Eleven Next Generation Tech Leaders

Just over three years ago, we created Rough Draft Ventures with the idea that talented students could support fellow student entrepreneurs. By joining our student team, these leaders would help their peers receive up to $25,000 to grow their business, while gaining in-depth exposure to the different strategies, challenges, successes, and lessons to be learned when getting a new company off the ground. Our first student team members (RDV ’13) have experiences across companies including Instagram, Snapchat, Uber, PillPack and Microsoft — they are truly the next generation of leaders across in technology. Emma Tangoren: This Boston University alum rallied the entrepreneurship community across campus, gaining marketing experience at Foursquare, Uber, General Assembly and Etsy. After graduation, she joined Kickstarter as one of their first Product Marketing Managers. Emma recently moved to San Francisco where she now works at Instagram. Kathryn Siegel: While at MIT earning both her bachelors and masters in computer science, Katie worked with the MIT Media Lab as an iOS Developer, created the Rails app for Square when working with their Information Security team, developed the website for the MIT Entrepreneurship center, and worked on the development of the Mailbox App for Dropbox. Katie has been working with the MemSQL team as a software engineer in San Francisco. Kasey Uhlenhuth: Kasey studied computer science at Harvard College, while building a wealth of skills in web development, user interface design, and app development through her work at biomentrics and construction firms SilviaTerra and COINS. At Volition Capital, she helped build a tool integrated with Salesforce to focus their company sourcing. After graduation, Kasey joined Microsoft in Seattle as a program manager where she actively blogs and produces videos of her work for their Visual Studio. John Brennan: John started a company during his sophomore year at Tufts University which led to an interest in consumer tech and ultimately him joining Twitter during the spring of his junior year. He spent time in their Boston office while he finished his degree and then transferred to their New York office after graduation. He joined Snapchat in late 2014 where he now focuses on sports partnerships. Zach Hamed: Zach has focused on development and design, through experience at Jawbone as a front-end developer, part of the Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB)’s first design fellowship, pairing the best student designers with portfolio companies. Zach started Bowery, an RDV company looking to expedite the coding process by creating on-demand developer environments, receiving a Thiel Fellowship before graduating. He recently joined Goldman Sachs as a Product Manager to work on an internal project to help open-source their trading technology. Delian Asparahouv: When we met Delian, he was involved in MIT StartLabs, and initiatives to encourage entrepreneurship within MIT and the broader community. Delian spearheaded their startup career fair with over 60 companies and 400 students. Out of MIT StartLabs, Delian was also building Nightingale, a software platform to simplify behavioral therapy tracking. In less than a year, Delian transitioned from full time student to full time founder, receiving the Thiel fellowship and joining YC upon moving to the west coast. Turner Bohlen: Turner studied Physics at MIT, while developing his technical skills as both mobile and web app developers at startups in the bay area. During his junior year, Turner became the director of StartLabs, an MIT based student tech accelerator. At the same time, he co-founded Spokes America, a collaboration with edX and Teach for America, among others to rethink STEM education. He begun his full time career as an application engineer for cloud collaboration tool startup Flux Factory, before transitioning to work on his education focused startup, Beagle Learning. Juliana Nazare: Juliana studied at the Olin College of Engineering, where she looked to bridge the gap between Olin students and the greater entrepreneurship community. As a board member at the Olin Foundry, she oversaw initiatives such as the Olin Startup Fair. At the same time, Juliana ran a part time program at the Boston born Startup Institute, helping non-technical students learn programming basics. Upon graduating, Juliana joined the MIT Media Lab to research using technology to help adults with literacy skills. Pratik Agarwal: Pratik moved to the U.S. to attend HBS, after co-founding two companies in India, in the education and media spaces. He spent the summer in San Francisco at Airbnb, focused on mobile growth strategy, and was awarded the KPCB Product Fellowship at graduation, where he made the full time move to lead product at edtech company, Remind. He recently moved back to India to take on an early investing role at SAIF Partners , a leading private equity firm for companies based in Asia. Jacob Mulligan: During his fourth year at Northeastern, Jacob had honed his product skills, and applied them as an in house developer at TechStars’ HackStar program, where he worked with a few of the incubator’s companies to help with design and product development. He spent time with one company in particular that stood out to him based on the team and the problem they were trying to solve around health care. Jacob joined Pillpack that spring as their first employee. Looking to join our community and connect with student entrepreneurs like these? 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