It’s been a quiet summer of reflection for me after finishing my first year at Harvard Business School.
There are a couple of things I want to briefly update you on: what I’ve been up to this summer, what my plans are for my final year in school, what content I plan to publish on F2F going forward, and a personal story that I haven’t ever shared publicly.
It was an intense year for both good and not-so-good reasons.
I’ve been primarily focused on my Product Marketing internship at Cambridge Mobile Telematics. I’ve worked hard and learned a ton. Getting experience at a growth-stage startup has been immensely helpful and eye-opening. The lessons I’ve learned working in a mature startup are invaluable to my future as a VC.
Speaking of which, I know that at the beginning of my journey at HBS, I mentioned that I wanted to start a fund by the time I came out. After talking with many folks and thinking more, while I still want to, it will be much later down the line. For now, I’d love to join a firm that values my skill set (engineering, writing, coding, and product management) and learn under a great practitioner.
So how will I spend my last year at HBS and Boston? My goal is simple: I want to help as many founders as I can with my nearly ten years of experience writing on startups and being involved in the entrepreneurial scene as an Investor and Head of Content at General Catalyst Venture Fellows.
That’s it. We will see where I end up by the time graduation comes around.
On content: I aim to bring back the Startup Spotlights and a new version of the Case Studies. These will take time to prepare, thus I won’t commit to a hard-and-fast deadline publicly as of now. (I know I haven’t done a great job of sticking to things that I announce in the newsletter. I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up and disappoint you and myself.)
However, in the meantime while I’m curating Startup Spotlights and Case Studies, I’ll be releasing short-form (less than 500 words) thought pieces, targeting a weekly basis. I’m spending the rest of this month drafting articles I will publish through my EC year at HBS.
Here’s a brief sneak peak of what these articles will look like: these short pieces will be natural extensions of the three Assays (investment theses) I’ve written over the past year. I’ll explore trends in tech that *no one* else is picking up on, and some pieces will identify companies that few have heard of who are innovating in spaces I’ve called out in my Assays.
The first one comes out tomorrow.
Last topic: a personal story. Before matriculating to HBS, I went on vacation to Croatia for a week. I lived on a yacht for a week. It was a ton of fun.
One of the activities that I did was to ride a moped around the Vis. The roads are mostly well-paved (I spent most of my time riding on the highways and roads). However, some of the highways lacked guardrails, with drops of over 300+ feet on the unguarded sides.
Oh, did I mention that this was my first time riding a moped before?
This was by far the riskiest thing I’ve ever done in my life (my family doesn’t even know about this!), but I decided to go for it. I was with the same group of guys I lived on the yacht with. I didn’t want to be left behind or ride a passenger with one of them.
I wanted to prove to myself that I could do this.
I took a risk.
It paid off massively. I had the time of my life riding around exploring the island on two wheels with folks I’ve come to consider some of my closest friends here at HBS. I fell twice - once at the beginning and towards the journey's end.
But I got back up and kept riding. (However, I had to pay a massive fine for damaging the bike on the second fall :(. )
Sometimes, I forget I can do great things when I dare to try new challenges.
I just turned 29. 30 is right around the corner. I’m entering my last year as a student. I’ve been writing about startups for nearly a decade now.
I’ve spilled a lot of ink telling founders' stories about how they are going to change the world, but the inkwell is starting to run dry.
I want to spend this year writing as much as I can while I still have ink left to spill. I don’t want to leave here with any regrets, and I want to help as many founders as I can with my writing.
Whenever I “fall down,” I’ll remember to get back on the moped and ride it to the end.
If you’ve read this far, thank you. I hope to share more of these personal posts from time to time when I feel motivated to share.
That’s all for now. Look out for an email in your inbox tomorrow morning!
Freddie just feel welcome to help us know
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