We asked our Fellows to create 1-minute videos as to how things are going in Detroit, New Orleans, Providence, Cincinnati, and Las Vegas. Here’s what they came up with:
Four of the Fellows (Mike Mayer, Billy Schrero, Brentt Baltimore, and Brian Bosche) started a non-profit, the Startup Effect, to train junior high school students in Detroit and New Orleans in entrepreneurship. The idea was born of a suggestion by Jeff Weiner, the CEO of LinkedIn and an Advisor to VFA who generously contributed the seed capital (note – Jeff is speaking at our Summer Celebration on May 30th at the IAC Building in New York, so save the date now!). Other Fellows are also hard at work making the cities around them better even as they look to help their companies expand and succeed.
Applications continue to stream in every day for the Class of 2013, and we already have 20 top prospects who have accepted offers and are set to go for next year. They include programmers, a biomedical engineer, a physicist, a college athlete who started a couple of businesses while in school, and many other talented and motivated young people.
In addition to our first five cities, we are expanding to Baltimore thanks in large part to a grant from the Abell Foundation. We are also heading to Cleveland to work with JumpStart and New Haven due to the leadership of Miles Lasater, co-founder of Higher One.
It’s hard to imagine now that Venture for America was little more than an idea 18 months ago. Since then we’ve been to 50 different universities, in the New York Times and on Fox News, to the White House, to Training Camp at Brown, and to the offices of hard-working entrepreneurs across the country. We certainly couldn’t have foreseen half of what’s transpired this past year plus.
When we launched in 2011, there were only 3 people full-time. We had commitments for about $400k and were working out of my old offices. I was going without salary, in part to save money and in part to help galvanize fund-raising.
Now we are up to 7 people on the full-time team and have raised over $1.5 MM with commitments for an additional $1.5 million, including $1 million from Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos. Our annual budget has gone from $400k in 2011 to $800k this year to about $1.5 MM in 2013. We just moved into new offices (still free as we’re being hosted by oneof our generous Board members at Mimeo). There have been countless people who have moved mountains and gone above and beyond to help us reach this point. We have some very exciting developments coming shortly too, including support from the Bank of America Foundation and a major corporate sponsor that has committed money to a new Innovation Fund for ideas developed by our Fellows in Detroit, New Orleans, Providence, Cincinnati and Las Vegas.
I believe we’ve progressed this quickly because everyone sees the need – our top young people are not being driven to roles that address the needs of our time. The question I pose at campuses (and occasionally, nice offices) around the country is this – imagine if the same proportion of talent that currently heads to finance, law, and/or management consulting were instead heading to start-ups and growth companies around the country. How long would it take to meaningfully impact job growth, innovation and economic vitality? What effect would it have on our culture?
That is the question we’re going to answer alongside you over the coming years.
Thank you for making it possible through your continued support. We couldn’t do it without you. Happy Holidays to you and yours, and here’s to a tremendous 2012 and an even better year ahead for Venture for America!
