Getting into VC as a Recent Grad with Justine and Olivia Moore
By: Jess Li
Tags: University, Consumer, Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital, Stanford

Justine and Olivia at the CRV SF Office

Justine and Olivia with the Cardinal Ventures management team 2018; they are still involved with the program as advisers and mentors

Justine and Olivia speaking at the Cardinal Ventures pitch day 2018

Justine and Olivia with their office bernedoodle and best friend, Kai Page

I spoke with Justine and Olivia Moore, identical twins who work together as venture investors at CRV and as founders of Accelerated, the rapidly growing content and community center for students, recent graduates, and others interested in venture capital and entrepreneurship. Justine, Olivia, and I discussed the Accelerated story and vision, as well as their advice for aspiring founders and investors.

How did you get interested in tech and venture capital?

Olivia: We started our journey at Stanford thinking that we would major in Communications and pursue careers as journalists. We started working for The Stanford Daily, and during our freshman year we became the editors for the Research & Technology section. This meant we were pitching, editing, and writing articles about student founders and venture capital — the first article I wrote covered StartX, an incubator for Stanford-affiliated entrepreneurs.

Justine: After our freshman year, we realized we would rather participate in this ecosystem instead of just writing about it. We joined the Stanford Venture Capital Club, where we did market research projects for local VC firms and began to learn more about the industry. During our junior year, we founded Cardinal Ventures, which is still around today. The idea was to bridge the gap between coming up with a great idea in an entrepreneurship class, and actually making the leap to working on a company full-time after graduation or in an incubator. We held two sessions of ten to fifteen companies each year, and brought in investors and entrepreneurs to hold speaker sessions and mentor the companies, with a pitch day at the end. We funded the program out of the student government budget at first, but the program is now supported by ~$250k in annual sponsorships. Cardinal Ventures has now graduated more than 120 companies.

After graduating and starting in venture full-time, what was your motivation to start Accelerated?

Olivia: When we were students trying to get venture internships and starting Cardinal Ventures, we found the industry to be somewhat opaque, especially as non-engineers. There was a lot of jargon we didn’t understand, and we also had a hard time differentiating between all of the different startups and investors out there! Once we were working in venture, we thought a lot about the kind of resources that would have been helpful to us as students — our goal was to democratize access to the kind of information we have now. This is particularly important when it comes to diverse candidates (especially women and minorities) who might not have access to the same kind of networks and connections that can lead to venture roles.

Justine: The purpose behind Accelerated is to serve as a resource for young people interested in working in tech and VC. In our weekly newsletter, we include five or six key news stories, as well as startup features, career advice and interviews, and tech and VC job and internship postings. We want it to be a quick five or ten minute read every week that helps get you prepped for any interviews you might have, or maybe introduces you to a company that you’d be interested in working with.

How did you think about building up the Accelerated audience?

Olivia: In the early days, we mostly just sent it out to student groups we were part of at Stanford, as well as friends of ours who were still in school. We also reached out to the heads of student entrepreneurship groups at other schools who we thought could distribute it to their group members. It definitely grew slowly at first, but every once in a while we would see a big spike when it took off at a particular school or was shared in a big Slack channel or Facebook group. It also helped that as the subscriber list got larger, startups and other VC firms would reach out to us asking to feature jobs and internships that sometimes weren’t posted publicly. We have around 10,000 subscribers now.

Justine: As the community grew, we were excited to find ways to engage with our readers beyond the newsletter, which felt like a one-sided conversation! We started a Slack group where our readers can discuss news or companies in more detail, and we also have an ambassador program where we work with 150 students more closely. We communicate with our ambassadors via a texting system as well as monthly survey — they are incredibly helpful in giving us feedback on apps or platforms we are diligencing, and they also highlight companies taking off on their campuses that we should keep an eye on. One of our seed investments, Harper Wilde, was sent to us by an Accelerated reader. We try to keep them tuned in on the investment process for companies we work with them on.

Do you have any advice for students interested in a career in venture?

Olivia: It depends on the type of firm you are looking to join. At some larger or growth-stage firms, an analyst or associate role is more like an investment banking job, where you are cold calling companies and doing a lot of financial modeling. These funds often have established analyst programs where they hire a certain number of people every year. At CRV and other early stage funds, hiring is typically more ad hoc, and focused around the unique value that you can bring to the fund. This often is either about your network and ability to source deals, or at some more specialist funds, it can be closely related to what you studied or past work experience.

Justine: Other than building a great network, the more you can do to start learning how to evaluate early stage companies, markets, and business models, the better. This could be anything from working at a startup incubator, like we did with Cardinal Ventures, to interning at a VC-backed startup or starting a company of your own. It’s helpful to start figuring out what sectors or kinds of companies you are most excited about, and then build expertise however you can.

Join the Accelerated Slack: here

Become an Accelerated Ambassador: here

Subscribe to the Accelerated newsletter and see past weeks’ issues: here