The third session of our flagship venture capital investor program, Venture Capital Unlocked: Secrets of Silicon Valley Investing run in conjunction with Stanford’s Center for Professional Development wrapped up almost a month ago.

With investors hailing from 6 continents and 40% of the class composed of female investors, it’s our most diverse class yet. Whether novices or seasoned professionals, our class learned the importance of keeping it simple and staying informed when doing venture deals. 

Tools to Help Investors Keep Up with the Market  

Regardless of your profession or geography, education is critical. Investors, entrepreneurs, and business leaders know the importance of staying informed and keeping up with the latest business developments. Our VC Unlocked participants were no different. Over the course of the two weeks, they shared resources to help each other expand their investing knowledge. Here are some recommended sources our Stanford professors, program participants, and of course, our 500 staff thought would be useful:

• StrictlyVC
• Fortune’s The Term Sheet 
• CB Insights 
• Mattermark
• Both Sides of the Table 
• Fred Wilson’s Blog 
• Tomasz Tunguz’s Blog
• Elizabeth Yin’s Blog 
• Hunter Walk’s Blog 

Tools to Help You Close the Deal  

Any effective angel investor or venture capitalist knows that closing the deal quickly and efficiently is ideal. Our investors learned that it’s always good to keep it simple when it comes to paperwork. In addition to staying in current, our investors learned that they should use standard legal documents to cut down on both the time and cost of doing venture deals. Here’s some of the resources they’re now using:

500’s Keep It Simple Security (KISS) Documents 
YCombinator’s Safe Docuements
National Venture Capital Association’s Model Legal Documents