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

25 points by brennanjp 13y ago ↗ HN

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

5 comments

[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 34.0 ms ] thread

JohnExley 13y ago ↗

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.

brennanjp 13y ago ↗

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

dancric 13y ago ↗

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!

bobsy 13y ago ↗

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.

jackrmcdermott 13y ago ↗

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