Charlie O'Donnell @ Fordham

How Starting Something Can AI-Proof Your Career: A 20 Year Venture Capitalist Talks Entrepreneurship, Fundraising, and Tech Trends

Nobody can tell you which entry-level jobs will still exist in five years. What you can control is whether you know how to find a problem worth solving, test whether anyone cares, and get people to bet on you before you have a track record.

Charlie O'Donnell, Gabelli '01, has spent 20 years in venture capital, at Union Square Ventures, First Round Capital, and Brooklyn Bridge Ventures, the fund he started in 2012 and used to back more than 100 companies. His new book, Founder Unfriendly: What Investors Won't Tell You About Getting Funded (Wiley), is about how funding decisions actually get made, and most of it comes down to relationships, trust, and doing the homework on your idea before you ask anyone for anything.

In this conversation, Charlie will talk about why starting something, whether a company, a side project, or a community, is the best career insurance available to students right now. You don't need to want to be a founder to get something out of it.