{"id":40882,"date":"2024-12-04T16:25:10","date_gmt":"2024-12-04T21:25:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/company\/stories\/dorm-room-funds-molly-fowler-on-finding-founders-off-the-grid-cornell-tech-bloomberg\/"},"modified":"2025-03-18T13:10:42","modified_gmt":"2025-03-18T17:10:42","slug":"dorm-room-funds-molly-fowler-on-finding-founders-off-the-grid-cornell-tech-bloomberg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/company\/stories\/dorm-room-funds-molly-fowler-on-finding-founders-off-the-grid-cornell-tech-bloomberg\/","title":{"rendered":"Dorm Room Fund\u2019s Molly Fowler on finding founders \u201coff the grid\u201d (Cornell Tech @ Bloomberg)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Molly Fowler, General Partner of Dorm Room Fund<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n
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Student entrepreneurship is an integral part of America\u2019s startup scene. But when Dorm Room Fund (DRF) launched in 2012, the $20,000 investments it made in university-based founders represented a novel idea.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a clear \u201cculture around starting companies\u201d on numerous school campuses, says Molly Fowler, a founding partner of DRF, which spun off from First Round Capital in 2021 as its own independent fund. That culture is \u201chard to manufacture,\u201d which is why funds like hers have found these resources so valuable to tap into.<\/p>\n

Twelve years after those first checks, DRF now offers funding to student entrepreneurs between $40,000 and $200,000 \u2013 along with access to a network of experts and mentorship opportunities. To date, the fund has supported more than 400 students \u2013 from undergrads to Ph.D. candidates, along with both recent graduates and dropouts.<\/p>\n

Fowler was tapped to lead DRF in 2019. With her at the helm, the fund has helped its portfolio companies raise billions in follow-on capital from leading venture capital firms. Its success stories include Toni Oloko of Dandy<\/a>, a dental startup, and Michael Truell of Cursor<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Fowler joined Sonali Basak, lead global finance correspondent for Bloomberg TV and anchor for \u201cBloomberg Open Interest,\u201d at Bloomberg\u2019s Park Avenue office in New York City on Tuesday, October 29th, 2024, for a conversation as part of the Cornell Tech @ Bloomberg Speaker Series<\/a>. She shared lessons from her origins working in California politics, how DRF chooses promising founders, and what she hopes the future holds for the country\u2019s original student venture fund.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n

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From the campaign trail to the private sector<\/h2>\n

Fowler started her career in politics, working as a campaign manager for Congressional and City Council races in California. She worked on Eric Garcetti\u2019s successful bid for Mayor of Los Angeles, an experience that served her well as she moved into her next vocation, which involved building teams and raising funds towards a shared goal.<\/p>\n

\u201cI loved it because it was so scrappy, and you were starting from nothing, and you had to build your team and manage your burn and figure out who your users are. And your candidates were your product,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

As part of Fowler\u2019s policy portfolio for then-Mayor Garcetti, she found herself working on implementing Google Fiber. An introduction to a private-sector company endeavoring to do something similar in New York City enticed her to leave the public sector and return to the East Coast, where she\u2019d grown up.<\/p>\n

Fowler got the call to join DRF on the recommendation of a close friend. The position fit her skillset as a former campaign field director well, Fowler thought, but she\u2019d never worked at a venture fund. She refers to her initial time at DRF as \u201can accelerated bootcamp.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s been really interesting to see how what I learned there has already morphed so much,\u201d she says, \u201ceven in terms of how New York is positioned in the tech world, and how much that\u2019s changed even over the last five years.\u201d<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n

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Dorm Room Fund’s Molly Fowler (right) talking with Sonali Basak, lead global finance correspondent for Bloomberg TV and anchor for \u201cBloomberg Open Interest,\u201d on stage during the Cornell Tech @ Bloomberg Speaker Series event at Bloomberg\u2019s Park Avenue office in New York City on Tuesday, October 29th, 2024.<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n
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Prioritizing access to talent and cutting-edge research<\/h2>\n

The concept for Dorm Room Fund was conceived in 2012 by venture capitalist Josh Kopelman, the founder of First Round Capital. Kopelman noted that many major tech companies had been launched by college dropouts, or people in close proximity to university communities, including Facebook, Microsoft, and Google.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s this unfair advantage that universities give to founders who want to start companies,\u201d says Fowler. \u201cThere\u2019s access to talent, there\u2019s time to build, there are places to build, there are resources, there\u2019s cutting-edge research.\u201d<\/p>\n

If so many companies were coming out of these ecosystems, Kopelman theorized that students might be better at identifying their promise than the established mainstream. The experiment would be to leverage students\u2019 connections, give them some guidance, and ask them to find the most interesting startup ideas on campus.<\/p>\n

The company started with just half a million dollars in Philadelphia, then expanded to New York, Boston, and San Francisco. In 2020, DRF went national; a year later it spun off from First Capital into its own entity. Today, Dorm Room Fund focuses on pre-seed and sometimes even pre- pre-seed startups.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re investing at the stage when a founder has a problem that they\u2019re just completely obsessed with,\u201d says Fowler. \u201cOne of the cool things that we\u2019re doing is making a bet on the founder\u201d as much as their business idea.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n

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Finding founders \u201coff the grid\u201d<\/h2>\n

DRF accepts around 30 students out of some 1,200 applicants to work with the fund as part of its student investment team. As Fowler notes, the program can often be more competitive than the schools the students are attending. But working with those team members is the best part of her job, she says. \u201cI get to work with the smartest people in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

The DRF network is also wide: Since Kopelman first founded the fund in 2012, more than 350 alumni have graduated the program, a portion of whom are now partners at top-tier VC funds or founders of unicorn startups. This alumni network can be particularly useful considering how early the fund\u2019s investees get started.<\/p>\n

As Fowler says, funding startups in their infancy requires DRF to spend significant time and effort on support \u2014 support that is much easier to offer with such a wealth of experience on call.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a group, we don\u2019t tend to rely on those [campus-based] institutional startup organizations, because we tend to find that a lot of great founders are still off the grid, building things in their dorm rooms,\u201d says Fowler. \u201cAnd that\u2019s why we like to find them the way we do.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Dorm Room Fund grows, Fowler says she\u2019s focused on maintaining the firm\u2019s unique culture. She\u2019s also committed to continuing to foster the culture within American universities that makes them breeding grounds for inventive startups.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re looking at people who aren\u2019t doing all the cookie cutter things that you\u2019re supposed to do to be successful in our culture,\u201d she says. \u201cBut they end up doing really interesting and successful things because they\u2019re a little different.\u201d<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n

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You can watch\u00a0the entire discussion below:<\/em><\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n