Putting Education First: How Peter Harris Created the Nation’s Largest Student-Run Fund

Anthony Codispoti : Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Codispoti and today’s guest is Peter Harris, founding partner at University Growth Fund.

They are the largest education-based private equity fund in the country, giving university students the chance to gain valuable real-world experience as they invest alongside top-tier investors in some of the nation’s most promising companies. Now Peter has been part of the fund since 2007, leading over 20 deals in areas like medical devices and customer relationship management. And he co-founded the fund officially in 2015. He was also instrumental in recruiting and training students, enabling them to build strong investment skills. As a senior associate and later a principal at University Venture Fund, Peter gained extensive experience in deal flow and diligence processes.

He’s done over 100 investments in startups including Spotify, Snapchat, and Airbnb. Now before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, AdBac Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits that are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line. One recent client was able to add over $900 per employee per year in extra cash flow by implementing one of our innovative programs. Results vary for each company and some organizations may not be eligible.

To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at adbackbenefits.com. Alright back to our guest today, founding partner at University Growth Fund, Peter Harris. I appreciate you making the time to share your story today.

Peter Harris : Yeah, thanks for having me. Looking forward to it Anthony.

Anthony Codispoti : So before we get into talking about University Growth Fund, tell me about some of the international consulting work that you’ve done before. Sure.

Peter Harris : So when I was growing up, my dad was a computer engineer and I always thought engineering would be this really interesting career path because it was all about solving problems. And then when I was in high school, he shifted and quit his job at a very large engineering, you know, very prestigious engineering firm and started doing more investing and entrepreneurial type things. And it taught me that you could use business as a tool to solve some of these problems. So when I was in college, I took a class from a professor around this concept called micro franchising. And the idea behind micro franchising is you take, you know, similar to McDonald’s as a franchise, it’s got powerful brand supply chain training systems to ensure that the franchises are successful. You take these same principles and you shrink them down for an individual living at the bottom of the pyramid. And so this class was all about taking that concept of micro franchising and designing different micro franchise business models for different nonprofits that were trying to implement that strategy. From there, you know, had so much fun.

Anthony Codispoti : Yeah, real quick, Peter, can you maybe give an example of a micro franchise? Yeah, of course.

Peter Harris : So like one of the projects we did was in Africa and Nairobi. We worked with the Nike Foundation and at the time Nike was very focused on girls. And so we went out, analyzed the market, figured out that one of the products that we do really well is a hair extensions product line. So we partnered with a local company there and then designed many salons that these girls could operate where they would do hair extensions and hair styling. And so they benefited from the brand, which was a company called Darling, which had good advertising throughout the city, had good supply chains to get them product at good prices and then trained them on how to do the different services. And then we helped them kind of set up through funding with the Nike Foundation to provide some of the startup capital for them.

And then there were, you know, they could go out and they could set up their own little salon doing doing hair. We also did ones in that same project. We had another one where we partnered with the equivalent of Kentucky Fried Chicken of Kenya, a company called Kenchik. And they sold chicken based hot dogs as a food stand. So a little more traditional to what most people think of when they think of a franchise. And then we’ve done all kinds of other things. Could be selling clothing, could be selling cosmetics, home supplies, all kinds of stuff.

Anthony Codispoti : So I’m going to put you on the spot and ask if there’s any metrics that you can reference in terms of success for any one of these or sort of collectively as kind of a concept.

Peter Harris : So last time I checked the numbers, we’ve been successful in launching probably close to a thousand of these micro franchises across the different markets where we operated in South America, the Caribbean and Africa. My favorite story, though, is the first project I did. So I went and spent a summer in Northern Ghana after I graduated. And our sponsor there was a large multinational corporation that was looking to gain access to the African market. And so we helped them set up a business that these women would sell like home supplies.

So cleaning detergents, soaps, shampoos, makeup, stuff like that. And we had this one woman who was really like just representative of a lot of the micro franchises we worked with. She would wake up at like four in the morning. She would cook until like seven in the morning. And then she would take care of her children and the children of the seven other wives in her household.

So she was the oldest of eight wives to this Muslim man. And then they she would go out and sell door to door kitchen supplies. And then she’d come home and cook more and take care and go to bed at like midnight. So like working insane hours and probably making about two dollars a day. We brought her into our program and she cut her hours in half. She went from earning two dollars a day to twenty five dollars a day.

Started taking English classes and so that she could learn how to read and write in her spare time, improved kind of the overall living situation of her entire family. And, you know, we just had a lot more energy and confidence kind of going out there. And so that that was the beauty of it was it was this this unique like win, win, win, where she was winning because it had this fundamental change on her life and her livelihood. The corporation was winning because they got access to this whole new market. And frankly, even the customers were winning because they got access to higher quality products and better service than they were getting before. So it was this this like big eye opener for me of this. This idea that you can create these win, win, win outcomes where everybody benefits. And it just creates this like virtuous cycle that builds on itself.

Anthony Codispoti : That’s really cool. And sorry, I cut you off as you were starting to talk about some of the other international consulting work that you’ve done.

Peter Harris : So, yeah, I mean, that’s that’s the type of stuff we did. We worked in Kenya, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Paraguay, Jamaica, Haiti, designing these businesses and launching them and then helping them scale. So it’s a lot of you’re still involved with. Not as much anymore. I’ve been so busy with my current ventures that it’s it’s been hard to allocate the time there.

And my business partner there went on to start some other businesses as well. So every once in a while, I get roped in to help advise on something here and there. But it’s it’s very tangential to what I do today.

Anthony Codispoti : OK, so before we get to University Growth Fund, tell me about University Venture Fund.

Peter Harris : Yeah, so when I was a student, the other thing that I got involved with beyond this consulting work was this fund called University Venture Fund. And at the time, you know, when I went to school, I thought I really want to be an entrepreneur. And I had just come back from serving in Spain as a missionary for my church for two years. And while I was there, I saw this concept that today we know is red box, but we didn’t have it here in the US yet. And so I was working with a guy who owned like one hundred and fifty little Caesars locations. And I was like, we’re going to bring, you know, pizza and a movie for six bucks and a vending machine. And right as we were about to launch, McDonald’s and Red Box announced this like one hundred and fifty million dollar partnership. And Utah was going to be where I was at at the current time.

Utah was going to be their launch market. And so I thought, well, I can’t really compete with that as a poor college student. You know, I was hoping to get one of these things up off the ground and running. So I shelved it. And at that time, a friend of mine was like, you should really check out the thing called University Growth or University Venture Fund.

I think you’d really like it. So joined that firm. And at the time, it was an 18 million dollar venture fund, largest of its kind in the country and had students from different schools in Utah. And about six months after I joined, the two guys that had started the firm left to go pursue other interests. And they brought in a gentleman who’s now my business partner, Tom Stringham. And he and I revamped Soup to Nuts, the whole fund. So we rebuilt the entire training program, the recruiting strategy for our student interns. And then we also rebuilt how we did due diligence, how we sourced deals on investment opportunities. And the thing that was really cool about University Venture Fund is that we had somewhere around at the time, call it 20 interns that were all college students.

And the students were really empowered to run the fund. So, you know, we were meeting with entrepreneurs. We were asking them hard questions.

We were going through all of their financials and other materials and then making decisions on whether or not we should invest, you know, out of that 18 million dollar pool, a capital that we had. So it was an amazing experience and did that for a couple of years as a student. And then when I graduated, was fortunate enough to be extended and offered to stick around and keep doing basically all the same work I had already been doing.

Anthony Codispoti : So you and who’s your boss, now your partner, what’s that person’s name? Tom, Tom Stringham. Tom. And so Tom had, I’m going to guess, a background in all of this, the sort of the funding space and training students. He came in with some sort of domain expertise already. Yeah.

Peter Harris : So Tom’s background is grew up in Utah and then went back east to do investment banking with Merrill Lynch at the time. Went and got his graduate degree from Harvard, went back to banking and then was working for a small boutique investment bank called Rath Capital Partners. And he was their Utah guy. So he had a lot of connections in Utah, was living in Utah and was an advisor to the fund prior to coming on full time.

Anthony Codispoti : OK, because I’m going to guess you coming as a college student, you didn’t really have a background or sort of understanding. So you learned a lot from him. Your early mentor. OK. And so at what point the two of you decide to leave there and start University Growth Fund?

Peter Harris : Yeah. So funds, venture funds have a, have a usually a finite life. They’re about 10 years. And then you have to raise another fund if you want it to go beyond those 10 years. And so as a firm, you might have like University Venture Fund might be a firm, but then it has actual funds that each last about 10 years. And most venture funds will raise a new fund every, call it three to five years. So we were coming because we took over the fund like halfway through. That fund was coming to the end of its fund life, that the end of those 10 years. And it had a board of directors and we went to the board and we said, hey, we would like to raise another fund.

And they said, that’s great. But the next fund really needs to be an impact fund. So imagine investing, shifting our investment strategy from investing in companies like Instructure, which makes the largest learning management software used by K12 and colleges today to doing like clean water projects in Africa. And we’re like, impact is great. You know, clearly like I love it, right?

I’ve spent a lot of time doing that. But it was such a huge shift in strategy. And we talked to our students and they didn’t really, you know, get excited about it. And so what we decided was that they could pursue the impact strategy, which they did. So University of Venture Fund went on to raise a subsequent fund to do impact investing. And we were very friendly and happy for them to do that. And we spun out and launched University Growth Fund, raised about $32 million for our first fund. And we’re fortunate enough to deploy in some really fun deals like some of the ones you mentioned, like Spotify, Snapchat, Airbnb, Pinterest and others. And really providing kind of that continuing to provide that tech focused experience for our students.

Anthony Codispoti : So what was it about the impact fund that was not attractive to you? You just didn’t see the ROI potential there. I know you mentioned like the students that you were working with, they weren’t super excited about it. But clearly it aligns with kind of your mission purpose DNA.

Peter Harris : You know, honestly, I think it was because I had so much experience. I knew how challenging it would be. And part of it is I also I know I always I always worry just a little bit about, you know, people coming from developed countries to developing countries and telling them what to do and how to do it and so forth without actually being on the ground and spending meaningful time there. And so there was an element of like, this is great, but I feel like you kind of need to be there to understand it.

Does that make sense? As consultants, where our position was always, hey, we don’t know what the local environment is. We want to work closely with you to understand that we’re just going to bring some things that we’ve learned from some other markets. They’re similar to yours and and bring them and then together we can create something new and innovative. That’s effective, right? But from an investment perspective, you’re sitting in Utah and you’re making investments internationally just felt really challenging and hard.

And as much as I do love impact, like I love tech as well. And we we actually propose like, hey, can we do both? And there wasn’t really room to do that. And so, yeah, we just felt like launching University Growth Fund would be a great way to continue on the model and the impact we were having.

Anthony Codispoti : So you mentioned some really big names, companies that you were able to invest in. Snapshot, Snapchat, Pinterest, we had Airbnb, Spotify. How was it you guys were able to get access to those deals? I mean, you’re raising money.

You guys have had success, a little bit of a track record and correct me if I’m wrong. But traditionally, those deals are reserved for kind of the big guys, right? Yeah, yeah.

Peter Harris : No, for sure. You know, the thing that I think has been the most impactful for us being able to get access to really high profile deals is that I don’t just have a bunch of interns, right? We have a program where we teach people, students how to do venture investing, and we’re very authentic about it.

And we put a lot of time, energy and resources into it. When I’m pitching, you know, our program, it’s there’s a lot of internships programs out there. Most internships, if not all internships, put the intern at the periphery. But at University Growth Fund, we put them at the center. And because we put so much into it, we can speak very authentically about the impact we’re having. And it turns out that most VCs and most entrepreneurs are good people. And they love this idea.

They like most of them wish that it had been around when they were in school. And so the idea of like, yeah, we’re raising, you know, in some cases, like $100 million. We’d be happy to carve off, you know, half a million dollars for you guys to participate in this round, right? And because I think we’re providing something that’s unique, and that is the ability to give back while taking investment dollars. And then we also have this army of students that we use to help these portfolio companies as well. And so the founders really like that aspect as well. And so it’s kind of this combination of having like a really unique story that we can be authentic about, as well as some unique value add that we can add. And this has been really powerful, whether it’s convincing a founder to let us in or convincing a venture fund to bring us into one of their deals. That’s how we’ve gotten access to the majority of these deals.

Anthony Codispoti : So from a practical standpoint, what does it really look like on the ground for students to be at the center of this rather than the periphery?

Peter Harris : Sure. So I the way it typically flows is I’ll meet with a founder. Of a company and hear the pitch to ensure that it fits our box because I don’t want to waste our students time.

And I don’t want to waste founders time either. So assuming that fits within our strike zone, then I will introduce the students to the founder and the students get to sit down with the founder. They get to hear the pitch directly from the founder. They get to ask questions.

Oftentimes, if not always, we get access to a full data room that includes all the things you’d expect, the financials, the cap table, the the forecasts, the pitch deck, etc. The students then dig into that. They do research on that. They do research outside of that, talking to industry experts and so forth. That comes together in a, you know, 50 to 80 page investment memorandum.

So it’s long and detailed. And then the students, they pitch it to the other students and everybody votes. All the students vote.

I don’t actually have a vote technically. And so the students vote on whether or not we do the deal. If they approve it, then we have an investment committee of individuals from different venture funds that graciously donate their time to support the program. And the students pitch to them, which helps do two things.

One, it helps us avoid any like terrible, terrible investments. And two, those students learn more in that hour long conversation than they do in like a whole semester worth of classes. Because you just get peppered with all of these hard hitting questions that are based on decades of investment experience. And so it’s both educational as well as helping us, you know, make good investments. And then once that investment committee has come to a recommendation to go or no go, we follow through with that. And then we look for ways to add value, typically through different consulting projects with that company.

So the students are really involved like throughout the process. You know, I joke, my job is to get their coffee. And sometimes that’s literally so like I’ll do a Costco run and load up the break room with lots of snacks and coffee and other stuff for them.

Anthony Codispoti : So so it’s interesting what you’re describing. It’s almost like there’s a firewall there for the senior advisor can kind of have an eyeball on it. Like you said, to prevent like a really terrible investment from happening. But otherwise, you’ve mostly got the students sort of at the wheel driving this.

And it sounds like it would be a tremendous learning experience. Do you run into any resistance from your investors? I mean, clearly, they know what they’re getting into. But when you’re pitching somebody new or they sort of like, wait a minute, I’m giving my money to who?

Peter Harris : Do you get it? Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And then look, there are some we know who we are and who we aren’t. And there are a lot of investors that just look at this and say, yeah, like you guys may have great performance and great track record.

But I’m not going to risk my day job, right? On investing in a bunch of students. But I think for those that are willing to kind of look past that and see the advantages that we have, you know, I think they’ve been really happy with the performance they’ve seen over the years. And so, yeah, it’s a mix of, you know, large financial institutions and then also family offices and high net worth individuals that make up our investor base. Where we don’t do well is anywhere where there’s kind of a gatekeeper.

You know, an advisor that’s advising like a large endowment or that sort of thing. Because again, like they’re just they’re just too risk averse. They’d rather invest their money into a much larger, more established brand than a small fund like ours. But that’s OK. We don’t need like billions of dollars under management in order for our program to work.

Anthony Codispoti : So you mentioned that one of the other benefits is that the Port Coast kind of end up with an army of students. That can help. What does that mean?

Peter Harris : So, you know, sometimes that doesn’t help very much if you’re Spotify, right? Really big business, a lot of people. But for smaller companies, because, you know, we’ll work with some pretty small businesses, they’re strapped for resources. And so the same caliber of student that goes through our program is the same caliber that’s going to land a job at like a McKinsey or a Bain or a Goldman Sachs investment banking. So they’re really smart, really driven students.

And excuse me, we have those students really engage in different projects. So we’ve done everything from we had one company where the CFO left in the middle of a fundraise. We stepped in and rebuilt their entire financial model and forecast model and helped them close over $10 million in funding. We’ve helped one company that does consumer products reach out to several hundred micro influencers and place product with them that were like very strategic for them. We’ve analyzed new markets for companies to enter. We’ve had companies dump just massive amounts of data on us and we’ve parsed through the data to find interesting insights to help them with their sales and marketing.

So it’s really kind of a variety of things. But invariably, when I meet with founders, they’ve got a list of 100 things they’re trying to get done. We don’t promise that we can help with the top 50. Like I just won’t even pretend like we’ll be helpful there. But on the bottom 50, I’m certain there’s a handful of stuff that we could knock out. And every founder I’ve ever met is immediately like, oh, yeah, I can think of like five things right now that like it’s something I would love to know or get to.

But I just just can never get to it. But if I could staff like five to 10 really smart eager students to crank on it for me, it would be amazing.

Anthony Codispoti : So if the experience alone was the only thing that the students were getting, that would be tremendous. How to put a price tag on that. But are they receiving anything else? The college credit, any other sort of like compensation for this? Yeah.

Peter Harris : So we have a stipend program. We have we have two layers of stipends. So and scholarships. So we provide scholarships to the students, which is kind of like a stipend. And then we have an additional scholarship or stipend available for needs based students that need like a little bit more in order to survive.

So we don’t want people to not do this program because they can’t afford it. And the reason for that is because we’re just very confident in the outcomes that our program can produce. So our students on average are making about 100 and 20 percent more than their peers at graduation. And more importantly, they’re landing jobs and careers that really just set them up for the rest of their life. So they’re making, you know, a multiple of what their peers are making, you know, five, 10 years into their career, because really that first job really sets them up, you know, throughout the rest of their life. So that’s those are the things that we really sell on is, you know, come in, get this amazing experience, especially because like we’re going to give you stuff that you probably won’t get to do until several years after you’ve started your career normally.

And you can leverage that then to land amazing jobs and do amazing things. And it’s going to be a little bit, you know, it’s going to be a lot of work. So our students put in about 20 hours a week and it can be a little bit of a grind for them. But it just, you know, hopefully they’re good investors and they’re willing to put in the effort and the time to make it to make it work because the payoff is definitely there on the backside.

Anthony Codispoti : So and the kinds of places that these students are going after graduation. I think you mentioned like McKinsey, Bain, yeah, places like that.

Peter Harris : Yeah, so this program is really designed because Utah was viewed as a flyover state in the early, you know, 2000s. And not a lot of people know about Utah. I feel like that that cats out of the bag a little bit.

But, you know, the students here just really struggle to compete with students on the coasts. And so this program was designed as a way to give them a leg up on that. And and it’s been really effective at doing that. So our students, what we tell students is you can leverage our program to get work to wherever you want to go as it relates to finance, entrepreneurship, etc. So we have students at all the top investment banks. We have students that have gone on to work at large private equity funds, venture capital funds, hedge funds, real estate funds, all the big management consulting shops like the McKinsey’s out there. We’ve had students go work for for tech companies, and we’ve had students start their own companies and raise money from, you know, big powerhouse VCs like Andreessen Horowitz and others. So it really is like whatever you want to pursue, like this, the experience you gain at UGF is just so helpful in landing that because it’s so unique and differentiated. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti : You said that you’re very confident in what your investment results are. What makes you so confident? I mean, let me change that question a little bit. What what has contributed to such a successful track record for you guys?

Peter Harris : Yeah, so my confidence comes from having done this for 15 years and seeing the results of that. And I think it’s a lot of the things that we talked about in that we do spend a lot of time and energy to create a really authentic program for students where, you know, they can learn a lot. But we also, you know, we have robust training programs we put them through.

Like we don’t just throw them in the deep end and hope they can swim. Like we do a lot to support them in that. And then what’s what’s been amazing is because we’re so impactful on these students and so critical in helping them land those jobs and tee up the career that they really want. They become incredibly loyal back to the organization and it creates this beautiful flywheel where they’re helping the next generation of students land those amazing jobs.

And so we’re working with the students and they’re also driving deal flow back to us. So they’re working at great companies. They’re starting great companies. They’re working at great venture funds and so forth and finding ways to drive deal flow back to us, which is also, you know, incredibly helpful. Like we just wrote a check into open AI and that was largely driven by one of our alumni that went through our program that helped bring us into that deal. So there’s, you know, a lot of interesting things that come out of that, right? Of kind of doing things for the right reason and then seeing the results kind of compound over time.

Anthony Codispoti : How competitive is it to get into the program? How many students do you have apply? How many do you accept?

Peter Harris : So we have about 50 students in the program today across 14 different schools. And it’s about an 8% acceptance rate. So it’s pretty competitive. What are you looking for? So what we don’t look for is a ton of experience because students don’t have it. What we look for is three things. I look for people that are really smart and there are a lot of ways to be smart.

You just have to demonstrate to me how you’re smart. And the reason for that is because we’re looking at so many different deals. You got to get up the learning curve super fast on every deal, right? The other thing we look for is people that are really passionate about what we do. So it could be you’re super passionate about AI and tech, or you could be really passionate about entrepreneurship or really passionate about investing. But like there needs to be something in you that’s pushing you forward because there will be times where the work gets tough and you need something to kind of push you through that.

It’s kind of like that saying like you can lead a horse to water but you can’t force it to drink. And so we think a lot about that. Like I can take almost anybody that’s passionate about doing this and get them there, but they got to come passionate and ready to go. And then the last thing we look for is people that are great team players that they check the ego at the door. I describe our culture internally as a collaborative meritocracy, which might sound counterintuitive, but the reason for that is because University of Girl Funds is one of those places where the more you put in, the more you get out. And that’s the meritocracy part. The collaborative part is we do everything in teams and there are rewards to spending time helping your peers learn stuff in advance because that’s how you advance within the organization as well. That’s how you become a leader within our organization is by demonstrating that ability to teach, train and coach those that are below you, if that makes sense.

Anthony Codispoti : And so you guys are exclusively tech focused. So software, hardware, these are the kinds of areas that you play in.

Peter Harris : Yeah, there needs to be some sort of tech piece of it at play. So but tech is like, can be kind of loose. So like we invested in a company called Kopari. Kopari is a predominantly women’s cosmetic and like they sell like sunscreen and other kind of nutraceutical type products, but they sell like 50% of their businesses online, sold online, right? So e-commerce business using technology to sell and distribute products qualifies for us. On the other end of this spectrum, like I mentioned, like we’re in open AI, you know, very deep technology type stuff. So pretty broad range. We’ve done business services in the tech space, a bunch of different consumer product sales, hardware, software, cybersecurity, all kinds of.

Anthony Codispoti : What’s an example of a business services company that you’ve invested in?

Peter Harris : So we invested in a company called Simplis. Simplis was a business that would help people install and customize sales force implementations. So kind of a consulting business. What was unique about it is they grew both organically and inorganically because they would buy other consulting businesses and roll them into the business. And then ultimately were acquired by Infosys a few years ago.

Anthony Codispoti : Is there a particular trend that you’re seeing in all the investing that you’re doing that you’re really excited about?

Peter Harris : So I think the big trend is the obvious one, which is just AI impacting literally everything. And so I’ve been thinking a lot about what that means. I remember when I was fairly early on in my career, we went through another one of these like big pivot points in technology when mobile kind of hit the scene.

And I was thinking about this this morning. When mobile hit the scene, there were a bunch of companies that would claim to be and really position themselves as being mobile first, which meant I didn’t just build something on the web and then repurpose it for mobile. Like I built on mobile first and those companies ended up most of them being extremely successful.

So you look at like companies like Uber, right, was mobile first in its development and how they saw the world and how they think about things. And I think there’s this new business, which is being AI first. And there’s going to be all of there are all of these opportunities that just didn’t exist before AI, just like Uber wasn’t possible before we all had a smartphone in our pocket. I think the same thing will occur with with AI.

And that’s the thing that I’m thinking a lot about. I think today we’re an inning one where everybody is just they’re like slapping AI onto current products. And it’s it’s a lot of kind of, you know, AI wrappers as we call them. But I think we’re going to start to see more and more businesses that are take this like AI first approach.

And I I’m not sure exactly where the unlock there is, but I think where it is is in personalization. And if you as a business like like an AI first business would be able to create a unique solution for every single one of their customers in a specific vertical where they have like domain expertise. If that makes sense. And so I think there’s this challenge if you’re a large company.

How do you take this like very large platform that you’ve built and create that customized experience for your individual customers versus starting from ground one where that’s just like baked into your DNA from day one. If that makes sense.

Anthony Codispoti : Conceptually, it does. I’m curious if you’ve sort of envisioned like an actual execution of this. What what it’s always helpful to wrap our heads around something a little bit more specific. Yeah.

Peter Harris : So I mean a couple examples. One which is kind of a terrifying example is instead of going on Netflix, right? And watching the same show that everybody watches having a show dynamically in real time created just for you and what you like, you know, that nobody else will ever see right because it’s just really for you personalized.

I think that’s kind of one extreme. I think another though like more business approach would be there’s companies like air table and ClickUp and others that have a very like flexible platform. But what I want to be able to do is just be able to type into my keyboard and say, Hey, I want a product that solves these pain points for me and have the AI automatically create the software that specifically solves those pain points in a solution that’s just as elegant as you know, if I were to go out and buy it and enterprise grade piece of software. I think ClickUp and air table were kind of this in between solution.

Whereas like this very broad platform and you could kind of customize it, but it required a lot of work to get the customizations in just right. But with AI now, like we’re getting to the point we’re getting close where like I can just tell it to do what I need and it creates that that outcome. And then if you pair that with some sort of like unique data set that nobody else has access to, I think that’s where you can create some some really interesting outcomes. So maybe that’s you know, you’re a company that operates in the health service health care services space and you’ve just collected a tremendous amount of data around how people work in that space. And so you can feed that into your AI. So then when they’re asking for solutions, it comes out with solutions that are specifically tailored to what they need and the outcomes they’re looking for.

Anthony Codispoti : Yeah, it is sort of a combination of exciting and a little bit weird and terrifying at the same time. I’d like to shift gears now, Peter. And obviously you’re bright successful guy. You’ve had lots of different experiences, a tremendous amount of success. And I’m sure that you had your share of hardships. What is maybe a serious challenge that you have had to overcome in your life? What was that? How did you get through it? And what did you learn?

Peter Harris : Yeah, so I kind of sort of mentioned it earlier, but I’ll give you a little more detail and context. So when we were going through that transition from University Venture Fund to University Girls Fund, it was kind of like a scary transition because we hadn’t raised a fund. We didn’t know if we were going to be able to raise a fund. We had a billionaire straight up say to us, you know, this is a terrible idea. I wouldn’t invest in your fund. No one I know would invest in your fund.

You’re going to fail, right? And like I had a young family. It was just really like kind of scary. And I remember I talked to my mom about it and and she was just like, I just feel like you need to go for it. And do this and your downside is not that big.

And it kind of was an eye-opener for me because I was like, as I really thought through it, I was like, you know, my downside is really not that bad. Like I can get a job doing something, right? I’m smart enough and ambitious enough to get a job. It just may not be something I love doing. But if that’s my downside, right?

Why would I not go and take this risk and swing hard to do something that I know I will love? And so it was challenging. Like for the first couple of years, you know, trying to go out and raise money from people was challenging. But we were fortunate enough to be able to pull it together and was interesting as we raised a little bit and we invested in lift. It was our very first investment. And then that kind of created some momentum and people were like, wow, like, okay, you guys are actually doing something interesting here. And that allowed us to raise a little bit more and a little bit more and do more deals and get some momentum going and finally raise, you know, that 32 million dollar fund, first fund that we raised.

So yeah, I don’t know. I think a lot of it was just that fear of failing, right? But then also seeing that like, maybe the downside is not as bad as I think it is. Like I’m kind of freaking myself out over nothing and that really I should take the risk and take the plunge, right?

Anthony Codispoti : Yeah, I kind of like that because I’ve got other friends and peers of mine that like to take a similar approach when they’re kind of stressing about something. Play it out to the worst case scenario and well, I could lose my money and then what? And then maybe I lose my and then what? And like what is it ultimately that you’re most afraid of that you couldn’t recover from and oftentimes when you play it all the way out to the possible end? It’s really not that bad. The worst case scenario is something that you could still bounce back from and that’s exactly the exercise that you went through.

I think it’s a lot easier to go through that exercise when you’re younger than when you’re older and more established. But you were still at a place where like you said, you had a young family. It wasn’t just, you know, bachelor Peter. You had, you know, other folks who were relying on you.

So it certainly took some gumption and the fact that you pushed through when you had a billionaire tell you this is a terrible idea, Peter. You’re going to lose all your money. I wouldn’t invest.

None of my friends would invest. You know, I go through this on a regular basis where I’ll, you know, spitball an idea with somebody that I respect. And, you know, maybe they don’t love it.

This guy loves it, but this one, no, it’s not going to work for these 12 reasons. Now, like, I was really excited about that. Now, I don’t know if I want to continue with it. And so I’m kind of curious when you’ve got somebody, you know, very astute, very successful, very, you know, has deep pockets. It tells you what a horrible idea this is. What caused you to push on and sort of take that advice and file it away, but not have it be the ultimate roadblock for you?

Peter Harris : Yeah, it’s a good question. And there’s a lot of factors there. You know, while you were speaking, I was thinking about how the big risk, of course, is I don’t do it. I don’t pursue my dreams, right? And I end up with like a life I’m not really proud of, right? And like, to me, that’s the worst outcome, right?

Kind of those missed opportunities that, you know, the missed shots I didn’t take. So, you know, there’s that. I think the other thing is just understanding like the biases that people have. So he had some biases that I won’t go into, but, you know, it was like, okay, that’s your perspective. And I can see why you have it. I can also see some of your biases.

And so kind of thinking through some of those things. The other thing that I was thinking about as you were talking is, so a number of years ago, they did this study where they looked at a lot of different venture funds and they wanted to see what mattered. Like, did consensus result in better investment outcomes? And so they looked at like how partners at different venture funds had voted on different deals over time and then they tracked those deals to see which ones performed well.

And what they found is that it was kind of binary. The deals that did the best and the worst were the most controversial within the firm. And the deals that had the most consensus were kind of like meh deals. They weren’t terrible. Like they didn’t lose all their money.

They really didn’t generate a very great return either. And the reason for that is because if you have too much consensus, you’re really not doing anything that innovative and new and different, right? Because then everybody’s like, oh, yeah, that’s obvious. Like, of course, of course, that’s going to be successful. And what happens is there’s tons of other people that come to that same conclusion, launch similar businesses, and now you’re in a sea of, you know, lots of competitors. But if you’re doing something like truly unique and innovative and different, you’re going to have a lot of people that tell you it’s a terrible idea. They just can’t get it.

Because they can’t get it. I think about like Airbnb is like a great example of this, right? Like so many venture funds were like, wait, you’re going to let a total stranger into your house, you know, for like 20 bucks or vice versa.

Like I’m going to go into somebody else’s house and they’re, you know, they’re not going to murder me and my sleep, you know. So there were a lot of people that passed on because they’re like, this is just never going to be successful. And all of those funds, had they invested would have generated like billions in return for their fund. And in venture, that’s really important because in venture, you operate under like this, this idea of power law where a few investments are going to return the vast majority of, or are going to generate the vast majority of your returns.

And so like the worst thing you could do is have lots of consensus, invest in med deals that don’t return very much and miss out on the Airbnb that returns, you know, a multiple of your fund.

Anthony Codispoti : That’s fascinating. Do you bake that into any of the education that you’re providing to your students in how they’re trying to assess deals for UGF? Like you’re sort of looking for this kind of friction.

Peter Harris : Yeah, for sure. I mean, you know, we love it when deals are pretty contested internally. For a lot of reasons, if nothing else, then it shows the students are really passionate and engaged, right?

And to what we’re evaluating, they’re taking it seriously. And you also learn a lot, right? You hear somebody else’s argument, and it gives you a unique perspective, a new perspective that maybe you hadn’t considered before. So yeah, like for us, we probably lean a little bit more towards consensus because we tend to invest more, you know, at the growth stage of companies when they’re generating millions in revenue, versus swinging on like truly massively disruptive technologies super early on. But even then, like I always get a little nervous if it’s like too easy of a slam dunk across the board.

Anthony Codispoti : So you mentioned that Lyft was your first investment and that gave you some street cred. Folks are like, oh, okay, let’s pay a little bit more attention to what these guys are doing. How far in how long after the initial investment was made, did that kind of give you some street credibility? Because it took a little while to evolve and become known and become a thing that everybody was using. So what was sort of that time period in between?

Peter Harris : It was probably about a year. I mean, Lyft was growing so fast that between the time we invested and, you know, a year later, they’d already grown like massively.

Anthony Codispoti : So how did you get the first investor? You said it was tough early going.

Peter Harris : So we had an investor at University of Venture Fund that was, you know, and to this day is our biggest cheerleader, this woman, Jan Bergson, over at Ally Bank. And she had left, so UBS was an investor in University of Venture Fund and she left UBS and went over to Ally. And she was really our first believer. We wouldn’t be here without her.

And so, yeah, she was the one that kind of went out on a limb and said, you know, I love what you guys do. I love this program. I love the impact you have on students. We want to support this. And so she made that first commitment and then that provided a lot of credibility to others that, you know, not only was she willing to stand behind it, but stand behind it in a very meaningful way.

And then when we layered on, like, well, and we also got access to Lyft, it was kind of that combination of two big points of credibility that pushed us over the edge with a lot of investors, I think.

Anthony Codispoti : Besides the program that you run, Peter, if somebody is listening and they’re thinking, hey, I really want to sort of get my feet wet or I want to better understand this entire space, do you have a resource that would be accessible to folks that you’d recommend, whether it’s a book, a course, another podcast that talks all about this stuff?

Peter Harris : So, yeah, there’s a little self-serving, but I do have a YouTube channel. You can find me at VC Pete. And I talk about all kinds of things related to venture capital. And then I also do a podcast at VC.fm with my co-host, John Bradshaw.

And we talk again about all things VC, but more in a podcast format and bring in different industry experts to talk about kind of the latest trends that we’re seeing and get their perspective on what’s going on there.

Anthony Codispoti : Any particular daily habits or rituals that have been helpful for you, either to get your day started or to keep you on track during the day?

Peter Harris : So, last summer, I was feeling like I wasn’t in the best physical condition. And so I decided to do 75 hard, if you’re familiar with that. I am, but explain, please. So, for 75 hard, for 75 days, you drink a gallon of water, you do two 45-minute workouts, one of which has to be outside. You read 10 pages in a nonfiction book, you stick to a diet, and you don’t drink any alcohol. And I think I got all of them. And so anyways, I did it.

It’s not really a fitness thing as much as it is a self-discipline thing. And I felt like my life needed a little bit of a restart. And so I did that.

And it was great. Like, it totally like, check that box of kind of hitting restart on my life and my health and my own self-discipline. And left me with the habit of now I wake up every morning and I work out for usually about 45 minutes to an hour. I’ve cleaned up my diet a ton, which has helped.

I don’t eat after 8 p.m. and I try to go to bed at 10. And all of those things have resulted in me just feeling like I have a ton more energy and just ability to tackle things. So, yeah, those are probably like the little things that I’ve done in the last, call it, you know, 6 to 9 months that I felt like have had a huge impact.

Anthony Codispoti : We had fun kind of spitballing on the AI sort of trend that you think is kind of coming. Is there something kind of non-AI related that you’re excited about in the tech spaces that you’re investing in?

Peter Harris : So, I think the space that I’m personally really excited about is, I don’t believe it’s been, like, now’s the time for it to take off because of AI, but it’s not an AI thing. And that is longevity. I think longevity is going to be a massive opportunity.

Because we’re now at this point where I think most people are starting to think about longevity. What do they eat? How do they exercise?

What are the stuff that goes into their body, whether they’re eating it or it’s products that they’re using? And it’s just getting more and more attention. And now we actually have through AI the data sets and the analytical ability to start giving really insightful recommendations on things that we can actively do to increase our longevity. When I talk about longevity, I’m not thinking like Brian Johnson, who wants to live forever. I’m thinking more along the lines of like Peter Atia where it’s like, I just want to have a really good quality of life and then die.

And as opposed to having a diminishing quality of life and kind of suffering for a decade or more until I die. And I think more and more people are thinking about that. And so, I don’t know, it’s just an area where I’m looking at a lot of different deals and get really excited.

Anthony Codispoti : I’m kind of curious, where do you think the data sets come from to produce those insights?

Peter Harris : So there’s just so many data sources. I think the average person now, if they’re being honest and they really look at their life, there’s probably like 10 to 20 data sets that are tracking their health. So if you have an Apple Watch or some other Fitbit or some other device tracking that, a lot of people have smart scales. You also have your medical records.

A lot of people are doing blood tests now. Even your phone that just tracks like where you live, where you move, where you’re going, what you’re doing. All of that is data that can be ingested into providing insights to your health. And then you put on top of that like AI’s ability to analyze all of these research papers and medical outcomes for the past, you know, 100 years. In a way that hasn’t been possible before. It’s kind of this confluence of like all of those things happening at once and being able to come together to provide those insights.

Anthony Codispoti : So are the companies that you’re talking to thinking about investing in, are these ones that are sort of figuring out how to pull in data from all these disparate sources?

Because like that’s even hard for me to think about doing. Like how do I take the data that my phone’s collecting, combined with my medical records, combined with my Apple Watch and like how do I, and then where do I put it? And what is it getting compared to? I guess in my mind I was thinking, well, we need like massive amounts of this data for millions of people over time so we could sort of see the trends of, oh, the people who ate less than three potato chips a day. They had, you know, 10% less cancer or, you know, something like that. Am I thinking about it remotely correctly or put me on track here?

Peter Harris : Yeah, I mean, I think it’s a fair perspective. Companies are attacking in all different kinds of ways. So you’ve got like Aura Ring just announced that they are wrapping in blood tests as part of their overall large like service offering. You’ve got companies like Function Health and Superpower and Lifeforce that also do kind of this concierge type, you know, medical advice where you do a blood test and you meet with a doctor and they give you feedback on things that you should adjust to your lifestyle. You’ve got a bunch of new companies that are bringing out all kinds of new devices.

So I’ve, you know, like just a few months ago I met with a woman out of MIT that has a test that can tell you your biological age based on a whole bunch of different factors related to your DNA and blood work and all kinds of things. And then, you know, I’ve seen lots of other companies that some of them are pulling in lots of data. Some of them are creating new devices to collect that data. I think there’s a lot of different approaches to it. And that’s what I think is really exciting, you know, that the CEO of Coinbase just raised like $140 million for a new therapeutic that is based on editing your genes at the cellular level to solve all kinds of different problems. So there’s just like a tremendous amount of people that are thinking about longevity and approaching it in different ways. I do think though, like, why isn’t there a platform that pulls in all of that data into one place? I think that’s the product.

Yeah. Well, you know, this is my frustration when I did 75 heart is I was tracking my diet was I could eat anything I wanted, but I had to track it. And because I believe that anything that gets measured gets improved. And so I was like, I’m just going to track it. And sure enough, my diet improved massively.

But I was like, I can’t compare. I bought one of those smart skills that tells me my body fat percentage. And I just wanted to see the correlation of my sugar intake versus my body fat percentage. And I couldn’t do it. There was like no easy way to do it other than downloading, you know, data sets into CSV files and running.

Anthony Codispoti : Continuous glucose monitor would kind of get you in that direction, right? Yeah.

Peter Harris : I mean, you know, and like there’s some stuff that kind of directionally points you in the right direction. But I don’t know. It feels like there’s like a missing opportunity and a hole there.

Anthony Codispoti : I agree. And it’s going to be fun to follow. Yeah. Just got one more question for you, Peter. But before I ask it, I want to do two things. First, I’m going to invite everyone listening. Go ahead and hit the follow button on your favorite podcast app. You want to get more great interviews like we’ve had today with Peter Harris from University Growth Fund. Peter, I also want to let people know the best way to get in touch with you. I’m going to point them to your website, which is the letter you growth fund.com. But are there other ways you also mentioned your YouTube channel and your podcast? Any other ways for folks to connect with you or follow your story? Yeah.

Peter Harris : I think those two are probably the best. My YouTube channel at vcp.com. You can find me on LinkedIn as well. Just Peter Harris. And I do have another website, which is also vcp.com.

So anyone else? What will folks find at that website? That mostly links out to a lot of my podcasts and YouTube channels and other things. More centralized place than University Growth Fund for my personal content.

Anthony Codispoti : And we’ll include links to all these resources in the show notes, folks. But last question for you, Peter. Let’s say you and I connect again in a year and you’re celebrating something you’re super excited about. What is that thing?

Peter Harris : So we are, you know, as I think about like, what’s the future of University Growth Fund, right? Like I always want to push the boundaries and do more interesting things.

And it’s not just, well, we’re going to raise another fund and deploy into similar deals. What I want to do is I want to impact more and more students. I want to impact more students and impact them in different ways. And so one of those ways that we’re thinking about it is can we expand the asset class? So today we do venture and growth equity investing into venture backed startups. But in the future, I would love to do private credit, private equity. Real estate. And so maybe in a year from now, like I’m celebrating the launch of, you know, one of those funds where we’re broadening the impact and the experience that students have beyond just venture capital to a bunch of these other asset classes so that they can get kind of more broad experience. And also that we can, you know, generate interesting returns for our investors. All right.

Anthony Codispoti : Well, Peter Harris, University Growth Fund, I want to be the first one to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I’m really grateful.

Peter Harris : Well, thank you for the time. This is a really fun conversation. I appreciate it.

Anthony Codispoti : Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.