Summer Tales 2017
Discover FRV’s 1st cohort of student investors.
Spring 2017 was entirely dedicated to training and team building. This summer was all about preparing our future as a firm, but also as individuals. Most importantly, even though we were scattered across 4 continents, we strengthen our team synergy by all working towards one common goal: be ready for Front Row Ventures first year of operations.
Thus, I am delighted to finally introduce our brilliant team to the world. It was long overdue. And since actions matter more than words, discover our awesome team of 20 students through their summer accomplishments.
World — Meet the McGill Cluster
Name: Dan. Summer Location: Toronto / Montréal. Organization: Lumira Capital / McGill Vision Research.
Occupation: Due diligence on an antiviral company / Neuro-imaging & neurostimulation lab experiments. Pride: Finally closed the deal!
Lesson learned: VC > Lab.
Name: Wyn. Location: Shantou (China). Organization: McGill.
Occupation: Worked on my Mandarin, and on my research paper on China’s special economic zones. Pride: Mastering Mandarin. Lesson learned: Approach everything with an open mind.
Name: Jack. Location: San Francisco. Organization: Morris Grassfed Beef (might not be a unicorn, but has a lot of cows).
Occupation: Ranged from helping out with ranch work to re-imagining the farm’s business model. Pride: Contributing to the propagation of affordable, healthy and sustainable beef, and aiding in the success of small businesses and local com-munities. Lesson learned: Tech and old industries (i.e agricult-ure) interact in fraught ways, and rarely develop as expected but they are also ripe with potential.
Name: Kat. Location: Montréal.
Organization: Hopper.
Occupation: Hopper hustle 🐰, including some secret new projects! Taking summer classes at McGill and Concordia, including a field week at Kahnawake. Pride: Managing to work full time, take a semester’s worth of classes, and still enjoy my summer. Lesson learned: Balance is key.
Name: Makoto. Location: Paris / Montreal. Organization: Busbud / Seahub.
Occupation: Finished semester at HEC Paris. Came back to Montreal. Worked and then left Busbud. Joined Seahub as director of marketing. Pride: Month 8 of keeping up with my new year’s resolution of (averaging) one book a week! Lesson learned: It takes as much discipline to know when to stop working and take a break as it does to motivate yourself to start working in the first place.
Meet the Concordia Cluster
Name: Jazna. Location: Montréal. Organization: District 3 innovation center.
Occupation: Coordinate D3’s startup program & visited the fam in Italy. Pride: Snuck into a 5 star hotel on the amalfi coast and used their pool all day. Lesson learned: With confidence, anything is possible.
Name: Lucas. Location: Montréal. Organization: RBC.
Occupation: Wealth Management, excel hassle, and training the new intern. Traveled twice: to Corsica and to Lac St-Jean.😉 Pride: Built the ultimate, user-friendliest life insurance spreadsheet. Lesson learned: 1) How to use Excel in an efficient way. 2) How to train an intern with little previous knowledge about life insurance.
Name: Zack. Location: Montreal. Organization: Ritcher / Startupfest / Startup Open House.
Occupation: Helped with corporate tax year ends at Ritcher, then volunteered at Startupfest, and currently volunteering at Startup Open House. Pride: Met a ton of people from the startup community, connecting with some of the brightest minds in Montreal. Lesson learned: Montreal startup ecosystem is HUGE.
Name: Tim. Location: San Francisco. Organization: Google.
Occupation: Product manager on Android Go, Google’s version of Android. Single PM in charge of all of Google’s first party apps for Go due to my boss’paternity leave. Pride: Organizing Google’s first Cryptocurrency meetup, and getting over 200 people across several offices to attend. Lesson learned: Squeezing yourself into another team’s roadmap at a huge company. Oh and food trucks have the best food at the Googleplex!
Meet the HEC-Poly-UdeM Cluster
Name: Eva. Location: Montreal. Organization: Qube-4D / Pegasus Research & Technology / Polytechnique.
Occupation: Computer engineering intern for a graphic engine (immersive environments) and a small drone companies. Rocking a student international drone competition. And worked for a prof. Pride: Won “Best Presentation” award… with special S/O to my french accent. Lesson learned: You cannot be everyone or do everything. Set the priorities that fit with your values, and stick to them.
Name: Loïc B. Location: Montréal. Organization: Volume7.
Occupation: Coded (full stack) multiple web and mobile apps for startups. Pride: Positively impacting startups while improving my Javascript. Lesson learned: Understanding the struggles of startups, and how hard it is for them to define the right product.
Name: Romain. Location: Paris/Geneva. Organization: HEC Paris.
Occupation: Mergers and Acquisitions summer program. Started GMAT. Visited the fam in France and Switzerland. Pride: Met some great people from big banks at Canary Wharf (London). Lesson learned: Incredible and committed teachers is a game-changer for education. Demystified big financial institutions.
Name: Loic S. Location: Palo Alto. Organization: Stanford.
Occupation: Summer session at Stanford in computer science (#savage) and technology. Enrolled in the Silicon Valley Innovation Academy (SVIA), and started a HR company (looking for advice in iOS development btw). Pride: Won Judge’s choice (500 Startups) during demo night at SVIA. Lesson learned: Look for new perspectives, and meet incredible people by living in new places.
Name: Victor. Location: Palo Alto. Organization: Stanford.
Occupation: Intensive program in Technology and Innovation. SVIA with Loic S. Pride: Won Judge’s Choice & Overall excellence at the SVIA finale. Learned Javascript html and css in two months. Lesson learned: Kickstarting a startup is all about execution.
Meet the UQAM-ESG-ÉTS Cluster
Name: Sherif. Location: Montreal. Organization: ÉTS / Startupfest.
Occupation: PhD candidate in machine learning. Co-led the VIP Speaker Management Team @Startupfest. AI mentor @McGill’s AI for Social Good Hackathon. Pride: Published a conference paper. Mentored around 80 AI for good hackers. Lesson learned: Never stop exploring, learning, and optimizing. Career and passion alignment is crucial.
Name: Arthur. Location: Montreal / Paris / Copenhagen. Organization: ESG UQAM.
Occupation: Summer semester with classes for the TOEFL. Pride: Almost FR-EN bilingual. Selected for an ESG consultancy program in NYC. Visited the fam in Europe. Lesson learned: Life is moving quickly
Name: Therence. Location: Montréal. Organization: Institut de Recherche Clinique de Montréal (IRCM) / FounderFuel.
Occupation: Started a Ph.D. Spent the summer in the lab. Pride: Sufficient breakthroughs to summit my first publication by the end of the year! Lesson learned: Hard work and a bit of luck pay off. Most importantly, I know that I know nothing.
Meet Management
Name: Éléonore. Location: Montreal (The Great White North). Organization: Brightspark Ventures.
Occupation: Worked like a busy bee with the amazing team at Brightspark Ventures Pride: Not work related — but I started amateur boxing, and I’m actually pretty good at it (for a 5'2'’ girl)! Lesson learned: Boxing is like entrepreneurship in many ways — every round is a new battle and defeat is declared not when you fall, but when you can’t get up.
Name: Nicolas. Location: Libreville (Gabon). Organization: Maison de l’entrepreneuriat. Occupation: Write and execute an actionable strategy to provide resources to small and very small entrepreneurs. Approach strategic donors & partners to finance it. Pride: Contributed to building a better future for low-income, and marginalized Gaboneses. Didn’t pay a dime in bribes. Lesson learned: African entrepreneurs redefine hustling. Small things can become major differentiators.
Name: Raphael. Location: Montreal / Palo Alto & San Francisco. Organization: Volume7 / Stanford.
Occupation: Attended the intensive technology entrepreneurship program at Stanford. Met and worked with entrepreneurs and VCs in the bay area. Pride: Meeting lot of amazing people in the Valley. Lesson learned: Can’t be everywhere & do everything. It’s super hard to run an organization (i.e. FRV) with 20 people spread around the globe in different time zones.
The school year just began. You finally know our team. It’s time to make the magic happen. Get use to seeing us on campus because we’re here to stay, and be everywhere related to student, tech startups.
We won’t be able to make it alone though. Community development will be at the core of our activities. Stay tuned for our Facebook group and multiple get togethers. In the mean time, don’t hesitate to reach out: hello@frontrow.vc.
