform Fellow (Head of Content, Head of Growth, Head of Engineering, or a role you create!) are open now through September 23rd. As always, all current students are encouraged to apply — no matter where you study, what you study, how old you are, or how you identify. We especially encourage diverse and traditionally underrepresented candidates to apply to the fellowship. If we want to support the best student founders across the country, we can start by making venture capital more accessible.

Visit roughdraft.vc for more information or RSVP here to join Jeremy Navarro on Wednesday, September 14th, at 5 PM PST/8 PM EST for an RDV info session and panel on breaking into VC! We’ll also be hosting in-person socials and info sessions at select cities across the US. 

If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to jnavarro@roughdraft.vc!

What is RDV?

Rough Draft Ventures (RDV) is a student-run venture firm, powered and backed by General Catalyst. Over the past decade, RDV has invested in 200+ student-led startups that have since gone on to raise over $2B+ in funding from leading investors and partners, including General Catalyst, Andreessen Horowitz, First Round Capital, NEA, Sequoia, Accel, and others. 

At General Catalyst, we’ve always been focused on investing in powerful, positive change that endures. With innovation comes responsibility – we can no longer build businesses solely for profit or growth. We need to build companies the right way, and engineer them both for growth and good. That is responsible innovation, and it begins as early as in the college dorm room.

Campuses have quickly grown into leading hubs for innovation, and student founders everywhere are taking it into their own hands to build the world they want to see. As student entrepreneurs redefine, engineer, and scale technology, we believe it is our responsibility to support them and leave the world better than we found it. And no one is better equipped to identify and support these student founders than their own peers. 

That’s why we backed Rough Draft Ventures in 2013. We’re excited to continue backing the student community and to foster responsible innovation at the earliest stages with next year’s class of venture fellows!

Apply now!