Difference between revisions of "Organization:Dorm Room Fund"

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[[File:DormRoomFundLogo.png|thumb|right|300px]]
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= Overview =
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== Overview ==
  
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<span style="font-size:medium;"><span style="color: rgb(50, 50, 50); line-height: 28px;">Dorm Room Fund (DRF) is a student-run venture firm that invests in student-run companies. Launched in September 2012 they have since grown at an astounding rate. Backed by&nbsp;</span>[http://firstround.com/ First Round Capital]&nbsp;they provide&nbsp;<span style="color: rgb(50, 50, 50); font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; line-height: 28px;">average investments of $15,000 - $20,000 for students run start-ups.&nbsp;</span><span style="color: rgb(50, 50, 50); line-height: 28px;">They're overall mission is to inspire and support more careers in the startup industry. Apart from funding DRF also offers their members&nbsp;</span><span style="color: rgb(50, 50, 50); font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; line-height: 28px;">discounts and partnerships with premier service providers, PR,&nbsp;</span>[http://dormroomfund.com/about#advisors mentorship from their incredible RAs]<span style="color: rgb(50, 50, 50); font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; line-height: 28px;">, DRF events, and access to a national network of other amazing student entrepreneurs.</span><span style="color: rgb(50, 50, 50); line-height: 28px;">&nbsp;&nbsp;They currently have student groups&nbsp;</span><span style="color: rgb(50, 50, 50); font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; line-height: 28px;">based out of&nbsp;</span>[http://dormroomfund.com/newyork New York City]<span style="color: rgb(50, 50, 50); font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; line-height: 28px;">,&nbsp;</span>[http://dormroomfund.com/bayarea San Francisco Bay Area]<span style="color: rgb(50, 50, 50); font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; line-height: 28px;">,&nbsp;</span>[http://dormroomfund.com/philly Philadelphia]<span style="color: rgb(50, 50, 50); font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; line-height: 28px;">, and&nbsp;</span>[http://dormroomfund.com/boston Boston]<span style="color: rgb(50, 50, 50); font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; line-height: 28px;">.&nbsp;</span></span>
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-198f9028-de14-0153-9143-ffbfe260f63e"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dorm Room Fund (DRF) is a five-year-old venture capital firm that invests in student founded companies. The firm, backed by First Round Capital, invests in companies where at least one founding member is a student, undergraduate or graduate. DRF’s investment teams consist of small committees of students on campuses in the New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and the Bay Area. Each investment team is given $500,000 to invest in student-run startups in order to bring their ideas from the “dorm to the market.”</span></span>
  
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= Purpose =
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== The Program ==
  
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<span style="font-size:medium;"><span style="color: rgb(50, 50, 50); font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; line-height: 28px;">The main purpose of DRF is to help student founders take their ideas from their dorm room to the market while providing their members with an entrepreneurial education. Their main ways of achieving this are through investments and access to their huge support network and vast recources. All the DRF investors are students so it really is a organization for students ran by students. &nbsp;</span></span>
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-198f9028-de14-368a-bdbe-675fcea3cefa"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Once accepted into the program, founders are given access to all of the resources at DRF. On top of providing $20,000 of capital, DRF investment partners meet regularly with founders to help them learn fundraising, launch strategy, growth, and hiring. In addition, DRF connects founders to a vibrant community of talented entrepreneurs, world-class advisors, investors, industry leaders, and mentors to help them solve their key problems. &nbsp;</span></span>
  
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= Distinct Differences From Other Offerings =
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=== <span style="font-size:large;"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">'''Stats'''</span></span> ===
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<ul style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;">
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<li><span style="color:#000000;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-198f9028-de1d-beb9-fa6f-43e9b5f372d7"><span style="font-size: 11pt; background-color: transparent; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; background-color: transparent;">DRF has invested in 150 startups that have gone on to raise over $300 million in additional funding from Andreessen Horowitz, First Round Capital, Union Square Ventures, Sequoia Capital and more. Here are a few of those startups:</span></span></span></span></li>
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</ul>
  
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== '''How It Is Run'''<br/> ==
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[[File:Partners.png|border|center|Partners.png]]
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<ul style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;">
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<li><span style="color:#000000;"><span><span style="font-size: 11pt; background-color: transparent; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">DRF represented the largest community in Y Combinator's Spring 2017 batch with 8 startups.</span></span></span></li>
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<li><span style="color:#000000;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-198f9028-de1d-beb9-fa6f-43e9b5f372d7"><span style="font-size: 11pt; background-color: transparent; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Over $1 billion in value has been created by DRF companies. With multiple portfolio companies raising rounds of over $10 million within the last 6 months alone, students are rapidly building some of the most promising companies in the country.</span></span></span></li>
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<li><span style="color:#000000;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-198f9028-de1d-beb9-fa6f-43e9b5f372d7"><span style="font-size: 11pt; background-color: transparent; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Student founders come from schools all across North America:</span></span></span></li>
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</ul>
  
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<span style="font-size:medium;">What start-ups the DRF invests in is entirely decided upon by the student investors. This means that the investors can really relate to both what other students are trying to do and the problems they may encounter. &nbsp;By using this approach to start up investment it gives the DRF a very different way of looking at start-ups compared to the traditional investment teams. &nbsp;&nbsp;</span>
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[[File:Schools.png|border|center|Schools.png]]
  
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== '''Financing''' ==
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=== <span style="font-size:large;">'''How to Apply&nbsp;'''</span> ===
  
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<span style="font-size:medium;"><span style="font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; line-height: 28px;">They invest on a founder-friendly uncapped convertible note. What&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: 'Open Sans', 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 28px;">this means that an investor loans money to a startup, but instead of receiving their money back after a certain time period, the note converts into stock.&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: 'Open Sans', 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 28px;">However, if the startup is successful without raising additional capital or pursuing equity financing, the note may not convert and the startup can choose to simply repay the note plus a very nominal (around 2%) interest rate. At Dorm Room Fund they try very hard to operate as transparently as possible so that every aspect of their terms are clear and understood.&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: 'Open Sans', 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 28px;">Knowing that some companies won’t work out, they realize that a failed company is not the same as a failed entrepreneur. As long as we all learned something, they view this money as tuition paid toward an entrepreneurial education – for everyone involved. So, if it turns out that your company does not explode into the next billion dollar business and instead fails, the Dorm Room Fund takes a loss and the founders DO NOT need to repay the money whatsoever.</span></span>
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-198f9028-de1a-5059-00c2-0c8aeafcff54"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Student founders can submit an application to the DRF website with the option to include a pitch deck. The website stresses the importance of two main components in an application. The first thing partners look for is a strategy for how the company plans to grow either capital or users quickly and effectively. The second thing they look for is where the ideas are coming from. DRF partners want to have faith in the success of the people they are investing in. Based off of these criteria, the investment partners decide whether or not a startup should join DRF's program.</span></span>
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<div><br/></div>
 
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= Impact Achieved For Students and Campus =
 
  
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Even thought they are a farily young program DRF has already funded 24 companies. The successfulones can all be viewed at DRFs [http://dormroomfund.com/portfolio, portfolio page]&nbsp;or in the galary below. Their portfolio CEO's come from a variety of schools which include Upenn, Columbia, Stanford, UC Berkeley, NYU, Dartmouth, MIT, and Princeton.&nbsp; <gallery>
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== Contact'''&nbsp;''' ==
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[[File:Screen Shot 2013-10-03 at 5.55.25 PM.png]]</gallery>
 
  
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[https://dormroomfund.com/ <span id="docs-internal-guid-198f9028-ddfc-152c-bbf9-e2ef1ed5c871"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(45, 86, 136); background-color: transparent; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Website</span><span style="text-decoration-line: underline; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(17, 85, 204); background-color: transparent; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></span>]
  
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[https://www.facebook.com/DormRoomFund <span id="docs-internal-guid-198f9028-ddfc-152c-bbf9-e2ef1ed5c871"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(45, 86, 136); background-color: transparent; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Facebook</span><span style="text-decoration-line: underline; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(17, 85, 204); background-color: transparent; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></span>]
  
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= Steps Required To Bring Resource to Campus =
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[https://twitter.com/DormRoomFund <span id="docs-internal-guid-198f9028-ddfc-152c-bbf9-e2ef1ed5c871"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(45, 86, 136); background-color: transparent; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Twitter</span></span>]
  
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= Contact Information =
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[https://medium.com/@dormroomfund <span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(45, 86, 136); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Medium Blog</span>]
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<div>Last Edited by: [http://universityinnovation.org/wiki/Cheyanne_Wheat Cheyanne Wheat], [http://universityinnovation.org/wiki/Liyang_Feng Liyang Feng], [http://universityinnovation.org/wiki/Joshua_Lim Joshua Lim]</div>
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[[Category:Organizations]]

Latest revision as of 10:59, 2 June 2020

DRF.png

Overview

Dorm Room Fund (DRF) is a five-year-old venture capital firm that invests in student founded companies. The firm, backed by First Round Capital, invests in companies where at least one founding member is a student, undergraduate or graduate. DRF’s investment teams consist of small committees of students on campuses in the New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and the Bay Area. Each investment team is given $500,000 to invest in student-run startups in order to bring their ideas from the “dorm to the market.”

The Program

Once accepted into the program, founders are given access to all of the resources at DRF. On top of providing $20,000 of capital, DRF investment partners meet regularly with founders to help them learn fundraising, launch strategy, growth, and hiring. In addition, DRF connects founders to a vibrant community of talented entrepreneurs, world-class advisors, investors, industry leaders, and mentors to help them solve their key problems.  

Stats

  • DRF has invested in 150 startups that have gone on to raise over $300 million in additional funding from Andreessen Horowitz, First Round Capital, Union Square Ventures, Sequoia Capital and more. Here are a few of those startups:
Partners.png
  • DRF represented the largest community in Y Combinator's Spring 2017 batch with 8 startups.
  • Over $1 billion in value has been created by DRF companies. With multiple portfolio companies raising rounds of over $10 million within the last 6 months alone, students are rapidly building some of the most promising companies in the country.
  • Student founders come from schools all across North America:
Schools.png

How to Apply 

Student founders can submit an application to the DRF website with the option to include a pitch deck. The website stresses the importance of two main components in an application. The first thing partners look for is a strategy for how the company plans to grow either capital or users quickly and effectively. The second thing they look for is where the ideas are coming from. DRF partners want to have faith in the success of the people they are investing in. Based off of these criteria, the investment partners decide whether or not a startup should join DRF's program.

Contact 

Website

Facebook

Twitter

Medium Blog

Last Edited by: Cheyanne Wheat, Liyang Feng, Joshua Lim
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