"You are the value proposition: your skills, your values, your soul"

Declan Coster ‘23 | Pittstown, NJ

Major | Electrical Engineering

Minor | Entrepreneurship and Computer Science

After finishing a long day of Zoom calls, I had a call with my friend and he asked me how this week was going. All I could think about was how I had learned so much. And it was Tuesday!

My LSV knowledge will allow me to better explain to my peers some of the nuances of Venture Capital. I am very grateful to have learned the concepts in such an engaging format and then peeled back layers in our conversations with Venture Capitalists. As a sophomore, this high level introduction to Venture Capital will give me much more perspective than a typical student on the ideas I have and how I could bring them to the market.

While I learned a lot of knowledge on how Venture Capital and Silicon Valley can help bring solutions to the market, I think what I have learned related to myself will have the most immediate impact. I have always put this pressure on me that I need to figure my life out by the time I am 25. Through this course, we have met so many interesting people who benefited from not getting all their success right away. This new perspective will help me rethink how I analyze my academic and professional paths and I hope will allow me to take the pressure off myself and allow me to focus on being the best me today. I have been recently trying to determine what I would like to do with my career, but, as LSV has shown me, the best way to look at it is what your career will do with you. At Lyft, we were able to see how the value proposition of a company really steers all aspects of where they make an impact. As we learned with the Baker team, you are the value proposition: your skills, your values, your soul. Just as in entrepreneurship, I need to find what business model, career, will work with my value proposition. Since I am still searching for a career that is best for the person I am, I hope to build on my value proposition. Build on my education and take the steps to do more of what I feel I want to do.