Meet Vincent Po, Head of the Neo Scholars program this Sunday!
Exciting week ahead for V1: hosting Head of Neo Scholars on Sunday & info session for an $100K fund! Plus, a look back on our trek to New York and our AMA last week.
Ship-It Sunday ft. Vincent Po
After graduating from Princeton, for four years, Vincent Po traveled the world to photograph weddings for free for young couples in exchange for staying with them for two weeks around their wedding and hearing their story. This unique job took him to Mexico, Slovakia, and South Africa and led to him featured on the New York Times.
After the four years, however, Vincent took a different direction in his career. He became head of the Neo Scholars Program, one of the most prestigious communities in tech, backing the brightest young talent in the world. Neo Scholars have gone on to found companies like Cursor and Cognition and work at rocket-ship startups like Kalshi and OpenAI.
How did Vincent’s Portraits of a Young Couple come to be? How did his business model of room and board in exchange for wedding photography work? How did he pivot and became organizer for the hottest hub of tomorrow’s tech talent?
Vincent will be hosting Ship-it Sunday this week. Find out the answers to all these questions on April 6th in North Quad Room 1255!
Critical Ventures: Pitch Competition Info Session
If you are a builder who wants to make a real impact in society with tech (education, climate change, healthcare, economic mobility, etc.), then this is your time to shine! Critical Ventures is excited to announce its inaugural University Impact Prize — a national pitch competition with $125K in prizes.
Partnered with Michael Baum (founder of Splunk, acquired for $28B) and top investors from Khosla Ventures, General Catalyst, and Lowercarbon Capital, the pitch competition aims to activate founders who wish to drive the world with their own hands. Join us for an info session on the competition on April 8th for more details and to meet other like-minded social entrepreneurs!
Annnnd, there will be food…
V1’s Trek to New York City
Two weekends ago, 62 members of V1 flew to New York City and got to work: we visited 11 fast-growing startup companies that range from having just raised their seed round to being valued at $13 Billion!
On Thursday, we were grateful to be hosted by Pinecone, BoxGroup, and OpenYield for lunch and followed it up with visits to Clay and POSH in the afternoon – when was the last time you saw a DJ deck in an office? 🎛️
Later in the evening, we stopped by Shade’s beautiful office on Broadway. Founded by V1’s very own alum Brandon Fan, Shade went from being built in UMich’s library basement to raising a seed round with a team of 10+ people. V1 Members heard all about Shade’s journey building asset management software for film studios, and their ups and downs along the way.
On Friday, V1 visited Dirac’s office in the Empire State Building (and got exclusive access to its gym!) before reuniting with our alumni working at Ramp – where we heard from a panel of 6 engineers that helped shape Ramp into the $13B unicorn. Finally, we wrapped up the trip by visiting Lumos, TextQL, and GovDash (we sat in on a live code-review session!), and stopped by the creator space Verci.
Keep an eye out for more content from the trip on our social media! 👀
V1 x Telora
Eliam Medina, co-founder of Telora, an early-talent incubator visited V1 last Wednesday and met builders in the community. Eliam shared the untold stories behind what it was like to sell a startup to MetLife, how he started the incubator, and how he got to work as VP for Burger King.
Want to not miss out on an event like this? Subscribe now to stay up to date with what V1 is up to! Demo Day on April 17th is fast approaching – expect to hear from us very soon about how you will get to meet the most ambitious builders and creators on campus.