Kauffman Fellows

Kauffman Fellows runs a two-year education programme for venture capital investors and maintains the alumni society that graduates join. Founded inside the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation in 1995 and spun out in 2000, it is now operated by the Center for Venture Education, a non-profit based in Palo Alto. Each class of roughly 50 Fellows follows a curriculum organised around three tracks (becoming a better leader, becoming a better investor, and building a better firm), delivered through five four-day in-person modules, a Global Summit, two Global Treks and about 24 virtual forum meetings, totalling 20 to 25 days over two years. Attendance at all modules and summits is required to graduate. Graduation is not the end point: Fellows remain in a permanent community of 1,060 people across 62 countries and 680 firms, organised into eleven regional chapters, ten Special Interest Groups and a members-only platform called KF Connect. The organisation reports that Fellows have backed companies accounting for 15% of unicorns as of March 2024.

How it works

Applicants apply once a year for a numbered class, are interviewed by current Fellows, and are selected by an admissions committee. Accepted Fellows pay tuition and complete two years of modules, treks, a summit and virtual forums. On graduation they enter the lifelong society, where activity runs through regional chapters, Special Interest Groups that meet monthly, and the KF Connect directory and platform.

Typical member

Recent classes are roughly 86% direct VC investors, 72% partner-level or above and 43% founders. Across the whole society, about 55–60% of Fellows are firm founders, roughly 80% are partner-level or above, and about one in three is female.

This is a paid fellowship rather than a membership association: the entry gate is a US$80,000 tuition bill plus travel and lodging, and the organisation is explicit that people who have not yet started investing are too early. That framing makes it closest in character to an executive-education programme with a strong alumni network attached; the network, not the curriculum, is what most Fellows cite. Selectivity is genuinely unclear: class composition statistics are published in detail but no acceptance rate is, and the application fee itself is tiered ($100 early, $300 late), which is unusual. Limited needs-based scholarships exist but their size and number are not disclosed. Anyone weighing the cost should note that the headline portfolio statistics describe what Fellows' firms have done, not what the programme caused.

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