New course introduces undergrads to world of venture capital

‘Classified’ is an occasional series spotlighting some of the more powerful lessons being taught in classrooms around Haas.

It’s an April afternoon and Joe Spector, BS 02, founder and CEO of online vet care company Dutch, is telling 44 Berkeley Haas undergraduate students in the new Introduction to Venture Capital class what makes for a good startup idea.

“Whether it’s software or a consumer product I ask, ‘Is this a gimmick?’” says Spector, who is also co-founder of Hims & Hers, a telehealth company that went public in 2021 in a $1.6 million SPAC merger. “Is this a real product? Do I see myself using it?”

Spector is one of 11 guest speakers invited throughout the semester by course instructor Julie Bell, BS 97, chief operating officer and partner at Emergence Capital since 2021. Bell is no stranger to good ideas: Emergence has funded dozens of them, recently raising a new $1 billion fund to keep investing in early-stage software companies. 

She’s now added teaching to her busy life and says she loves it. Her course, taught throughout this past spring semester, is a way to impart knowledge about venture capital to the next generation of venture investors and VC-backed founders. It’s also a realization of her own dream to make a difference for Haas students, a dream that included teaching.

‘A natural in the classroom’

As an undergrad in 1996, Bell enrolled in the first undergraduate business classes that Steve Etter ever taught at Haas.“I had never taken a finance class, but I absolutely loved it,” she says. “Steve’s approach to business and his use of real-world examples, cold calling, and the Socratic method. …I ate up every moment of it. It was my favorite class.” 

Decades later, Etter mentored Bell again on her first Haas teaching experience. He calls Bell, who remains full-time COO of Emergence while teaching, one of the top students he taught over the past 30 years. “Julie has it all,” says Etter, a continuing finance lecturer. “She is super intelligent, a natural leader, and plays with sharp elbows when needed. She’s a natural in the classroom and has a heck of a following from students. I love to see her fulfill her dream that started in my class a long time ago.”

Etter says he will never forget his first class with Bell. After the first question of the day, Bell “debated another student aggressively.” That student, Jerilyn Castillo McAniff, BS 97, became one of her best friends and is now a managing director at Oaktree Capital.

As a teacher, Bell has adopted Etter’s real-world approach, tapping her deep industry network to schedule speakers to help students understand all aspects of the VC industry over the 12 weeks of the course. 

Learning lessons

In her recent class, she and Spector discuss everything from raising capital (and burning through it) to their immigrant experiences (her family fled Russia when she was 3; he came to the U.S. from Uzbekistan at 7) to the challenge of changing online pharmacy regulatory laws to how he chose his VC partners.

Bell noted how Hims, as a startup, addressed a pain point—a universal startup challenge for all students interested in entrepreneurship. “You guys basically took the shame out of buying products that people were embarrassed to buy,” she says.

But Hims was no overnight success, Spector says. The company raised $550 million in venture capital and spent about $10 million a month on marketing. “I think there’s generational thinking that, ‘Oh, you just put it out to the world and it goes viral,’” he says. “You have to build products consumers love and then you have to make money. ‘I went viral on TikTok’ is the equivalent of people saying, ‘’I just got out of bed looking like this.’”

With lessons learned from Hims, Spector moved on to launch Dutch, which he says also fills a need he recognized during the pandemic when his family got a dog and was looking for a vet. “I couldn’t believe how expensive it was,” he said. About half of all Dutch’s new customers previously lacked a primary care vet, he said, adding that offering a more affordable monthly telehealth plan to pet owners made him proud of what he’d created.

After their discussion, Bell opens the class for student questions.

Leanid Palkhouski, BS 26, who grew up in Belarus, asks whether being an immigrant helped Spector to succeed. “Absolutely,” Spector says. “You have to overcome a lot of things, and I think that that skill set translates into taking a chance, taking risks, doing something new. I still feel like an outsider to some extent. …I think that the outsider mentality is helpful for sure.” 

Bell invited various VCs to speak throughout the spring semester. She kicked off with Brett Wilson, MBA 99, who discussed his experience as a VC-backed founder and CEO who took TubeMogul public and sold it to Adobe. He then became a seed investor in AI at Swift Ventures. Other speakers included Jéssica Leão of early-stage investor Decibel and Charles Hudson of Precursor Ventures.

After the final class discussion, Palkhouski, who is minoring in data science, posted on LinkedIn about his star-studded last day of classes. “Only in Berkeley in ONE day can you have Yazan ‘Yaz’ El-Baba from Emergence Capital at 2 p.m.; Aravind Srinivas from Perplexity at 5 p.m., and Konstantine Buhler from Sequoia Capital at 6 p.m.

Undergrads in the new ‘Intro to Venture Capital’ class. Photo: Jim Block

The daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants, Bell and her family lived first in an apartment in Oakland before moving to Moraga, where she attended high school. At Berkeley, she met her future husband, Chris Bell, also a student in Etter’s class who was sitting next to her. Before joining Emergence, she worked in private equity and at Bain & Co. 

“I had no idea what was possible (when I came to Cal),” she says. “I didn’t know what management consulting or investment banking was or what a VC was. …I had no idea. You only do what you know is possible.” 

She says that Haas showed her what was possible, which is why she wanted to give back. Teaching also sets an example for her two children, Elisha, 17, and Joshua, 15.

Bell says she’s thankful that her partners at Emergence have supported her decision to teach a class. The firm shares her commitment, she adds, and Emergence will offer scholarships to Haas undergraduates through a new Emergence Fellows program kicking off this year.

“I want to show these students what’s possible,” Bell says. “When you don’t come from that world when you don’t have parents or your parents’ best friends to show you it exists you just don’t know what is possible. Joe (Spector) said it. ‘You belong. You have just as much right to it as everybody else.’”