Its T minus 2 weeks until our next session of Venture Capital Unlocked: Secrets of Silicon Valley Investing.

We are currently in the final stages of selecting participants for our joint program with the Stanford Center for Professional Development that runs Feb 8th – 19th. As of now, there are only four spots left (apply here.)

Speaker List

Our visiting instructor and speaker list so far includes:

• Mark Suster (Upfront Ventures)
• David Hornik (August Capital)
• Judith Elsea (Weathergage Capital)
• Tim Draper (Draper Fisher Jurvetson)
• Jason Calacanis (Launch, Inside.com)
• Aydin Senkut (Felicis Ventures)
• Jeff Clavier (SoftTech VC)
• and many others

Speakers will be opening up to program participants about the challenges they’ve faced in early stage tech investing, including how to access to deal flow, which companies to say “no” to, how they built out star portfolios, and how they’ve helped the world’s top companies grow and scale.

The group of participants is once again shaping up to be a diverse representation of the future of venture capital.

Agenda

Week 1 

• An overview of the venture capital industry and recent trends
• Individual investment theses
• A look at how to assess opportunities and select companies
• Hear from experts from various verticals, who will be sharing their investment theses and portfolios.

Week 2 

• Deep dive into the details of how to build an accelerator or set up a fund
• Visits to top accelerators and VC funds in the Valley in order to see a range of approaches.

Throughout the program, participants will be working with real companies that are currently fundraising and will have a chance to interact with founders at Preview Day and Demo Day.

They will be undertaking a deeper analysis of the pitches with the guidance of Stanford professors and 500 partners, and may even decide to write a few checks.

The week culminates with participants presenting the projects they worked on throughout the program as well as a certificate ceremony.

Check out the preliminary agenda here.

Program Leadership

The program will be led by faculty from Stanford Center for Professional Development (Mike Lyons, Michael Lepech and Pedram Mokrian) and 500 Startups’ managing partners Dave McClure and Bedy Yang.

There are 4 spots remaining. Apply at 500.vc/apply.

Finally, while the most of the material will not be recorded or available to the public, here’s one sample from last year’s program with guest speaker Jason Calacanis.

In this video, Jason reveals what a new investor needs to do to become someone who gets chased by deals, and not the other way around.