Venture Cooperative

The Venture Cooperative is the most accessible onramp for venture capital.

We cultivate a community and provide free educational resources that make Laconia's investments, processes, and learnings accessible for the next generation of early stage investors.

All cooperative participants will receive opportunities to financially share in our success, participate in our investment processes, collaborate with us on due diligence, hear perspectives from industry leaders, share their expertise within the community, and collaborate with early stage founders.

Applications for Cohort 6 (Spring 2024) are open until February 21st. Applications submitted after the deadline will be considered for future cohorts.

If you're not quite ready to make the leap, you can join any of our public sessions and follow our content on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Historically, the venture capital industry has largely been premised on exclusion, artificial barriers to entry, and proximity to social & financial capital. In addition to creating an industry that is largely homogeneous, it has already resulted in a perpetual dearth of resources allocated to founders at the very earliest stages of their company growth, as capital repeatedly consolidates across fewer firms, larger vehicles, and later stages of company lifecycles.

We believe that empowering the double long-tail of builders and investors is critical to a dynamic and sustainable startup ecosystem. As regulatory changes and technological innovation decrease the structural barriers to investing, truly leveling the playing field will require bridging the institutional knowledge gap. With the Venture Cooperative, our goal is to eliminate the dichotomy of industry “insiders” and “outsiders” and make it easier for anyone to make the leap.

Selfishly, we have no doubt that if the Venture Cooperative works half as well as we hope, it will result in more startups for us to fund, more employees for our companies to hire, more investors for us to co-invest with, and higher returns.

Cohort 7 will take place from mid-October to mid-December of 2024. Applications for this cohort are open until September 22. Any applications submitted after this date will be considered for the next cohort (Spring 2025).

The cohort sessions are a true deep dive into the venture industry. These sessions will provide visibility into the specifics of Laconia’s strategy, perspective, and daily operations. A word of warning: if “liquidation preference”, “Limited Partnership Agreement”, “pro-forma cap table”, and “syndication” sound like gibberish to you, your learning curve will be steep. If you’re up for the challenge, our public sessions and onboarding materials will help you catch up.

These cohorts are ideal for individual investors (angel investing into startups or making Limited Partner investments into VC funds), aspiring fund investors (thinking about finding a job at an existing VC fund), and aspiring fund managers (considering starting their own VC fund).

That said, you are more than welcome to apply even if you don’t fit any of the buckets above! Founders looking to get inside a VC’s head, startup employees hoping to understand what goes on in Board meetings, career switchers, and curious minds are all welcome here 🤗

As a Venture Fellow, you will receive:

✅ an unfiltered view into how we operate at Laconia

✅ detailed insight on critical topics (legal, finance, portfolio construction, etc.)

✅ access to the Laconia team (through small group office hours and 1x1s)

✅ insights from expert guest speakers

✅ a community of 650+ fascinating people

✅ virtual and in-person event invitations

✅ opportunities to shadow live deals and lead Sector Deep Dives

✅ potential upside in our fund (if you source a deal we do, we will give you carry)

✅ accessible investment opportunities (if there's an opportunity for you to invest in our future funds, we would waive our investment minimum for you)

To get the most out of the program, we recommend 2-3 hours a week during the program.

Applications for our 7th cohort (Fall 2024) are open until September 22. Any applications submitted after that date will be considered for the next cohort (Spring 2025). Apply here.

The public sessions cover fundamental topics like The Dysfunction and Potential of Venture Capital, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of VC Careers, Defining Investment Goals and Strategies, Basics of Venture Capital Portfolios, Leading Deals, and Venture Fund Operations.

These candid sessions are for aspiring investors dipping a toe into the venture world, existing investors looking for a refresher on core topics, and founders hoping to get inside our heads.

All the public sessions are listed here. Each one has a registration link. Once you sign up, you will receive an email confirmation with a calendar invitation.

No – everything is free. If you join the Venture Cooperative cohorts as a fellow, there is potential for reward.