This network of Park Cities area business leaders and entrepreneurs isn’t only adding value to investment portfolios.
The Park Cities Angel Network, a nonprofit organization of investors from the Park Cities and Preston Hollow, offers capital to help get fledgling companies off the ground, as well as guidance, feedback, and mentorship.
This semester, the network expanded its reach to students with an interest in venture capital by taking on a high school intern through a partnership with the Highland Park High School Moody Advanced Professional Studies (MAPS) program.
Highland Park High School junior Eva Madden, the network’s inaugural intern, said she’s built valuable connections through the experience. For Madden, reviewing companies for potential investors that can result in real deals is simply part of the job.
“I just wanted to see what venture capital is like,” Madden said. “I feel like it’s really valuable to have a lot of connections in the Dallas area for business.”
For the Park Cities Angels, collaboration is the point of the internship program.
“Anything we can do to bring value to MAPS or any program inside the high school is an opportunity for us,” The Park Cities Angel Network’s founder and managing director Trey Bowles said.
Bowles explained that the network aims to teach students how to do their due diligence when identifying quality companies. As part of the program, students learn how to find or recruit companies that might be interested in applying for funding and evaluate them for potential investment.
Both the companies and the opportunity that investments create are real. And so are the benefits for the network’s young interns.
“It’s such a game changer for them as they’re trying to build up a resume of experiences as they go to college, and graduate, and want to get involved in private equity or venture capital,” Bowles said.
Moody Innovation Institute Director Geoffrey Orsak called the internship and partnership with Park Cities Angels a “natural fit” for the MAPS program.
“It translates what they’re learning in the classroom (into) the real world,” Orsak said. “It’s been part of our dream that this would be the outcome for MAPS students.”
Bowles is a longtime supporter of MAPS. He has worked with Orsak on programs including the lemonade stand project, which challenges students to run their own version of the classic childhood business, and recruited business leaders to participate in Scots Tank, the MAPS program’s annual entrepreneurship competition.
“The most important thing we can do for students around entrepreneurship is not teach them to be entrepreneurs or not be entrepreneurs,” explained Bowles, who founded his own venture studio, 1845 Ventures, last year. “I think it’s teaching them an entrepreneurial mindset — things like problem solving, creativity, this approach to failure, which is it’s not failing. It’s learning.”
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