ASIF Ventures is a pre-seed venture capital fund supporting startups of students and recent graduates with funding, a community of young entrepreneurs and a network of VCs, industry experts and investors. The fund of €1 million is completely student run and backed up by the Amsterdam research universities. It was founded in 2017 and has been gaining popularity since with investments in promising start-ups, such as Lalaland, Dyme, Project Cece, and Bringly. The board of four students is supported by a group of 21 fellows in total, all of them trying to spur entrepreneurship in the student community of the amsterdam entrepreneurial ecosystem."
The fellowship is divided into four teams. All of the teams are responsible for different fields of the fund, but are equally vital for ASIF Venture’s success. In every team, fellows are presented with the opportunity to develop deep skills and expertise, while receiving ownership and responsibility for their activities. The first team is the Dealflow & Investment Team, who is responsible for scouting dealflow, portfolio management and writing investment theses. The Marketing & Media team is focusing on ASIF’s outreach across different communities and channels and creating relevant content. The Community, DE&I & Events team is responsible for creating and hosting all of the events throughout the year. Besides that they are tackling current issues, like a lack of female and LGBTQ+ founders in the entrepreneurial ecosystem. The last team, Finance & Operations, is responsible for closing sponsorships, expanding the angel investor network, and assisting portfolio companies with financial forecasting. Radu and Jasper are part of the Community, DE&I, and Events. Clair is part of the Finance & Operations team.
ASIF Ventures finely complements the Msc Entrepreneurship’s curriculum, oftentimes closing the gap between academic knowledge and the real-world business environment of start-ups. There were numerous times when attending a lecture helped us very shortly after with our activity within ASIF and, similarly, when being a part of ASIF made exams easier. Moreover, while the university curriculum focuses on the point of view of the entrepreneur, ASIF allowed us to have an insider peek behind the curtains of VCs, angel investors, incubators and accelerators, all a crucial part of the entrepreneurial journey.
Thus, whether it is learning from entrepreneurs that succeed (or fail) their pitch, having talks with Angels about the metrics they look for when choosing between investment strategies, or simply meeting like-minded people interested in the entrepreneurial scene of Amsterdam, ASIF proved to be a great activity to allocate a few hours of our weekly schedule to.