Today we take a deep dive into the Ripple X Fellowship , with its Founder, Dominic Lau . The world of startups and venture capital can be the road to providing immense value to consumers, founders, and investors, but it also can look like a brick wall to those without insight, connections, or knowledge of it all works. The RippleX Fellowship program gives students looking to become Founders and Investors access to that knowledge, as well as, a cohort of like-minded people to collaborate with. Founded in 2019, the RippleX Fellowship recently launched its tenth cohort and is now making its curriculum open to the public at ripplexfellowship.thinkific.com for students globally to help democratize access to startups and venture capital. About Dominic Lau: Dom joined Ripple Ventures as its first employee right after graduating from Waterloo and has been an integral part of building the firm from day one. He is Principal at Ripple Ventures and runs the RippleX Fellowship and is a Board member on several of Ripple’s Portfolio companies. In this episode we discuss: 01:30 Dom’s background and why he wanted to jump into Venture investing 02:43 How he got hired at Ripple Ventures 04:02 Why Dom started the RippleX Fellowship 07:46 What it was like to launch the first RippleX cohort 10:19 How the program has evolved over the years 11:51 How the fellowship grew to beyond Matt and Dom’s personal networks and into the US 13:08 The pitch to participants to get them to apply and thrive in the program 14:40 Success stories from the RippleX Fellowship 18:05 Other benefits of participation in the fellowship 19:22 The importance of the alumni network 22:00 Focus of the 10th cohort and moving forward 24:33 Why Dom decided to open up the curriculum to anyone 27:21 The importance of persistence when applying to programs like the RippleX Fellowship 28:15 The long-term vision of the RippleX Fellowship 29:03 Why the RippleX Fellowship prides themselves on diversity Fast Favorites Podcast Beautiful Stories from Anonymous People Newsletter/Blog Verity Verdict Tech Gadget Ninja Coffeemaker New Trend Web3 Gaming (Here’s Dom’s Blog Series on Web3 ) Book Maybe You Should Talk To Someone Life Lesson Momentum is Everything Follow Matt Cohen and Tank Talks here! Podcast production support provided by Agentbee.Agency