Announcing Our First Investment, $20,000 in Balbus

#1

Post by brennanjp » Tue, Mar 05, 2013, 2:14 PM UTC

Rough Draft Ventures, a student-run venture capital firm powered by General Catalyst, has made their first investment in Jack McDermott's Balbus, Inc. Jack is a junior at Tufts University

Announcing Our First Investment, $20,000 in Balbus
blog.roughdraft.vc

Re: Announcing Our First Investment, $20,000 in Balbus

#2

Post by JohnExley » Tue, Mar 05, 2013, 2:19 PM UTC

The story of Jack stuttering during his pitch meeting to the RoughDraft partners and FIXING HIS STUTTERING WITH HIS APP RIGHT THERE IN THE MOMENT IN FRONT OF THEM is freaking unreal. Bilal tells it here: http://bznotes.wordpress.com/2013/03/05/roughdraft-vc-studen...

Inspiring story. I'm pulling for this guy.

Re: Announcing Our First Investment, $20,000 in Balbus

#3

Post by brennanjp » Tue, Mar 05, 2013, 2:47 PM UTC

JohnExley wrote: post #2

The story of Jack stuttering during his pitch meeting to the RoughDraft partners and FIXING HIS STUTTERING WITH HIS APP RIGHT THERE IN THE MOMENT IN FRONT OF THEM is freaking unreal. Bilal tells it here: http://bznotes.wordpress.com/2013/03/05/roughdraft-vc-studen... Inspiring story. I'm pulling for this guy.

It was pretty incredible.

Here's Jack's post from this morning on the origins of Balbus and what this investment means to him and his company:

http://blog.jackmcd.me/post/44584577942/onwards-upwards

Re: Announcing Our First Investment, $20,000 in Balbus

#4

Post by dancric » Tue, Mar 05, 2013, 2:55 PM UTC

Got to hang out with the folks at Rough Draft last night – I am glad to see that their passion for helping entrepreneurs is finally coming to fruition. Keeping in mind that these are students making these investments (many who were simultaneously studying for midterms this week), it is truly inspiring to see such energy in the Boston ecosystem. Keep up the good work!

Re: Announcing Our First Investment, $20,000 in Balbus

#5

Post by bobsy » Tue, Mar 05, 2013, 3:38 PM UTC

As someone who has a stutter. Good for them. I will check out the product later.

Somewhat unrelated. I really hate how you cannot see a web version of the Apple store. If I click the link app it tells me to install iTunes. I don't want to. I just want to check out the app now, see the price and hopefully motivate me to get it when I get home..

xbox, playstation, google play stores all allow browsing. Weird Apple doesn't.

Re: Announcing Our First Investment, $20,000 in Balbus

#6

Post by jackrmcdermott » Tue, Mar 05, 2013, 4:59 PM UTC

bobsy wrote: post #5

As someone who has a stutter. Good for them. I will check out the product later. Somewhat unrelated. I really hate how you cannot see a web version of the Apple store. If I click the link app it tells me to install iTunes. I don't want to. I just want to check out the app now, see the price and hopefully motivate me to get it when I get home.. xbox, playstation, google play stores all allow browsing. Weird Apple does…

Thanks @bobsy! I appreciate your kind words. Apple indeed does have a web version of iTunes to preview each app, here you go: https://itunes.apple.com/app/id467558411

best,

Jack

Founder, Balbus