Welcome to the Midway Ventures Collective.
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The Midway Manifesto
l. The Originality Trap
We are told that the founder’s journey begins with a flash of unprecedented genius.
We are taught to wait for a “eureka” moment of an idea before we have the right to enter the arena. We are told that founders are hit by a lightning strike of novelty and ingenuity — one that generates a superhuman charge that leads to extraordinary outcomes — and that those who have not received such a sign should not pursue the path of being an entrepreneur.
We respectfully disagree. The history of progress and innovation is a history of imitation.
The great masters of the Renaissance began as apprentices, copying the strokes of their teachers until the muscle memory of greatness was theirs. Apple did not invent the personal computer; they imitated the industrial infrastructure of IBM and the hobbyist ethos of the Homebrew Computer Club, then iterated until they reached a new frontier of possibilities.
At Midway, we believe that you don’t find your “One” by sitting in a room waiting for inspiration. You find it by getting your hands dirty with the messy 'Zero' — the unrefined ideas, the broken prototypes, and the early-stage chaos — that already exists in the undergraduate space.
II. The Pre-Founder Stage
There is a massive, untapped demographic of “pre-founders” — students with high agency and immense technical or strategic potential who have been conditioned to believe that the only path forward is a structured internship at a legacy firm. Society tells these students to optimize for resumes, prestigious logos, and the “safe” trajectory.
Midway is for those who refuse to wait. We didn’t want to wait until the summer to “maybe” intern at a startup. We didn’t want to wait until we had a resume full of buzzwords to prove we were ready. We didn’t want to sit on the sidelines while the real work happened somewhere else.
III. The Embedded Model
The most effective way to learn “founder’s intuition” is through proximity to the arena. You cannot learn to swim by reading a textbook on fluid dynamics, and you cannot learn to build a company by reading Substack posts or case studies.
Midway operates on a model of active apprenticeship. Since 2014, we’ve worked with 60+ startups across industries — building MVPs, sharpening go-to-market strategies, and embedding students into early-stage chaos. We partner with founders to handle the work that actually moves the needle. Our members don't "shadow"; they deliver.
IV. Our Ethos: Non-Gatekept Building
Most student VC organizations are gated. We built Midway to be the inverse.
We strive to be open as possible. While our core project teams are lean and focused, the knowledge we generate and the networks we build belong to the community. We don’t believe in proprietary "alpha" for undergraduates.
Founders and Funders Series: Our sessions are open. If you want to hear how a Series B founder navigated their first pivot or how a GP views the current macro environment, you show up. No application required.
Open Regional Competitions: We host competitions that aren’t restricted to “the right” majors or inner circles. We want to see what happens when raw curiosity is given a platform, regardless of the logo on your ID card.
Proof of Work: Our recruitment process doesn’t screen for “polished” candidates who can nail a monologue. We look for the people who show up and do the work — those who learn via iteration and prioritize velocity over optics.
Because if there’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s that your future co-founders, clients, and early believers won’t always be the loudest people in the room. Sometimes they’re just the ones who were allowed into the room in the first place.
