When I graduated from Brown, I had a very limited conception of jobs, careers, and what I wanted to do. Basically, I figured I should do some kind of thought work that paid well, but I wasn’t sure what.

Here were my original criteria:

1. Intellectual vs. Manual. Does the job require a lot of conceptual work where I ‘used my brain?’

2. Higher pay vs. Lower Pay. Do you get paid a lot? I didn’t have any real numbers in mind, but more money seemed better than less.

This was my original thinking in a nutshell: seek higher-paid thought work. So I went to law school and joined a big law firm. I found that my framework was totally unhelpful when I didn’t enjoy being a corporate lawyer at all. Over time, I developed a sense of other work criteria that wound up being more informative.

3. Changing over Time vs. Repetitive. In some environments, roles shift and change each period depending on what the company’s needs are. On the other hand, many functional roles can become very repetitive if you perform similar tasks over and over again.

4. Broad Development vs. Specialization/Efficiency. Many jobs want you to become excellent at something and continue to do it. On the other end of the spectrum is a role where you’re required to develop new skills because of evolving responsibilities (e.g., a manager at a growing company). Think a swiss army knife (generalist) versus a scalpel (specialist).

5. Managing/teaching others vs. Operating Individually. Some positions involve developing others and taking responsibility for larger groups of people (e.g., becoming the head of a sales department). On the other hand, many of those with specialized skills or creative roles operate independently much of the time (e.g., a lawyer, writer, doctor, artist).

6. Autonomy/Agency vs. Low Discretion. In some jobs, you are able to make choices how best to address a particular problem, and can exert some control over your own environment and schedule. In other roles, your discretion can be quite limited due to detailed hierarchies, policies, and procedures. (e.g., I found that I had relatively limited discretion as a lawyer because my schedule and environment were out of my control and the client makes most big decisions).

7. People/service-oriented vs. Institutions. In some organizations (e.g., a tutoring business), you directly serve people that you may even see face-to-face. In others, as is common in the professional service context, your clients are large organizations that are hard to personalize (e.g., consulting to a large pharmaceutical company).

8. Compensation for Value vs. Compensation for Time. In most established organizations, there are firm compensation and advancement guidelines, generally related to how long you’ve been there. If you create significant value for a company, it may not be reflected in compensation. In other more flexible contexts, it’s possible for an individual to be compensated according to the value he or she adds.

9. Creative vs. Established Process. If a company has done something before, it probably has a set of documentation, rules, and policies to apply, and as an employee you will be expected to follow the process. In other settings, either because of the nature of the activity or because it hasn’t been done before, you may innovate or implement something new (though if you’re smart you’ll often refer to other companies’ best practices).

10. Building/Making Progress vs. Maintaining Position. If a company is growing, then people’s roles often grow and change and opportunities abound. You are much more likely to feel that you are building toward something and making progress with each passing month. If a company is fighting a defensive battle, contracting, or even staying level, opportunities are harder to come by and roles tend to be more stagnant. In a professional service environment, you often work on one engagement or deal after another, with one ending before the next begins.

11. Executing vs. Analyzing. In many analytical roles, you synthesize a great deal of data to produce a report, build projections, or make a recommendation. The output is the report, projection, or recommendation (e.g., as a consultant you build a report indicating how a company could lower costs). In an executive capacity, your output is the action or activity of the organization (e.g., opening stores, choosing what goods to sell, allocating resources to different marketing campaigns, etc.).

12. Team-Orientation vs. Individual Metrics. In many professional service environments, the unit of performance is based on the individual (e.g., how many hours an accountant or lawyer worked and billed, how many patients a doctor has seen, etc.). In other companies, the organization’s performance is measured more collectively because people from different departments are required to work together in order to achieve shared goals.

13. Uncertain Path vs. Predictable Track. In some situations, you can say with some certainty what the path forward is going to look like over the next number of years in terms of career progression. In others, your path forward will vary widely depending on how the company does and your role within it.

14. Sense of Ownership vs. Employee. In some companies, staff feel a sense of ownership over their work and the performance of the company due to the nature of the activity, company size, culture, or compensation mechanisms (e.g., stock ownership). In other environments, employees feel detached from their employer and see individual performance and company performance as largely unrelated.

15. Well-regarded vs. Obscure/Negative. Certain roles and organizations are admired by employees’ families, peers, friends, and the community at large. Others are not as well-regarded or well-known.

16. Long-term vs. Transactional. In some industries and roles it is customary for employees to come and go every couple of years, particularly junior hires. In other environments employees may stay for extended periods of time to build long-term relationships.

17. Positive Impact vs. Neutral/Indeterminate. Some organizations have missions or conduct activities that produce a discernible, positive impact (e.g., developing a new technology that reduces pollution or improves a health care treatment, etc.). Other companies conduct activities that are neutral or unclear in impact.

This is an exceptionally long list of considerations (sorry about that). To make it a little bit handier, here’s a list of Job Traits:

1. Intellectual vs. Manual                                                            Thinking

2. Higher pay vs. Lower pay                                                       Compensated

3. Changing over Time vs. Repetitive                                         Changing

4. Broad Development vs. Specialization/Efficiency                    Breadth

5. Managing/teaching others vs. Operating Individually            Managing

6. Autonomy/Responsibility vs. Low Discretion                         Deciding

7. People/service-oriented vs. Institutions                                People

8. Fee for Value vs. Fee for Time                                               Rewarded

9. Creative vs. Established Process                                            Creating

10. Building/Making Progress vs. Maintaining                           Progressing

11. Executing vs. Analyzing                                                             Doing

12. Team Orientation vs. Individual Metrics                               Collaborating

13. Uncertain Path vs. Predictable Track                                    Risk-taking

14. Sense of Ownership vs. Transactional                                 Owning

15. Well-regarded in Community vs. Obscure/Negative            Admired

16. Long-term vs. Transactional                                              Committed

17. Positive Impact vs. Neutral/Indeterminate                          Contributing

I’ve found this more detailed framework much more useful, and I hope others find it helpful as well. It’s unrealistic to expect a job to hit every single note, particularly starting out. And every job has its fair share of trade-offs and need to manage relationships (e.g., even a CEO is beholden to directors, staff, investors/ownership, customers, etc.). But this set of Job Traits may help identify why particular roles are more or less appealing to you, and it’s useful to have a vision of what kind of role you’d like to move towards.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I was an undergraduate at Brown, I had a fairly simplistic view of occupations and career paths. I just thought that I wanted to do some kind of smart or intellectual work.

So, I went to law school and became a corporate lawyer. I didn’t enjoy it at all. I left in less than six months to co-found a start-up, and have worked at a variety of early-stage companies for the past 11 years, the last of which was acquired by a public company while I was the CEO.

I’ve immensely enjoyed my time in the start-up realm – I think the start-up world presents a great set of job experiences and growth opportunities for recent graduates, for a number of reasons:

1. The job changes. In the start-up world, your function will constantly shift as priorities change. One week you’ll be working on a sales pitch, the next you’ll be working on the product, the third week you’ll be putting together a projection for a potential investor. You’re always doing different things. It’s impossible to get bored. Contrast this with a functional role where you may essentially do the same thing over and over again.

2. More Real Responsibility and Learning. In start-ups, relatively junior people often wind up doing work that they probably wouldn’t be exposed to in larger organizations, simply because there’s no one else around to do it. Your first web designer may fill in as the company’s creative director, with his or her work seeing the light of day immediately. There’s less bureaucracy. Your work is likely to be impactful from day one, with your learning curve accelerated as a result.

3. Responsibilities grow. If a start-up company enjoys some level of success, it is likely to grow quickly. In that environment, your responsibilities quickly grow as well. Your first marketing person can quickly wind up a marketing manager in charge of 3 junior people if he/she is up to it. It’s customary to see good people get great opportunities over time with limited bureaucracy.

4. High engagement/ownership. It is much easier to be excited for work when you see the impact of your efforts, and you know and like the senior team of the organization you’re working for. It’s also easier to be motivated if you have some stake in the company, whether financial or emotional.

5. Upside. In early stage companies, there is the possibility of some upside, whether your job grows into a senior role in a successful and growing company or even a financial reward if you wind up with some equity over the years (note that significant equity for junior hires is not the norm, even in most start-up companies, but it’s likely that you’ll be rewarded in some form for the company’s success).

6. Purpose-driven. Smart people working together can achieve great things. They can find a better way to solve a particular problem, make innovative products that make a difference in people’s lives, or offer a value proposition that’s more compelling than that of the dominant competitor. It’s a lot easier to get up in the morning and hit the office if you’re building something that you’re excited about.

7. Company perspective. If you work in a start-up, you are much more likely to internalize and identify the priorities of the company and the key drivers of success. Though there are certain issues that you may not see day-to-day (e.g., funding), working in a start-up environment is a great way to develop a sense of what would make a difference for your company or for any other. This perspective is transferable and valuable to any employer (e.g., all managers want staff who are able to ‘think like the owner’ and act in the best interests of the company).

8. Relationships. Start-ups are an intense environment. You will likely work long hours in close quarters with a small group of other people. The team bonding over hitting a common goal extends to all hours of the day. The chances are high that you will build multiple quality, long-lasting relationships as a result, including quite possibly with senior management.

Not to say that working for a start-up is perfect for everyone. Here are some of the things that may make it undesirable:

1. Financially unpredictable. Start-ups are risky, and the financial rewards are uncertain and uneven. For example, I took a 60%+ paycut for more than 5 years when I co-founded my first company, and there was no guarantee that I’d ever get back to my earlier income, particularly after my first company failed. It may work out great, but most start-ups don’t pay off in a financial sense.

2. Training is Doing, Doing is Training. Most start-ups don’t have the time or resources to engage in extensive training of new, junior employees. Often times, you’ll learn on the job and have to figure things out for yourself. If you like being self-determined, this is great. If you want a lot of structure, this isn’t ideal.

3. Unstructured. Generally, people are too busy getting things done to spend a lot of energy designing formal internal policies, processes, or procedures (or maybe there’s a policy somewhere but no one’s paying attention). As a junior hire, this may be beneficial because you’re not tied down with lots of red tape. On the flip side, sometimes a degree of structure is beneficial, if only to make things more efficient and give you a sense of how companies organize themselves.

4. Low Market Recognition. One plus to working for a big company is that everyone’s heard of it. And if you decide to leave, you can point to your years at Procter and Gamble or Boston Consulting Group as a stepping stone. If you work for a small start-up and it fails, your experience may not be as clear to prospective employers. (if you’re part of a start-up that succeeds this isn’t much of a concern)

5. Uncertain progress. Start-up companies make progress at very non-linear rates. Some of them blow up in a good way (or bad way) in a very short period of time. Others toil away for years before receiving any notice. A majority of companies spend years in the trenches only to fail or run out of resources, leaving the founders and early employees primarily with hard-won lessons.

6. Lack of Socialization. If you work for a big company or professional services firm, you not only learn whatever it is the company trains you to do, you also learn how to traffic and interact in a corporate environment, the terminology/lingo, presentation skills, even how to dress nicely. This kind of training is transferable and helpful in a number of other settings. (Of course, many see skipping this as one of the big perks of start-up life!)

7. Relationships (again). Though building relationships is in some respects the best part of working for a start-up, the dependence and exposure to the people around you can cut the other way. CEOs and co-founders are people just like anyone else. Some of them are great leaders naturally looking to develop and reward their staff with phenomenal opportunities. Others will teach you more about what not to do rather than serve as effective role models.

Above are at least some of the virtues and relative downsides of working at a start-up. If you’re interested, one thing I’d advise is for you to give it a try early on in your career. For most people, the time to take a risk is in your 20’s – it gets harder to be lean and mean when you get older. Figure that there are 3 times to take a risk on your career – earlier, later, or never.

 

If you’re a recent college graduate interested in working for a start-up, apply for the Venture for America Fellowship here.

By Ashley Aydin, Staff Writer

Published on: Thursday, September 15, 2011

It’s usually a bad sign when a city finds itself in the company of Detroit and New Orleans — but not always. Providence joins its woebegone sisters in playing host to Venture for America, an entrepreneurship program founded by Andrew Yang ’96.

The program, launched in July, is a nonprofit that seeks to create jobs in economically struggling cities, provide entrepreneurship experience to college graduates and help graduates join start-ups in locations around the country.

“We want to provide a runway for people who have entrepreneurial aspirations and encourage them to fulfill those aspirations,” Yang said.

Venture for America places entrepreneurs in what the organization calls “lower-cost cities” — Detroit, New Orleans and Providence.

These cities represent the “new American frontier,” Yang said. “Each of these cities has a hub for thriving start-ups so that graduates can continue their growth and development,” he said.

Doug Ulman ’99, president and CEO of Lance Armstrong’s Livestrong foundation and a Venture for America advisory board member, said he was moved by Yang’s business model. “He’s focusing on cities that can use the type of influx of youth and excitement,” he said. “I think there are a lot of cities in this country that are not considered hotbeds of entrepreneurial activity. So, there’s so much opportunity for seasoned entrepreneurs to have a huge impact there.”

Yang, who double concentrated in economics and political science, was inspired to start Venture for America when he met Charlie Kroll ’01, president and CEO of Andera, a financial services company.

“I thought if we were to have more talented graduates starting businesses like Charlie, it would great,” Yang said. “That’s what the country needs — more entrepreneurs.”

At Columbia Law School, he “saw a number of bright college grads that went down a particular path that didn’t really fulfill their needs as they hoped or anticipated.” But starting your own company is by no means easy. Yang’s first venture — which he started at 25 — failed. It was difficult starting a company while also focusing on management and professional development, he said.

“It’s hard to get into a start-up when you’re fresh out of school,” Ulman said. Giving young entrepreneurs a “two-year experience in the trenches” will inform their future business ventures.

Venture For America can “help build the bridge between enterprising college grads who want to learn how to be entrepreneurs and start-up businesses that need talent to continue to grow,” Yang said. 

Benefits of the program

Responsibilities of the fellowship include “developing materials, planning and executing placement initiatives, visiting and evaluating prospective start-up companies, interfacing with senior leadership at dozens of start-ups around the country and intensive relationship management,” according to the organization’s website. Venture for America is only hiring 50 fellows in its inaugural year.

“I think that the skills that they can obtain are practical ones,” said Tina Imm ’97, General Manager of Time Inc’s lifestyle group and a member of Venture for America’s entrepreneur board. “In start-ups, you get your hands dirty in a variety of things. You’re the intern getting coffee, and you’re also the CEO making decisions.”

Parker Brown ’12, a public policy concentrator, is interested in pursuing a fellowship after graduation. “You’re working for a start-up, and that can lead to anything,” he said.  

 Brown said Venture for America’s leadership also sparked his interest.

“I really admire the people who head the organization. They’ve done amazing things,” he said.

Brown, who is applying to the program, said he is most interested in using entrepreneurship as a vehicle for innovation.

“Finding more efficient and socially beneficial ways to do things and finding new ways to contribute to society — it’s very personal when you start your venture. I think you’re really invested in what you’re doing,” he said.

Tim Dingman, a fifth-year masters student in electrical engineering, said he first became interested in entrepreneurship while working on the planning committee for Better World by Design, a three-day design conference run by Brown and Rhode Island School of Design students.

“It taught me the performance of distributive innovation,” he said. “Venture for America’s purpose is to funnel people into that network of distributive innovators.”

The fellowship offers a number of benefits to its fellows. Salary includes $50,000 per year plus a bonus of up to $10,000 in the fellow’s first year, as well as medical benefits, a three-week paid vacation and the opportunity to build entrepreneurial experience. Once they have completed their fellowships, fellows can also enter a competition to win $100,000 in seed money for their own ventures.

Entrepreneurship at Brown

With courses like ENGN 0090: “Management of Industrial and Nonprofit Organizations” and an open curriculum, Brown’s academic offerings piqued the entrepreneurial interest of many of Venture for America’s board members.

“I think that Brown in many ways is a fantastic environment for training entrepreneurs,” Yang said. “I may not have gone down this particular path if not for my time at Brown.”

Ulman said Brown is not a university that people think of when start-ups come to mind, but students here are “so creative and innovative, and so many folks from Brown are interested in social change.”

Brown attracts a special type of person, Imm said. “There’s so much talent there,” she said. “You want to be successful and succeed, but not in a cookie-cutter way.” 

Equipped for the future

All of Venture for America’s fellows will be well-positioned to start their own ventures once they have completed the program, Yang said.  

Yang recommended that young entrepreneurs seek out mentors. “You can certainly learn by doing, but it is tremendously helpful to have someone who has gone through it before to tell you what to expect.”

Dingman stressed the importance of networks. “From what I’ve seen and read about and studied, building networks is the best way to build the thing you want,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if you have the best credentials in the world. It’s easy for someone to say, ‘Oh, there’s someone else like him out there.'”

Having a strong vision is one of the most important aspects of being an entrepreneur, Imm said. “It’s about patience and persistence, and keeping at your vision,” she said. “You have to be like the energizer bunny and just keep going and going and going.”

VFA Note: Fellows salaries will range from $32,000-38,000 +benefits, instead of “$50,000 per year plus a bonus of up to $10,000 in the fellow’s first year, as well as medical benefits, a three-week paid vacation…” as stated. Also, all fellows participating in the fellowship have the opportunity to be awarded the 100k seed money and will be judged throughout the fellowship experience based on criteria given in advance.

As a young person, often one’s instinct is to think of jobs as requiring skills for functional roles. You’re an analyst, or consultant, or lawyer, or dentist, or salesperson. And you’re looking for a job that gives you training to develop a skill and fill a role.

It’s also natural to think if you’re graduating from college, “I don’t have much to offer a company right now, because I don’t have any skills or training.”

Skills are valuable and necessary. But I speak to other CEOs of start-up companies about who they’re looking to hire and here’s what they say: “I don’t care if the person has done this job before. If they’re smart they’ll figure it out. I’m just looking for someone competent who will roll up their sleeves and hustle and do whatever it takes to get things done with a good attitude.” If that sounds like you, then someone wants to hire you. (Seriously, apply for a Venture for America Fellowship here.) The roles in start-ups are less cleanly defined, so the ‘account manager’ may find him or herself selling, creating materials, researching prospects, buying furniture, and anything else that the company needs at a moment’s notice.

There are some people who just work harder than others. The stubborn will to ‘get it done’ and run down loose balls is itself the skill that many start-up CEOs prize the most.

Just as recent graduates tend to overvalue skills, they often undervalue relationships. The truth is that most start-up jobs are filled that way – the founder has a friend of a friend, etc. If you’re a recent or soon-to-be graduate, it’s hard to build relationships early on because relationships are a two-way street, and there’s generally a sense that others can do more for you than you can do for them (though you’ll be pleasantly surprised how many entrepreneurial types are open to advising or mentoring as long as you come across as smart, courteous, likeable, and sensitive to their time).

Uncovering good opportunities and capitalizing on them is often as much about building relationships as it is anything else. Someone’s going to have to like you or trust you. And then you have to overdeliver on every level as soon as you get an opportunity.

As you’re getting started, the goal is to find someone, be it a manager or a founder or mentor, that you can support wholeheartedly and who likes to develop people. Ideally, you’ll find someone you admire doing something you believe in. Then do a consistently great job for him or her as a reliable, trustworthy, energetic high performer, and you’ll have one person looking out for you the rest of your career. If you help him or her succeed, so much the better.

This mindset is particularly true in the context of start-ups and small organizations. If you’re working with 5 or 10 or 20 other people, it’s crucial that people actually like and trust each other in order for the organization to succeed. The environments are more intense and you’ll be forced to work closely together. You learn a lot about each other. As a natural result, the chances of developing relationships that will help you in the future are very high.

From The Brown Daily Herald Blog, By: Jenny Bloom

Note from Venture for America: The Brown Entrepreneurship Program and Brown Investment Group event will be held in Wilson 101!

Wednesday, September 7, 2011 BY: Jennifer Larino, Staff Writer

Daniel Smolkin was 17 when Hurricane Katrina and flooding after levee failures forced his family from their Lakewood South home into “the center of the startup universe.”

Smolkin says he shared the heartbreak that came for so many evacuated families as he made the abrupt transition from bunking with relatives in Palo Alto, Calif., to planning a new life 2,250 miles away from New Orleans.

But Smolkin said he was soon drawn into the startup community rooted near Stanford University and feeding off the energy around large companies such as Hewlett-Packard and Amazon.

He picked up small jobs with startups ranging from search engine technology to garment printing.

Smolkin, who graduated with a degree in public policy from James Madison University in Virginia in May, is now exploring building a career with a fast-growing startup or even starting a company of his own. But he’s more interested in returning to New Orleans than Silicon Valley to do so.

Smolkin is one of more than 400 recent college graduates to apply to Venture for America, a national nonprofit that will send young graduates to work two-year stints with startups in New Orleans, Detroit and Providence, R.I. The nonprofit plans to place 50 graduates next summer and about 15 will make their way to New Orleans.

For graduates such as Smolkin, a VFA assignment is a rare avenue to cut entrepreneurial their teeth and a vital talent pipeline for New Orleans startups.

The program will also be one of the first formal tests of the sticking power New Orleans has among young, entrepreneurial talent.

Venture for America founder Andrew Yang said he spent years watching young grads try to crack into the startup scene while running a test preparation and education services startup in New York.

“I met hundreds of enterprising recent college graduates who were trying to put themselves in a position to get into startups. They all were struggling to find that runway,” Yang said.

Yang modeled Venture for America after Teach for America, a program partially funded by the government that placed more than 5,000 recent graduates in two-year stints at high-needs schools throughout the country last year alone. Venture for America will use a mix of private donations and corporate sponsorship to fund its mission.

Yang said New Orleans fell into the mix as he toured the country looking for entrepreneurial communities in cities that are affordable to live and do business in, are attracting young talent and represent the shifting economic landscape facing all U.S. cities.

“Entrepreneurs are much more likely to be successful in an environment in which they have a network surrounding them,” Yang said. “The goal would be that if these (alumni) then wanted to start their own company, they would find New Orleans a good place to do it.”

New Orleans entrepreneurs say the selection underscores the strength of the local startup ecosystem after more than a decade of growth. They also note the program will test how supportive that ecosystem is once fellows complete their two-year commitment.

Chris Schultz, a New Orleans entrepreneur helping fund Venture for America and founder of Launch Pad, a collaborative workspace for New Orleans entrepreneurs, said the local startup community still has gaps to fill to keep growing.

“One of them is fresh meat, smart people with new ideas,” Schultz said.

Brent McCrossen, a New Orleans native and CEO of Audiosocket, said the city has gotten better at attracting young talent since Katrina, but the 4-year-old music licensing technology firm still faces challenges in finding local talent.

“My objective is to retain talent in this city and attract talent to this city at all costs,” McCrossen said.

McCrossen said Venture for America provides that opportunity at an affordable rate. VFA startups must agree to pay fellows between $32,000 and $38,000 with benefits.

Chris Reade, owner of Carrollton Technology Partners, a New Orleans-based technology development firm, added that VFA fellows are likely to be driven and committed to the local startup mindset.

“If you’re a Harvard business grad and you wanted to just make money, you would just go to McKinsey and Co. and make money,” Reade said.

Reade and McCrossen note that a lack of talent and venture capital could be hurdles to keeping driven fellows here. Reade worries those who plan on starting their own firms will go where they get funded.

“And we have the worst capital raising environment I’ve ever been around,” Reade said.

Yang said the goal of Venture for America is to foster more startups.

“If they go and move to Atlanta and start a company and create jobs there, that is still a win from our perspective,” Yang said.

But he notes New Orleans has a strong startup support network that is likely to keep fellows in the area.

Kira Orange Jones, executive director of Teach for America Greater New Orleans, notes a similar support network among local educators is the reason 60 percent of New Orleans TFA alumni now stay in the city. She points to aggressive efforts from New Orleans schools to cultivate and support new teachers as well as diverse career options outside the classroom.

“They’re coming and staying at a rate that is as high as New York City and the San Francisco Bay area,” said Jones, adding that 80 percent of New Orleans alumni still work in education.

John Elstrott, executive director of the Levy Rosenblum Institute for Entrepreneurship at Tulane University, said a similar support network is growing for entrepreneurs at local universities and institutions such as Idea Village, the New Orleans Bioinnovation Center and Launch Pad.

He added the New Orleans Startup Fund, a nonprofit venture fund started last year by regional economic development leaders, is filling out the capital gap.

“I would say we’ve got real sticking power now,” Elstrott said.

Schultz said he, too, is confident the New Orleans lifestyle and startup support system is strong enough to retain talent. But bolstering funding before the first class of Venture for America fellows makes its way through the program can’t hurt.

“The best thing we can do to keep them here is to fund them,” Schultz said. “I hope we’re ready.”

 

Almost one in three students from the Class of 2011 working for pay this year will take jobs in the financial services or consulting sectors, according to Senior Surveys conducted by the Office of Career Services last spring.

It’s a statistic that embodies the extent to which Harvard students gravitate towards high-profile and high-paying jobs.

Now a group of entrepreneurs are looking to give students another option.

Drawing lessons from the successful Teach for America program that sends college graduates into classrooms across the country, the new program—Venture for America—will connect graduates with start-up companies.

The program, whose board includes a number of Harvard alumni and professors, will give 50 hopeful entrepreneurs two-year jobs at 50 separate start-ups beginning next summer.

The arrangement is “win-win-win,” said VFA’s founder Andrew Yang. College graduates will gain coveted entrepreneurial experience, while start-ups without the recruiting resources of larger companies will be able to entice the country’s best and brightest, he said. And by sending students to start-ups in three “low-cost” cities—Detroit, New Orleans, and Providence—program organizers also hope to foster community development.

“We think that there are hundreds of seniors who very badly want to learn how to start a business, but those ambitions are difficult to fulfill on your own,” Yang said.

The program is gaining momentum. Although its formal recruiting process has not begun, more than 400 students from schools across the country have submitted applications.

Yang hopes VFA will become a “runway” for students interested in entrepreneurship. Following a three-round application process that includes a written application, phone interview, and trip to New York, each selected “fellow” will receive five weeks of training at Brown University.

Participants will be matched with 1 of 50 partner start-ups and will receive normal employment benefits and an annual salary of approximately $35,000.

Gaibrielle A. Bryant ’12, a Detroit native who has already applied to VFA, said the program is more than an internship.

“This is a job that you have for two years,” she said.

And for one talented fellow per class, there is an extra reward at the end of the program: $100,000 in feed investment to start his or her own business.

Jinzhao Wang ’14, co-president of the Harvard College Entrepreneurship Forum, said this incentive is an important aspect of what makes VFA innovative.

“VFA will give people the satisfactory feeling that they are doing something good—but they are making this opportunity just as economically satisfying as other opportunities,” she said.

HCEF is coordinating with VFA to organize a recruitment event on campus early in the fall.

Chris S. Paik ’09, a member of VFA’s Board, said he thinks VFA’s message is a particularly important one for the Harvard community, which is generally very “risk-averse.”

Calling the financial services “prestigious, well paying, safe,” and “logical,” he acknowledged that starting a business means accepting a high rate of failure—an idea that Harvard students may have trouble taking to heart, he said.

“If you get it right, you’re Mark Zuckerberg, and if you get it wrong, you live in your parents’ garage for the rest of your life,” he said.

But Paik hopes that VFA can gain the prestige of TFA—and start to eliminate the stigma of risk Harvard students associate with entrepreneurship.

—Staff writer Radhika Jain can be reached at radhikajain@college.harvard.edu.