We dive deep into our sectors. Our research drives our insights and thesis-driven approach.

I first met Ali nearly 5 years ago. He was finishing his senior year at the University of Illinois and was referred to me by Spencer Lazar, who was a VC at General Catalyst at the time. Ali had spent his summer working with the team at GC and Spencer had suggested that I get to know Ali given that we were both in the Chicago area (I was at Lightbank at the time). We had no intention of hiring anyone at the time but were blown away by Ali’s intelligence, maturity and intellectual curiosity. We offered Ali a position to join us full-time as an Analyst, presumably upon graduation. Ali countered, he wanted to start immediately. He was so eager to join the venture community that he dropped out of college to join us, reasoning that he’d learn more as part of our firm than he would in the classroom and that he would finish up his degree online later.

We are living in perplexing times. At the dawn of a new decade, we’re witnessing political, societal and economic polarity, unlike anything that we’ve seen in recent years. Technology, once heralded as a force to “make the world a better place”, is now being vilified across circles of politicians and the populous. A contentious divide has developed between technology hubs and the rest of society as we increasingly lay witness to a world of technology “have” and “have-nots”, what some refer to as the “digital divide”. With that, we are seeing virtually every category (and the incumbents entrenched within those categories) attacked by an onslaught of digital upstarts, creating unprecedented amounts of both transformation and displacement.

We’re excited to kick-off a new initiative at Equal Ventures to work with experienced Operators to explore opportunities for building and launching new ventures. Over the course of the program, we’ll provide a select group of operators to diligence a few market opportunities together and connect them with other high caliber operators and executives. We’ve written about the areas we consider our ‘Majors’ in a recent post on some of our Key Investment Areas. However, we welcome applications from operators with interests across other sectors and areas as well.

We’re excited to launch a new program at Equal Ventures to connect talented generalists early in their careers with early-stage companies in our network. Through the program, participants will be matched with Chief of Staff opportunities in a mutually agreed upon startup where the operators will work directly with the C-suite.

We first met Chelsea at the end of 2019 (doesn’t that seem like a lifetime ago…) when we were recruiting MBA interns for the Spring. I distinctly remember my interview with Chelsea and her ability to speak in intimate detail about the industries she worked on while at LEK (a high-end strategy consulting firm that she joined after graduating from the University of Chicago). Chelsea had deep experience working with clients in an industry theme we were particularly interested in, but we decided to send her a case study on an industry she had ZERO experience with. Her case was seemingly flawless. She was extremely prepared, insightful and brought perspectives that I hadn’t thought about despite operating in the sector for years. Shortly thereafter we asked Chelsea to intern with us for the Spring, while she finished up her 1st year at Wharton.