Democratizing access to Startups and Venture Capital with Dominic Lau, Founder of RippleX

Today we take a deep dive into the Ripple X Fellowship, with its Founder, Dominic Lau. The world of startups and venture capital can be the road to providing immense value to consumers, founders, and investors, but it also can look like a brick wall to those without insight, connections, or knowledge of it all works. The RippleX Fellowship program gives students looking to become Founders and Investors access to that knowledge, as well as, a cohort of like-minded people to collaborate with.

Founded in 2019, the RippleX Fellowship recently launched its tenth cohort and is now making its curriculum open to the public at ripplexfellowship.thinkific.com for students globally to help democratize access to startups and venture capital.

About Dominic Lau:
Dom joined Ripple Ventures as its first employee right after graduating from Waterloo and has been an integral part of building the firm from day one. He is Principal at Ripple Ventures and runs the RippleX Fellowship and is a Board member on several of Ripple’s Portfolio companies.

In this episode we discuss:

01:30 Dom’s background and why he wanted to jump into Venture investing

02:43 How he got hired at Ripple Ventures

04:02 Why Dom started the RippleX Fellowship

07:46 What it was like to launch the first RippleX cohort

10:19 How the program has evolved over the years

11:51 How the fellowship grew to beyond Matt and Dom’s personal networks and into the US

13:08 The pitch to participants to get them to apply and thrive in the program

14:40 Success stories from the RippleX Fellowship

18:05 Other benefits of participation in the fellowship

19:22 The importance of the alumni network

22:00 Focus of the 10th cohort and moving forward

24:33 Why Dom decided to open up the curriculum to anyone

27:21 The importance of persistence when applying to programs like the RippleX Fellowship

28:15 The long-term vision of the RippleX Fellowship

29:03 Why the RippleX Fellowship prides themselves on diversity

Fast Favorites
Podcast
Beautiful Stories from Anonymous People

Newsletter/Blog
Veradi Verdict

Tech Gadget
Ninja Coffeemaker

New Trend
Web3 Gaming (Here’s Dom’s Blog Series on Web3)

Book
Maybe You Should Talk To Someone

Life Lesson
Momentum is Everything

Follow Matt Cohen and Tank Talks here!

Podcast production support provided by Agentbee.Agency