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Tweets, Awkward Suits, and Hustle: How I Became a VC in Detroit at 22

Blake Robbins
15 min readMay 9, 2016

As of last week, I have been at Ludlow full-time for a little over 3 months. I wrote a small post announcing that I was joining the team; however, I wanted to take the time to explain how I somehow ended up in the VC world as a 22 year-old from a relatively small suburb of Detroit, Michigan.

I’ve talked to a lot of people that want to get into VC, and they all ask me how I did it, so I figured I’d share my story, in case anyone finds it useful.

I’d like to think that I defied a lot of odds, but truthfully I was so heads down focused on achieving my dreams that I didn’t ever notice what the odds were.

My Twitter bio does a fair job of showing on a high-level what I’ve done to get to this point, but I’d like to think my story is much deeper than just a couple of @handles in a Twitter bio.

Below is a timeline of some major milestones, risks, etc. and how it all played a factor into where I am today.

Freshman Year (2011–2012)

January 2012 (Found my mentor):

Shortly after starting classes at Michigan State, I had decided that I was going to get an internship my freshman year. I don’t know why I was so determined or focused, but it probably…

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Blake Robbins
Blake Robbins

Written by Blake Robbins

VC @ludlowventures. cautiously optimistic. previously at Google, Nest, and SpaceX.

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