📌 Through the looking glass 🔎— TBV’s 2022 in review
Recapping some memorable times with Textbook Ventures
Looking back on an eventful year💡
In a familiar sense to past year-in-reviews, I find that there is a timely space carved for reflection to revisit and celebrate a year gone by. In 2022, TBV embraced a blend of digital and in-person events, connecting many students to leading startups and VCs. From publications, industry workshops and case competitions, Textbook Ventures had another purposeful year to further our mission of empowering students across universities to embrace their own personal success stories.
So…what happened in 2022 🎉
At TBV, we’ve been delighted to serve students and aspiring operators and founders for another year. A big thank you to our amazing partners and engaged community, where every year has been more exciting and purpose-driven! After a jam-packed year, we wanted to share some of our other successes for 2022 including continuing our Student & Founder Spotlight medium series garnering over 10,000 unique reads and curated 43 weekly newsletter issues over the past year.
Let’s flashback and break down the community initiatives the team ran in 2022 🔙
How did we go about this? Inform > Connect > Engage
Founder’s Journey & Operator Panel Series 🗓
We started the year strong with our Founders in Healthtech event showcasing founders Tim Doyle of Eucalyptus and Dr. Thomas Kelly of Heidi Health. Demystifying and uncovering the insights and secrets of the path from zero-to-one can be particularly revealing- echoing the salient point that founders aren’t without their teams. The origin story, founder motivations, and team-building journeys were charted in several of our sessions including our talk with the founders of Gamurs Group and Shippit. Check out our full learnings and recaps by Sam and Paul.
In addition to our vertical-specific industry events, we shone a spotlight on creators at the forefront of investing and media, learning from operators on what it means to be a T-shaped generalist and investors in Web3 on how to identify formidable founders seated across the table during the downturn. These included partnered panel sessions with Startmate, Aura Ventures, Curiosity Center and Minnow.
Startup Careers Fair 👥
We brought back to life our in-person flagship Careers Fair run jointly with Startup Link, Aura Ventures and Earlywork! Imagine this, take 5 rounds of 10min speed interviews and networking with rocketship startups. A combined effort that connected students to Atlassian, Airwallex, Lygon, Propeller Aero, Morse Micro and more than 20 other rocketship startups and tech companies, with 80+ student attendees from UQ, UTS, UNSW and USYD.
🎥 Check-out Chriso’s vlog of the event here.
Startup & Venture Capital Case Challenges
In true case competition fashion, Textbook Ventures ran our first transnational case challenge Growth Marketing Competition alongside Startup Club New Zealand giving students the opportunity to devise a growth strategy for the NZ startup eVouch.
The Venture Capital Case Challenge with Folklore Ventures was in its second-year running, inviting students to think and operate as investment associates with a showcase of startups and founders- Shanya Suppasiritad of Rntr., Mihailo Bozic of Envited and Danielle Whitford from Pioneera.
🎥 Check-out Chriso’s vlog of the event here
Here are some enduring takeaways from a meaningful year:
- Distribution is key: the process of disseminating content and collateral is effectively the driver of word-of-mouth and traction. From our TBV x Curiosity Center’s Future of the Creator Economy Roundtable, creation is the first step, nailing distribution (i.e ensuring information is accessible to the relevant people) gets you the rest of the way.
- What can you be the best at: borrowed from Jim Collins’ Good to Great with his Hedgehog Concept- the goal is not to be the best, … it is an understanding of what you can be the best at. Too often, proliferation is misconstrued with value, effectively diluting efforts across areas of varying impact. With this, we have sunsetted a few initiatives and doubled down on the most impactful ones.
- How did you make them feel: with metrics and numbers aside, Mary Angelou shares a compelling learning of life — people will never forget how you made them feel. Central to culture-building and forming lasting relationships, questions arise— Did you connect with them? Did you make them feel valued? How did they feel?
- Talent can be nurtured: demystifying the founder’s journey and connecting with fellow founders and operators can potentially be course-correcting and awaken a new possibility that prompts in others the counterfactual question of “What if…?”. Tyler Cowen’s take on identifying talent has been central to the mission of TBV. It is at those critical intersections, we can decide and raise the aspirations of other people significantly…simply by showing they do something better or more ambitious than what they might have in mind. For those who identify it within themselves, keep at it and find your edge.
A conversation or an immersive experience during university can change the trajectory of one’s vision for themselves. If not, at least question and pique one's curiosity about the possibilities of alternative paths. The magic of charting journeys and connecting other students across university campuses felt particularly momentous this year. All this, could not have been done without an incredible team!
0️⃣ ➡1️⃣ 2023 Onwards 🚀
Moving forward, TBV is committed to giving students the tools they need to take charge of their own success stories.
The 2023 TBV team co-led by brilliant minds Paul Park and Rodger Liang, is actively recruiting for young and ambitious students curious and passionate about tech and startups. With an exciting event line-up of pitch competitions, hackathons and more- be sure to check out the role descriptions here and to apply below👇
Application form: https://forms.gle/DLfuA9KGcWDMUrmY6
