In this episode of the My First Million podcast, the hosts debate the merits of investing in student founders and the broader question of whether young people should dive straight into startups or stay in college. They discuss Dorm Room Fund, citing notable successes such as FiscalNote, Bevy, and Brooklinen, as well as notable misses like Lily AI, illustrating the high‑risk, high‑reward nature of early‑stage campus investing. The conversation then shifts to other campus‑focused funds, including The House (a Berkeley‑specific fund) and Peter Thiel‑backed programs, highlighting the varied ecosystems supporting young entrepreneurs. A recurring theme is the socialization value of college—building emotional maturity, friendships, and networking—versus the potential career acceleration from early real‑world ownership. The hosts also riff on the informal culture of startup communities (drinking, “kissing” fellow founders, keto/fasting jokes) and briefly touch on a naming confusion between “Emergence” and “Emergent Capital.” Throughout, the tone remains conversational and often tongue‑in‑cheek, while the participants oscillate between enthusiasm for early‑stage opportunities and skepticism about their sustainability.
Chapters
Is this shit a good idea, investing in these young-ass kids?
I think it's a terrible idea. Dorm Room Fund's been around for a while. Dorm Room Fund's been around for a while.
Dorm Room Fund's a fucking horrible idea.
Dorm Room Fund's doing really well.
The experiment ran.
What happened? Yeah, the experiment ran and it was a pretty successful experiment.
What came out of it?
What was, uh—
I mean, there have been some, listen, there have been some pretty big hits and there have been some pretty big misses, you know. I think they got a big hit, like FiscalNote's done pretty well out of Dorm Room Fund. Bevy, the beverage company, has done pretty well out of Dorm Room Fund. Brooklinen.
Wait, those guys were—
Yeah, student founders. Yeah, Brooklinen, the linens company. And I'm sure I'm gonna get probably railed on Twitter after for not having come up with the whole portfolio, but I'm sure there are more that I can't think of. And then on the misses side, you have like Lily AI, which is the other, if you guys remember Lily Drones.
Yeah.
Oh yeah. Yeah.
They like raised, um, I'm familiar. Yeah. They raised like, I don't know, like $30 million, something like that. I can't remember the exact number. They raised a bunch, then kind of flamed out. And that's the, the counter side too, is you can have people who, and I remember it 'cause I was one, who are inexperienced founders, don't know how to manage their cash.
What's the one outta Berkeley? There's another, uh, There's a Berkeley-specific one too.
Oh, the House. Yeah, the House fund. Yeah, Jeremy's great.
And then the Peter Thiel thing. Dude, I'm down. If you're old enough to be an adult and start something. But I also think that you should just be getting drunk and hooking up with people.
Yeah, get drunk and kiss some people. That's our fellowship. The Sam and Sean fellowship.
I mean, live a little. Yeah. Kissing. Apparently that's what the dream was. The goal. I don't know if there was a lot of kissing.
How often did that work out? Give it up.
Go keto and start intermittent fasting after that.
That's the like, wake up at 5 AM, like a little bit later, but stay up until 5 AM.
Yeah, stay up and then just roll into the next one. I mean, listen, there's like an important socialization element of college which helps you learn emotional maturity and learn how to deal with people. And it's tough if you don't have that. I don't know when you make it up. Certainly don't make it up by moving straight out here and working really hard early.
Plus you don't make friends. You don't make friends after you graduate. Your friends are who you met in college. And then the rest are just, you just go to work and then you go home and you're like, wait, where do people make friends after that? There's no more friends.
I'm like Uncle Rico. Like, I think of college, I'm like, oh, I would kill to go back.
Yeah, give it all up.
Yeah, for sure.
Like, Sean, who produces the podcast, he's always like, oh well, you know, you know, he's like 20, 21. He's like, well, you have, you know, experience, you have capital, you have this network, you have— I'm like, dude, I would give all of it up just to be right back where you are in your position right now. Like, I'll trade you in. If we can do something.
Really Friday, I think. Yeah, we, we remember that young guy. Oh, you were there. We met a young guy at our meetup and he was like 21 and he flew up.
I'm like, wow.
So like, if I was, if I was 18 and I lived and I went to NYU, yeah, I would be not being the door— I would only do the dorm room fun if it helped me meet girls. I mean, if you're in SoHo, uh, and you're 18, that's the dream.
NYU is a really fun college to go to and certainly had a really fun time there. But here's the flip side of it, right? Like, I see the other side of this, which is it does feel today like there are compounding effects, both reputationally and professionally. So working and exposing yourself to like some kind of real tangible ownership of work really early. And the earlier you can do that, whether it's like a startup or working for a large company in a significant role or building some reputation, even if it's just tweeting dumb jokes on Twitter, like that compounds over time. And if you wait 5 years, you can, you can both have fun and build compounding professional returns at the same time. It's sort of the argument I would make here. Right. You can do both those things. Yeah. By the way, it's not as fun as just doing the fun. It's not as successful as just doing the success. But a lot of folks try to walk that tightrope.
But you'll end up way ahead of the curve.
Yeah.
Most people are just having fun and not doing anything that builds their sort of like career foundation. Ironically, when you're in college. Okay, so you do all this stuff.
Yeah.
And by the way, when you said Emergence, you really emphasized the C at the end of it. Is it because people think it's Emergent Capital?
So I think people, there's a couple things. One is people think it's Emergence Capital. People think it's like Emerge Capital. I've heard like 5 or 6 different issues with the name. The other thing is our website is emcap.com. Like when I first joined, I'd say, oh, it's MCAP. And people were like, oh, the letter M and then the, you know, CAP. I probably had— You need to rebrand. Not up to me, but I probably had like 6 months of emails I didn't get because people were like, "Oh, this jerk gave me like a wrong email address at that party because he was saying—" I was screaming "Mcap" at the top of my lungs. People were like, "Oh yeah, like Zach Mcap." M-C-A-P. Right. So if it were up to me, it'd be a different URL.
