Need help - please help me review and sort my evidence

1

Hi all!

I’m looking at all the possible evidence I have, and am having a hard time figuring out what is the strongest evidence, and where it should be sorted (particularly around MC, OC1, OC3). I would love people’s thoughts on how to make the best application. I find the

Background: I am a former PhD scientist (2017-2020, quit to go into industry, graduate work was coding/stats/data science heavy and became world expert in the field), founder, and current VC, planning on joining a company as COO. I am not applying as a VC, but rather as a founder/COO on the business track. Because of my varied background, my evidence is also very across the board, and it is making it difficult for me to understand how to best utilize and sort it.

If you had this evidence, what evidence would you choose, and which OC would you put each piece of evidence in? Also, it is ok to have more than two OC represented, correct?

Evidence

For this first batch, most would fit into MC, or OC1 or OC3, but I find it very difficult to understand those three categories since they seem quite vague and open to interpretation.

  1. “Contributions to the ecosystem” letters – I could get 3 pages of short glowing recommendations from other VCs, ranging from associates to partners, about how I interact with and contribute to the tech ecosystem. Was thinking about 10, each a paragraph or 2.

  2. Techstars guest investor - Letter from the managing partner of one of the major Techstars hubs talking about my contributions as a visiting investor (they invite outside investors for each cohort to give their opinion)

  3. Letter from former Principal at Techstars London and current founder talking about how I was an invaluable mentor in all things ESG for their cohort

  4. Letter from ESG founder out of Techstars saying his intent to bring me on as COO

  5. I was founder of former digital product company (edtech ) with 16k/month profits in first year (since shut down to go into venture)

  6. Letter of evidence from client of digital product company

  7. Images of company website

  8. Images of bank statements

  9. Member of Sandbox, selective group/ community of trailblazers, etc using technology to influence the world. Lots of 30U30 etc. Acceptance email. Letter of evidence from sandboxer.

  10. Letters of evidence and mentorship from founders – helped mentor their businesses (2 or 3 letters, should this be MC, OC1, OC2, or OC3)

  11. Acceptance to Venture Forward Academy – 1 in 20 VC women accepted

  12. Le wagon web dev certificate (dedication to continuous learning? Probably not actually a good piece of evidence.

Optional Criteria 2 – outside direct occupation

  1. Volunteer director of research for anti sexual abuse reporting technology NGO

  2. Letter of evidence from founder of NGO

  3. I am a mentor for the resolution Resolution Project (social ventures started by a VC, some of the projects involve tech, however some don’t, so not sure if I can include this.)

Optional Criteria 4 - Academia

  1. Peer reviewed paper – first author – Bayesian movement models on animal migration from satellite tag data – biotelemetry lab

  2. Peer reviewed paper – migratory connectivity for policy

  3. WWF article on Polar scientists of the future (2019) my niche being data visualization

  4. Letter from former PhD Advisor saying I was technically very gifted

  5. Talk for and Ecology Society on my research and grant

  6. Letter from WWF head saying my publication and data analytics was most successful ever and led to changes in laws (however, this publication was in 2018, but the impacts still continue to this day? Is this ok if it is a letter from the guy talking about my work, not the actual work?)

  7. Github repository

Thank you so much!! My brain has been twisting in knots and I very much value everyone’s input.

2

Hi

I don’t think a COO intent could be used as evidence.

You should focus on what you have done, e.g. previous COO

Also, Any media report about you could be very helpful if they highlight your past as a founder, etc.

3

Thanks! I only have media reports from my past career, unfortunately. Which can support the technical side of things even though it is academia so therefore not tech.

4

Your evidence are mostly reference letters. Aside the letters what other evidence to demonstrate you are a potential leader.

I don’t think you meet the criteria for OC4, it is clearly not related to tech. Analysing data during PhD is done across discipline. Your PhD supervisor just saying you are technically gifted doesn’t show that your work is ground breaking research in the field now digital technology? A letter of support from a research supervisor or other expert in your area of expertise affirming their potential world-class standard.

5

Thanks! I’m confused by the whole academia bit, because as far as I am aware, there is no field of academia that is in the field of digital technology. There’s comp sci departments, but that’s just programming, which is what I did, I just applied mine to animals and we used tech. I wish they would go into detail about what majors count! I was trying to use it show my technical abilities (and it was very successful) because I was the data scientist for the lab and I published data science related articles in peer reviewed journals.

Evidence I have is work with my own company and also the non profit.