Welcome to Edition 007 of the No Cap Newsletter ! We’ll cover industry news, key program learnings, and of course, spotlight a RippleX Fellow doing awesome things! 💇‍♀️ New Year, New Look Kicking the year off with a brand new look of the RippleX Fellowship curated on Thinkific (link here ). The open-source model provides all students with access, in the hope to execute our vision of democratizing startup building and venture capital. Huge shoutout to Dom who spent his Winter holidays building out the newly revamped program. Take a look through his tweets as he shared his experience building and deploying his MVP. Take a peek and dive into the course: https://ripplexfellowship.thinkific.com/ If you want to join our Discord server, please ensure that you submit your profile to this Airtable and we will add you to the waiting list: https://airtable.com/shrypJUyacfDYxptJ 💸 So You Think You Can Invest? The RippleX Fellowship invites the brightest founders who are developing amazing companies but it also consists of some of the most ambitious students eager to support founders through their entrepreneurial journey. So let’s talk about why you want to be a VC. Here are a few tough questions to get you started: What have you done to validate your interest in the industry? Why do you want to be an investor instead of an operator? Why now? Have you worked at a VC-backed startup before? Have you networked with people in the industry and learned on your own time? What skills will you need to check off? Broaden your perspective of the world - be curious about everything and never leave a door closed Listening skills are KEY - be able to piece together fragmented information to drive a clear thesis Networking - be a genuine person to others, under-promising, and over-delivering Timing is essential. Although you may have everything completed and ready to go, here’s a brief timeline to when roles open up in a fund: A new fund is created VC Fund raises a new fund Analysts get promoted Someone quits Where do these jobs exist? Don’t underestimate your network - both founders and VC’s Here’s a gem that covers VC concepts and blogs all venture jobs: https://johngannonblog.com/ If you’re interested in VC, pave out your own path to show a fund that they should invest in you. We’re rooting for you! 🔮 Let’s Dive into Web3 If you jump on Twitter, it’ll be tough for you to not come across someone talking about web3 and its mystical powers to solve so many problems using this technology. It’s hard for the average person to understand what this noise is all about, so we took the initiative to write up a series of posts that dive into what’s actually inside the rabbit hole. Here’s a tough question you must be eager to ask: why does web3 matter? Let’s talk about it. Here are three core value propositions of Web3: Interoperability: If you wanted to switch from Spotify to Apple Music or vice versa, it would be a pain because you would have to remake all of your playlists, listening history, liked songs, and more. Now imagine if that wasn’t a problem to worry about. Web3 applications introduce a decentralized approach that enables you to switch between applications with ease. Low barriers to entry: Developers have a much lower barrier to entry when creating a Web 3 application because data is being shared at the protocol level (a set of rules that allow data to be shared between computers). In essence, this provides much more transparency and trust to create open-source applications that can be shared with everyone. Decentralization: Since Web 3 uses blockchain, data and computing power is not centralized like it is in Web 2. This means that there is no central point of failure and that there could be anywhere from 10 to 10 million individual computers validating transactions, storing data, or providing computing power to back the applications happening on Web 3. You must of course be curious to keep reading and learn more! Here is the link to the full article to keep you on your toes and answer your questions: https://bit.ly/3t4KWWZ 💡 Fellow Spotlight Steven Tey - Creator of DAO Central Although there is immense hype surrounding web3, the development of many technologies is still ongoing and we are just scratching the surface. Currently, the most promising projects are those that shake up current and familiar web2 platforms with a twist of web3 technology. Let us introduce you to DAO Central, the Product Hunt + Glassdoor for DAOs. In simplest terms, a DAO or Decentralized Autonomous Organization is a self-governing organization that enables members to work towards a mutual goal. Members (absolutely anyone) can contribute, participate in decisions, and be compensated for their contributions. We are excited to introduce Steven Tey, Creator of DAO Central from Cohort #6. This platform was curated through the curiosity to simply search a DAO by the emojis on Twitter. This led to a mission to “educate as many people as possible about DAOs and help DAOs find the best people to join their communities”. Beyond the platform, they also held a Founding Member NFT which sold out in just 90 minutes of their launch! Now, of course, it doesn’t end just there. Steven is also the Founder of One Word Domains - a platform to help you seek out brandable one-word domains for your next startup idea. It started off as a week-long project that led to over 50K users, 200K views, and ranked #2 on Product Hunt winning the Product Hunt Golden Kitty Award. See what Steven said about his experience with the fellowship program 👇 “RippleX has been a truly transformative experience for me – both as a founder and an angel investor. It has taught me the technicalities of fundraising from both ends of the table, which is really helpful for me as I raise money down the line.” Interested in being featured? Looking to share exciting news? Please reach out to Turja at turja@rippleventures.com. Authored by Turja Chowdhury (Cohort #9).