Venture associates are back.

The Vermont Center for Emerging Technologies is going on its 17th year of its internship program. Nicole Eaton, the Marketing Manager at VCET sat down with this year’s summer venture associates, Morgan Lee and William (Will) Bradbury, to get a sense of why they joined the team this summer.

 

Do you mind giving a quick introduction?

{Will} I’m Will Bradbury. I’m from Stowe, Vermont, and I go to the University of Washington. Heading into my sophomore year, I’m studying Business and Data Science as a minor. 

{Morgan} My name is Morgan Lee. I’m from Seattle, Washington, which is where the University of Washington is, and I go to Middlebury College, so Will and I just did a switch. I’m a Film and Media Culture major with a minor in Political Science.

 

Why did you decide to work for VCET?

{Will} I have been pretty interested in early stage and seed investing within Vermont because I’ve been hearing a lot about it for a long time. And you know, going all the way to Seattle kind of made me want to come back and see what some more grassroots and bootstrap projects are looking like when it’s all Microsoft and Amazon and all that. 

{Morgan} I decided to work for VCET because I took a class with Dave and Sam, the President and Vice President of VCET. The class was called “Middlebury Entrepreneurs”, and I really loved the way that they viewed startups and how interesting investment and seed funds were. I wanted to learn more about that industry and I knew I wanted to work in an environment where I could really grow as a person. I asked Dave one afternoon during class if he knew anyone hiring for the summer because I trusted his judgment on jobs for young business driven people. Dave said, “we’re hiring” and I got the job the next day.

 

Picture: Dave Bradbury (far left), Andy Rossmeissel (second left), Morgan Lee (middle), Nicole Eaton (second right), Sam Roach-Gerber (far right) on the last day of Middlebury Entrepreneurs.

 

What do you want to learn this summer at VCET?

{Will} What I’m really hoping to get out of this experience is just a better grasp of what makes solid pre-seed and early investments and what to look for in successful companies. I do hope to start something of my own someday. So it’s kind of fun to look from the other side of the glass and see what works and what doesn’t on a long term scale, and also from a kind of bird’s eye view.

{Morgan} I want to learn more about how the investor side works. I think we hear a lot about entrepreneurs and how they pitch their company and sell their ideas. But I wanted the other side of that interaction. How does an investor think? How can we value a company? Why is this company interesting? Is it going to provide any profit for us? I had all those questions that sometimes are not always talked about that I wanted answered. 

 

Have you ever been entrepreneurial? If so, when?

{Will} I would say, here and there, I think with a couple organizations on campus at school, I would reach out and, you know, try to get us whatever we could by just leveraging our connections, whether that’s free food before finals, or Red Bulls or, you know, whatever we can do, and kind of just expand my network that way. But I’ve yet to start a business. Well, that’s in the works.

{Morgan} I started my own business in January, with Sam and Dave actually. It is a hip-less underwear brand for women in athletics. I worked with a patent lawyer to get it patented, kind of laying out all of the technology behind it, and got the patent filed. And now I’m in the manufacturing stage, so I’m traveling to China in August to work with manufacturers to start prototyping and testing products out.

 

Where is your favorite spot to work at VCET?

{Will} I like to rotate, like every day, so I never really know where I’m going to work. But couches are nice, anything near a window, because it’s a little warmer.

{Morgan} I’m the opposite. I have to stay in one place. It’s less of a spot, but I’ve liked standing a little bit more, I feel a little more mobile. I usually stay at the same desk, which is behind Dave’s kind of.

 

Have you ever seen a company in Vermont that has impressed you, and if which one why?

{Will} I’ve seen a lot of companies that are really impressive, whether it’s the founders or the tech or both. I got a chance to meet the founders of Rigorous and they were just phenomenal. And hearing them talk about their tech and how excited they are for their business was really, really cool. And I think that’s the most exciting kind of company I’ve been able to talk to. 

{Morgan}I’ve been more and more interested in consumer goods because of my own business. I can’t really decide, but one is Burton. The fact that their manufacturing and headquarters are in Burlington… It’s really impressive. I did a tour of their facility and it’s just amazing that they create everything in that one spot. I’m a huge snowboarder so it was surreal seeing them make all their boards that I see sold all over the country. Another one, although it’s kind of niche, is Ecco on Church St, the women’s boutique. It’s been there for 30 years, something like that. And I just think it’s amazing that  something on Church St has been able to stay there for 30 years and continue to be such a great store. And I think these small companies are really what make Vermont, Vermont.

 

What is one thing that excites you in the tech space?

{Will} I just got a chance to reach out to a distant cousin the other day, but he’s combining AI with music production, which is really, really cool. So using that for stems to make vocal recording easier and mixing and auto tuning, so just really reducing labor hours for audio engineers. I just thought that was a great application, and I’m hoping to learn more about it.

{Morgan} One thing that excites me is, again, also AI, but in the background of businesses. You can have a meeting nowadays with someone online and AI will be in the background monitoring your conversation so that you can have notes ready and available at the end of your meeting, or AI can summarize it as a whole. I think it saves a lot of time, as well and just makes your life a lot easier so that you don’t always have to be worried about writing down everything and can be more engaged with the conversation. I think it’ll be really helpful going forward, especially in 2024.

 

What is the weirdest thing you’ve seen at VCET so far?

{Will} Usually it’s been pretty quiet since I joined. I guess what we post on social media, seeing it behind the scenes? Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t have a good one on the top of my head. 

{Morgan} This isn’t weird but I found the VCET scooter and the helmet to be a little quirky. Or, of course, the inflatable dinosaur.

 

Anything else either of you want to add about this summer at VCET?

{Morgan} Excited to work with everybody and be a VCETer. 

{Will} Super stoked!

 

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