Venture for America is featured in a full-page article in Time Magazine this week that also references research from the Kauffman Foundation.  There’s a nice picture of Andrew being dwarfed visually by 2012 Fellows Todd Nelson and Derek Turner, both from Columbia.  Thanks to Time for the great article!  🙂    

 

Name: Melanie Friedrichs

Hometown: Bethesda, MD

University: Brown ‘12

Major: Economics

 

What led you to apply for Venture for America?

Two great ideas: fostering an entrepreneurial generation, and revitalizing America’s urban centers.

What were you doing when you found out you were accepted?

I was sitting on my bed checking email. It wasn’t very interesting.

This is the story of how I decided to accept VFA, which is a little more interesting. I wasn’t 100% sure I wanted to become a VFA fellow when I applied. I was torn between working in business and doing research; the former was more appealing in the short run because I love the pace and dynamism of the private sector, particularly entrepreneurship, but the latter would have better prepared me for graduate school and a career in academia, a long run goal I’ve often found appealing.

On the Saturday after I was accepted (I asked for more time) I went to study in J Walter Wilson, a building at Brown with many classrooms popular for study groups. Miraculously, the best room in the building was open: the “chandelier room” on the top floor that offers panoramic views of Providence.

The sun was just beginning to set, and I thought, fate is telling me that it’s time to make life decisions. I wrote pro-con lists for both the research job I was considering and VFA on the whiteboard: “Creation” “Implementation” “The World of Ideas” “The World of Application” “Means to an Certain End” “End to an Uncertain End” and “Risk” (on both sides) and transcribed the entirety of Ruaryd Kipling’s “If.” Then I sat on one of the tables and watched the sunset.

After two hours I realized that all ends can be reached in many ways, and that by limiting myself to a defined path (the research > grad school > academia path) I was ignoring opportunities that I aren’t as clear cut but are more exciting and more adaptable to my personality, my skills, and my goals.

Now that you’re a fellow, what are you most excited about with regard to VFA? What do you hope to accomplish?

I’m most excited about my fellow fellows! I was super impressed with everyone I met at the selection day and I can’t wait to get to know them more. I’m also excited about the entrepreneurship boot camp. I haven’t had any formal business training and am looking forward to learning and discussing concepts and techniques with the other fellows.

I also really hope to use these two years to think about my long-term goals, in entrepreneurship or other, and how to achieve them!

If you had to live one place for the rest of your life, where would you choose?

That’s not fair. I haven’t been everywhere yet! Right now probably Burlington, VT. Lake, Mountains, funky urban scene, and not too big. I know I don’t want to spend my entire life in a metropolis.

Best thing about Brown: Prospect Park

Favorite Book: Watership Down

Favorite childhood TV show: Sailor Moon

Favorite meal: Steak, corn on the cob & tomato-basil salad. Although I’m conflicted about the steak.

Role model: Everyone has traits I admire, and nobody has all of them. I try to emulate the best of what I see around me rather than try to copy someone specific.

Favorite holiday: Christmas

Best class you’ve ever taken: Classics of Political Economy

Favorite movie quote: “My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, Commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions, loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife. And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next.” (Gladiator)

Favorite thing to do on Sunday: Practice! Play Ultimate Frisbee, 9:00 AM, Every Sunday, Love it.

Favorite entrepreneur: Jacqueline Novogratz of the Acumen Fund.

Favorite cereal: Cracklin’ Oat Bran. (I just heard we are on Brown’s meal plan for the summer. All the fellows will come to know and love Cracklin’ Oat Bran).

Most worn article of clothing: Red sweater. p>

Favorite sports team: Disco Inferno (my ultimate team). Michael Phelps.

Best trip you’ve ever been on: Study Abroad (Comparative Urban Studies, New York, Delhi, India, Dakar, Senegal, and Buenos Aires, Argentina).

Favorite historical figure: Adam Smith

Accomplishment you’re most proud of: Keeping the balance.

We wrote back in January about our visit to Las Vegas to meet with Tony Hsieh of Zappos, his partner Fred Mossler, Zach Ware, Don Welch and the rest of the Downtown Project team. Well, it’s now official that Venture for America will be sending a number of Venture Fellows in August of this year to support their efforts to rebuild downtown Las Vegas.

What Tony and his team are undertaking right now in Las Vegas is one of the most impressive and fascinating initiatives in the country. Can one revitalize and invigorate an entire metro area through resources and passion? In this era of struggling communities and fitful job creation, can a small group of people create a movement to turn a place around? In many respects, it’s a logical extension of the Delivering Happiness idea of a company as a community. After Zappos moves into its new headquarters in the old City Hall in downtown Las Vegas, Tony and company are going to be building the community around them. They’re armed with a massive war chest thanks to Tony’s personal commitment and the success of Zappos, which itself demonstrates what this team is capable of.

When I was at SXSW on a panel earlier this month, I was asked by a Las Vegas resident what can be done to build a thriving start-up ecosystem in the region. I responded, “Well, we’re about to find out if it can be done, because Tony Hsieh’s about to take it on in the most significant way one could imagine.”

If you take a step back and look at Tony’s track record, it’s staggering. After college, he started and sold a company to Microsoft for $265 million. He then became a venture investor and CEO of Zappos, a company that touches millions of people’s lives and was acquired by Amazon for over $1 billion. He wrote a best-selling book that has impacted companies and people everywhere. Now he and his team are looking to turn around downtown Las Vegas, in one of the hardest hit cities in the country (the city’s unemployment rate currently stands at 12.7%). The bar keeps getting higher and higher.

Tony, Fred, Zach, Don, Connie, and the rest of the Downtown Project team embody the principles that Venture for America is looking to restore to our culture of achievement: value creation, risk and reward, and the common good. They’re an outstanding group of people, and we’re privileged to be sending some of our country’s best and brightest to support their work.

 

 

Name: Ovik Banerjee

Hometown: Tuscaloosa, AL

University: UNC Chapel Hill ‘12

Major: Environmental Science and Biology double major, Chemistry minor

 

 

What led you to apply for Venture for America?

Last summer I had the chance to hear Christopher Gergen of Bull City Forward speak. “We often are so focused on taking the next step up, that we forget to take a look at where we are and the path we are on. We then reach the top of the mountain, see the view, and realize that we climbed the wrong mountain…” That sounded eerily similar to my trajectory and it made me pause and re-assess what it was exactly that I wanted to do. I entered my senior year undergoing the typical college senior crisis of attempting to figure out what to do with the rest of my life. Being interested in hard science and its practical applications for the real world, and social justice, I had no idea how to combine all of my passions. Thus when I first heard about Venture for America, a light bulb came on. Instead of trying to find a job that contained all my interests, why not take this opportunity to gain an entirely new skill set and create my own position for the future?

What were you doing when you found out you were accepted?

I was in a meeting for NC Fellows. Needless to say, I did not contribute very much to the meeting afterward.

Now that you’re a fellow, what are you most excited about with regard to VFA? What do you hope to accomplish?

I am definitely excited about getting to know everyone involved with this program, from the members of the VFA team, to the entrepreneurs and community members we will be working with, and the other Fellows themselves. I’m going into this hoping to learn as much as I can and accomplish at least part of Andrew Yang’s goal of creating 100,000 new jobs.

If you had to live one place for the rest of your life, where would you choose?

On a boat just so I could still manage to travel around the world (even though I would need to learn how to move move from point A to point B in said boat). If you are really strict about a specific geographic location, I might have to go with Chapel Hill or San Francisco.

Best thing about UNC: My fellow Tar Heels. Easily some of the most incredible people I have met.

Favorite Book: Fiction: The Count of Monte Cristo. Non-Fiction: Mountains Beyond Mountains.

Favorite childhood TV show: Boy Meets World and Legends of the Hidden Temple

Favorite meal: Indian Food

Role model: Bill Gates

Favorite holiday: Holi (When else can you have a powder/water/paint war?!?!?!)

Best class you’ve ever taken: NC Fellows Sophomore Seminar, a class spent trying to define leadership, service, Quality, and everything in between.

Favorite movie quote: “Life is like a box of chocolates… You never know what you are going to get.” Forrest Gump (I hate to pop your bubble fans, but there is no Greenbow County, Alabama.)

Favorite thing to do on Sunday: Sleep (although that rarely happens)

Favorite entrepreneur: Salman Khan

Favorite cereal: Blueberry Morning

Most worn article of clothing: Flip-flops (although I wear them so often one pair lasts about 6 months if I’m lucky)

Favorite sports team: Alabama Crimson Tide Football

Best trip you’ve ever been on: Cruise in the Galapagos

Favorite historical figure: Thomas Jefferson

Accomplishment you’re most proud of: Spending 22 years of my life in the south and escaping without a southern accent.

Every year as many of America’s most talented college graduates search for their niche in the post-college world, they are forced to decide between two alluring career paths. The first is accepting a high-paying job with a well-established corporation. The second is joining the ranks of a fledgling startup: a high-risk, high-reward option that offers the opportunity to see first-hand how innovators and entrepreneurs build a company from scratch.
In a recent Fast Company article, expert blogger Kerrin Sheldon gives 8 reasons why recent grads should choose a startup gig over an offer from a large corporation:
1. You’ll have more responsibility.
2. You’ll be given more opportunities.
3. You’ll be able to do a lot of different things.
4. You will learn from true innovators.
5. Your work will be recognized (as will your failures).
6. You’ll work in an awesome atmosphere.
7. You’ll learn to be frugal.
8. You’ll be instilled with the value of hard work, ownership, and self-sustainability.
 
Check out the full article here. And let us know in the comments section if you agree!

I was on a panel at SXSW earlier this week with Mark Davis (Kohort), Marc Nager (Startup Weekend), Nick Seguin (Kauffman Foundation), Jeff Slobotski (Silicon Prairie News), and Paige Craig (BetterWorks) moderated by Shane Reiser (also of Kohort).  The topic was How to Build Entrepreneurship Communities.  Brad Feld of Techstars was meant to join us, but stayed in Boulder to attend to his wife. 

It was an interesting panel, as each of us had a different perspective.  We each directly touched different aspects of what makes an entrepreneurship community vibrant and successful: leadership, successful and aspiring entrepreneurs, media and resources.  Over the past year or so I’ve become exposed to the start-up scenes in Detroit, New Orleans, Providence, Cincinnati, and Las Vegas, so I had some sense of how these cities’ entrepreneur networks developed. 

A few themes arose from our discussion: 

• Leaders often emerge by accident.  In many instances, a member of the community saw a problem (i.e., entrepreneurship is too inaccessible, no one’s talking about what’s being done in a particular region) and set out to solve it.   By so doing, they found themselves in a leadership role and a central figure in their community, though that wasn’t the original goal. 
• The right community leaders prioritize others.  In part because they hadn’t set out to be the focus of the community, the best leaders think about how to build something independent of their own position.  Mark Davis talked about the greatest victory being that someone would come to a Columbia Venture event and not know who he was.  Lining up a successor in an organization was regarded as a crucial part of building an enduring network. 
• Communities require lasting commitment. Mark, Marc, and Nick all commented on how communities take time and resources to coalesce.  It’s not an overnight process, but instead a multi-year endeavor that requires persistence to see results.  One signal of long-term commitment is a dedicated innovation hub, accelerator and/or co-working space, which appears in most any thriving start-up scene (RI-CIE and Betaspring in Providence, Cincytech and the Brandery in Cincinnati, Launchpad Ignition and Ideavillage in New Orleans, DVP and Bizdom in Detroit, etc.). 

Overall, the panel was well-received.  I was approached afterwards by individuals looking to build up start-up communities in Las Vegas (a VFA city), Chicago, Houston, Honolulu, Ithaca, Asheville, and other environments.  The interest level is at an all-time high. 

One point of contention that came up was that our panel was male-dominated, which could be said about the start-up scene in general.  Shane took the heat for that, but it’s really not his fault that the numbers are the way they are.  Hopefully Venture for America will be able to ease the entry of some enterprising women into start-ups and growth companies nationwide. 

One of my mentors taught me that there are 3 means to getting things done in business – people, processes, and technology.
At the time, I was VP at a health care start-up. We had come up with a new online service for hospitals that helped them manage paper-based information prior to surgery. Each hospital felt that its processes were unique and required weeks of individualized mapping and planning. My job was to make sure each client engagement worked out and grow the business, so I was generally eager to please.
I occasionally butted heads with my CEO, who would say “We’re not building a consultancy, we’re building a product business.” Over time, I realized what he was saying, and it applies to a very wide range of start-ups.
Many businesses start by having several really talented people working on something. If they’re very capable, they can build a business based on ingenuity and provide a service that someone would pay for. In our case, we had some smart types around who could drop into a hospital and improve the workflow by figuring out the bottlenecks (in conjunction with our online offering).
Eventually, if you’re smart you figure out what the consistent issues are and recognize patterns. You become able to process things in a replicable way. At this stage, it’s possible that some of the work can be done by someone who’s not quite as experienced or talented or creative, because you’ve figured out what needs to be done. In our case, we realized that one of the steps was behavior management and education of physician offices. We hired people who would go to physician offices and interact with the secretaries who were sending documents to the hospital. Generally speaking, the more process-driven a job is, the less vital the nature of the person you’re hiring for it.
If a task has been processed very carefully, it’s sometimes possible to automate it. You can have technology perform a task instead of a worker. For example, we could have an automated system notifying physician offices that they hadn’t submitted insurance information to the hospital instead of having someone call them. When you get to this point, then you’re at the product level and the business becomes predictable and scaleable. This is what we were going for, because then our offering could be more quickly rolled out to a larger number of hospitals.
This is the progression that many start-ups tackle. They begin with very talented people who are trying to solve a problem. There are often many twists and turns. Eventually, they figure out a solution to the point where they hire people for more defined roles. Last, they automate as much as they can to reach the product stage, if that’s feasible (it’s often not feasible for ‘service’ businesses or consultancies; these businesses thus retain an emphasis on hiring people that can continue to maintain the quality of the offering).
This is true in non-tech businesses too. With Five Guys Burgers, the founders spent 15 years tweaking their original handful of restaurants in Virginia, finding the right bun bakery, how many times to shake French fries before serving, how best to assemble a burger, where to source potatoes, etc. After they had figured out the processes, they eventually decided to franchise, roll it out, and bring it across the country. Here, the ‘product’ is the consistent Five Guys experience you get if you walk into a location and order a burger.
This is not to say that the progression from people to processes to technology is always preferred or necessary for growth. Many businesses have distinguished themselves by retaining their focus on people. For example, Zappos has eschewed developing processes for its call center staff, instead allowing them to exercise autonomy as to how best to resolve an issue. They can even spend hours on one call if they feel it’s warranted. This makes the staff happier and makes Zappos’ customer service one of its key competitive advantages. On the flip side, we’ve all had experiences with companies that seem so process or automation driven (e.g., call-answering software designed to keep you from talking to a human) that they’re not positive orgs to interact with or work for. But it’s difficult to resist movement toward processes and automation as operations grow, and in many cases they’re vital to achieving scale.
Knowing what I know now, I understand why my CEO was always driving us the way he was. You try to find the most talented people you can early in an organization’s development. Over time, the organization grows and you can process out more and more things as you hire. Eventually, technology can make certain aspects of the organization’s functioning easier, and the people move on to figure out different tasks and opportunities to process or automate.
Having a sense of the progression from people to processes to technology can help people find roles where they’re likely to be happiest too. If you’re a talented, motivated person who wants to build something and dislikes processes, you’d probably prefer to start or work at an early-stage organization that is still figuring things out.

Sara Cullen ’12 joined VFA after graduating from Cornell. As a VFA Fellow, Sara worked for RPM & CO, a boutique brand agency in New Orleans where she had a hand in all things digital marketing. Now, Sara is the founder and CEO of GEM, the first real food multivitamin for women. Read below for an interview with her from 2012 on why she chose to join VFA and click here to learn more about GEM.

 

Name: Sara Cullen
Hometown: Astoria, Oregon
University: Cornell ‘’12
Major: International Agricultural and Rural Development
 
What led you to apply for Venture for America?
As an international development major I was initially drawn to public policy and non-profits as way to pursue my interests. The insight into the inner workings of public bureaucracies frustrated me yet inspired me to deliver pragmatic solutions from an innovative and enterprising perspective. VFA became this perfect opportunity to work in an impassioned start-up environment where visions are boundless, impact is evident, and innovation is critical.
What were you doing when you found out you were accepted?
Just finished lunch with my friends at the Mate Factor in Ithaca, NY.
Now that you’re a fellow, what are you most excited about with regard to VFA? What do you hope to accomplish?
I’m really excited to immerse myself into a network of entrepreneurial driven individuals where big ideas are the norm. While with VFA I hope to learn all that I can and work with the other VFA fellows to accomplish great things.
If you had to live one place for the rest of your life, where would you choose?
I often refer to myself as a nomad. I grew up in Oregon, studied and worked all along the East Coast, and spent significant time both in Africa and Europe. I believe there is beauty in every corner of this world and no matter where I end up I know I can find the energy and culture to thrive. However, if I had to choose, I guess it would be San Francisco…I know, so cliché of me, but it is America’s current heart of creativity. Nevertheless, I am optimistic and believe that VFA has the power to change my choice and incite a proliferation of innovative cities!
Best thing about Cornell: Passionate alumni network
Favorite Book: The Story of Ferdinand (or also known as Ferdinand the Bull), 1936, by Munro Leaf.
Favorite childhood TV show: Anything TV Land–Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, Happy Days
Favorite meal: I’ve always been and always will be a sucker for a bowl of warm oatmeal with berries and Greek yogurt.
Role model: Anyone who loves what they do and does it well.
Favorite holiday: Easter! A humbling day of appreciation, dedicated to competitive egg hunts and feasting on yummy food!
Best class you’ve ever taken: Controversial Topics in the Global Economy—A class taught by the amazing Professor Barrett that was comprised of four topic areas: obnoxious markets, intellectual property rights, sovereign debt, and corporate social responsibility.
Favorite movie quote: “Here’s looking at you, kid.” –Rick in Casablanca
Favorite thing to do on Sunday: Reading and yoga
Favorite entrepreneur: Muhammad Yunus
Favorite cereal: Blueberry Optimum
Most worn article of clothing: Button-down blouses
Favorite sports team: Oregon Ducks and Oregon Beavers. Now that I am living out of state I don’t like to choose sides.
Best trip you’ve ever been on: Riding in a herd of wild horses outside of Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Favorite historical figure: Great-grandfather
Accomplishment you’re most proud of: I’’m happy that I am able to continue to do what I love!

One of the frustrations that I consistently encounter when I visit college campuses is that most all of the companies that are recruiting look like each other. If you don’t want to work for an investment bank or management consulting firm, there’s not much there for you in career services.

There are six default paths if you’re a smart kid right now (stats from Harvard’s class of 2011 used for illustration):

1. Finance (17%)

2. Law (20%)

3. Management Consulting (12%)

4. Med School (15%)

5. Grad School (9%)

6. Teach for America (4%)

For the average senior, it’s a pretty limited range of paths to choose from. Almost 80% of the class is accounted for before anyone has gone to work in ‘industry,’ or any company that’s not providing professional services. If you try to discern how many graduates are going to start-ups each year, it’s minuscule.

Professional services firms invest millions annually in recruiting our best and brightest. There is literally a ‘Goldman Sachs room’ in Columbia’s career services building. Every top student knows the names of all of the big banks and consulting firms by their junior year.  

But banks, law firms, and consulting firms all need clients – companies that hire them to transact. Even if your sole concern is the health of, say, financial services, you’d recognize a need to have a robust group of smart people starting companies and working at start-ups each year.  Someone has to grow and then hire the bank.

Additionally, professional service firms are congregated in a handful of cities (New York, San Francisco, Boston, and Washington D.C. being the most prominent).  If our talent is similarly concentrated, it’s leaving most of the country to fend for itself.  

We’re training our smart people to analyze, process, assist, and transact but not build.  We have blood flowing to the appendages but not to the vital organs.

Imagine if the same proportion of talent that is currently going to finance, consulting, and/or law instead went to start-ups and growth companies around the country. If you had 49% of Harvard graduates heading to biotech, renewable energy, Internet, green manufacturing, education technology, nanotech companies, etc. How long would that take to have an impact on job growth and national competitiveness?  I believe it would take less than a decade to see hundreds of companies and thousands of jobs take form.  

I obviously think that start-ups are a great place for smart people to go. The job changes, you have a chance to have an impact and believe in your work, and the reward is commensurate to what you produce and how much value you add. You’re trying to create something and bring it to the world.

But what I would LOVE to see would simply be a country where people do what they were meant to do. Where people choose to be bankers because they really enjoy putting prospectuses together and building financial models, not because it seemed like the thing to do or because Goldman has an effective recruiting arm.  Same for law, medicine, consulting, education, start-ups, etc.  Success needs to be defined by and for each individual.

Our country has the finest university system in the world. Tens of billions of dollars of public money and tax-exemptions go into it each year. What comes out should be more than a question of which organizations and industries have the savvy and resources to recruit effectively.  If we were to allocate our talent more effectively, it would go a long way toward addressing much of what we’re concerned about economically and culturally.  

 

We already know that our inaugural VFA class is full off passionate, bright and motivated individuals. And starting this week, we’re going to post a weekly “Fellow Spotlight” to give everyone the chance to get to know our 2012 fellows even better.

 

Name: Tim Dingman

Hometown: Sudbury, MA

University: Brown ’11 Grad ‘12

Major: Electrical Engineering

 

 

What led you to apply for Venture for America?

I remember hearing about VFA some time around the June 2011 launch date, and I knew right away I needed to apply. I believe that innovation is the prime mover of the US economy, and that innovation comes from two sources: basic science, like the work done in universities and government labs; and technology, the application of new techniques to the world around us, which is largely the role of new private ventures. Having experienced both aspects of the innovation paradigm, I felt that my skills and passions would be more at home with the entrepreneurs.

What were you doing when you found out you were accepted?

Watching the Patriots beat the Ravens for the AFC Championship with my friends. Andrew called me in the 2nd quarter to let me know, and I accepted the offer on the spot.

Now that you’re a fellow, what are you most excited about with regard to VFA? What do you hope to accomplish?

I’m most excited about building relationships with the other fellows. Having spoken with most of them during the interview process, I can tell that we have a lot in common and will be able to accomplish a great deal together.

If you had to live one place for the rest of your life, where would you choose?

As much as I love my home state of Massachusetts, I have little patience for the drawn-out winters. It would have to be a place with a similar culture but warmer weather… maybe somewhere in California? I just don’t know enough to say.

Best thing about Brown: The expansive freedom the administration grants its students. They trust us to do what we feel is best, and that tends to work out well given the kind of student they accept.

Favorite Book: Fiction: World War Z. Non-fiction: The New Way Things Work.

Favorite childhood TV show: The Simpsons

Favorite meal: Buffalo wings, but none of that boneless nonsense.

Role model: David Hume – Scottish philosopher from the schools of empiricism, skepticism, and utilitarianism.

Favorite holiday: Christmas

Best class you’ve ever taken: My high school philosophy class

Favorite movie quote: “I am serious – and don’t call me Shirley.” – Airplane

Favorite thing to do on Sunday: Relax

Favorite entrepreneur: Vinod Khosla- co-founder of Sun Microsystems, currently one of the top VCs in clean tech.

Favorite cereal: Frosted Mini-Wheats

Most worn article of clothing: I no longer own it, but probably my Stewart/Colbert ’08 t-shirt.

Favorite sports team: New England Patriots

Best trip you’ve ever been on: Bonnaroo 2007

Favorite historical figure: Thomas Paine – Founding Father, author of Common Sense, and noted freethinker.

Accomplishment you’re most proud of: Organizing A Better World by Design, a student-run and student-led sustainable design conference held annually at Brown and RISD  (abetterworldbydesign.com).

For more: timdingman.com.