Paige Finn DohertyFounding Partner, Behind Genius · Founding Partner at Behind Genius Ventures

What has Recast Capital Co-Founder Sara Zulkosky learned from coaching future investors?

10 Feb 2023 · 1 min

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In this interview, Sara Zulkosky, co‑founder of Recast Capital, reflects on her experience coaching university venture capital investment competition (VCIC) teams at San Diego State University and Georgetown University, the latter a national champion. She explains that coaching, which she’s done since 2015, serves as a meta‑learning exercise that reminds her of why she entered venture capital in the first place. While the day‑to‑day work of building firms and fundraising can become mired in minutiae, mentoring students re‑energizes her by highlighting the fun, meaningful, and purpose‑driven aspects of the job. She notes that the competition helps students grasp the broader innovation economy and see how they can drive change, while also giving her a fresh perspective that reinforces her commitment to generating outperformance and doing good through investing.

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One of my like favorite moments of the week is coaching the VCIC team at SDSU, and you coach the Georgetown VCIC team, which national champions, right? Thanks for sliding that in there for me. Yeah, of course, of course. What has coaching future investors taught you about yourself as an investor? I feel like it's a very like meta pursuit.
Yeah, so I've been doing the coaching since 2015, and yeah, I think what I found that the coaching kind of brings It reminds me of the fun of the business, right? We so often get caught up in like the minutia of it and building firms is difficult and the fundraise is difficult. But this is a fun job. It's a meaningful job. You get to, you know, hopefully do some good with your efforts along the way, hopefully also generating outperformance. It's so great to see the students really leverage the competition to learn about venture broadly, you know, the innovation economy, how they can really help, you know, drive change in our industry.