The V1 Startup Fair, hosted at the Ross School of Business on November 16, featured a keynote address by Peter Levine, general partner at Andreesen Horowitz, as well as booths from 15 startups seeking employees. The event, hosted by V1, a community at the University of Michigan for “ambitious student builders”, connected students seeking full time and internship roles in engineering, product, UI/UX, and other fields to startups in various emerging tech industries. The Fair included virtual booths, Tech Talks, and networking opportunities. Students heard directly from company speakers to learn more about emerging technologies and the startup ecosystem.
As general partner at Andreesen Horowitz, also known as a16z, keynote speaker Peter Levine has led the firm’s investment in Figma, recently acquired by Adobe for $20B, and GitHub, which was acquired by Microsoft for $7.5B. Other major investments include People.ai, an enterprise AI startup which recently received $100M in Series D funding, and Mixpanel, an analytics startup with a recent round of $200M in Series C funding. A16z’s investment thesis places emphasis on the firm’s “venture mindset that supports long-term vision and greater innovation risks”, an idea that Levine stressed in his keynote address to students at the V1 Startup Fair.
In his keynote address, Levine provided advice to students seeking careers in the exciting but sometimes daunting startup space. He advised “You should only join a startup if you’re actually interested in being at a startup…If you don’t enjoy something, you’re not going to be great at it.” He also stressed to the mix of undergraduate and graduate students in attendance that early in their career is actually the best time to join startups, when they have fewer responsibilities and are less susceptible to risk.
Levine also touched on the recent economic climate that has been impacting funding for tech startups. His opinion is that while startup funding is harder to come by compared to a year ago, those that are funded have the unique advantage of the time and space:“When money is scarce, you just have fewer companies that get funded, so you have more time and freedom to innovate without worrying about N number of companies competing with you”. He cited stories of tech companies that were founded in economic downturns, including unicorns like Airbnb, Slack, and Uber, all founded in the wake of the 2008 recession, or enterprise tech companies like Microsoft, founded during the 1975 oil embargo recession. Unlike in the past few years where startups were being funded nearly uncontrollably and the market grew crowded with well-funded players that were indistinguishable from one another, Levine urged students to continue to pursue roles in the startup space and take advantage of the unique opportunities available.