Name: Ethan Levy
Hometown: Baltimore, Maryland
University: Tulane University ’16
Majors: International Studies & Business
Company: ComeFail
 
One of our promising young entrepreneurs working as a campus ambassador at Tulane University, Ethan Levy, recently participated in 3 Day Startup (3DS), a non-profit organization that seeks to kick-start student-run companies and build entrepreneurial capabilities in university communities through their program. It’s like Startup Weekend, geared exclusively toward talented college students.  They are a tremendous organization that has conducted over 100 programs on 5 continents and have launched 54 companies that have received over $18 million in funding. As VFA continues to grow, we look forward to partnering with 3DS and other organizations that are making entrepreneurship a viable path for young people in college and after graduation.
Check out our recent interview with Ethan where we dive into his experience with VFA, 3DS and how both are helping him launch his new venture, ComeFail.
Q | How did you first catch the entrepreneurial bug?
I caught the entrepreneurial bug when I was 7 years old, when I was on a 5-day hike with my family. As a seven-year old, hiking seemed long and painful. But what really got to me was boredom. There was nothing to do but hike. So I started thinking and came up with a “business plan,” which would make me CEO of a store called “Which What Who.” At first I would sell my collections, but later I would sell practically anything that my customers wanted for a really good price! I spent the day sorting out all of the details with my family, and they all agreed to work in my store. It was encouraging. I ranted about my store for eight whole hours. Although bizarre, it was on that summer day that I decided my dream was to become an entrepreneur.
Q | How did you first get involved with VFA?
Various people had referred me to VFA, but I never understood what it was or took it seriously until I met Sean Rowland, the campus ambassador at Loyola University in New Orleans. After learning more about the program, I was intrigued. After meeting with Joe Guy, Community Marketing Manager at VFA, I was convinced that I should get more involved by becoming a campus ambassador at Tulane.
Q | Can you tell us a little bit about the venture you are starting?
I am starting a venture called ComeFail, which is an online platform for student entrepreneurs to share their ideas, improve them, and attract the resources they need as their businesses grow. Built on the philosophy that (smart) failures produce amazing growth, ComeFail is a safe space for young, college entrepreneurs to get their hands dirty. Our purpose is to increase the number of entrepreneurs and their likelihood of success, and by redefining the culture of failure, we aim to minimize fear and maximize self-improvement.
Q | What led you to participate in 3DS?
I first heard of 3DS when I was participating in Startup Weekend. Students from the University of New Orleans recommended that I participate, since it would be a great opportunity for me to connect with other students and grow my business.
Q | Could you describe the 3DS experience at a high level?
3 Day Startup is an event that brings students together for 3 days to work on startups. Having now participated, I can say it’s an incredible experience. 3DS encourages students to spend one weekend in the startup field, giving students a taste of the startup lifestyle and all of its great energy. Students are rarely given the opportunity to get away from schoolwork and social life to work on their ideas. 3DS gives students that opportunity.
Check out this brief documentary that shows students in action at 3DS.
Q | How did your venture change and improve as a result of 3DS?
Thanks to the 3DS experience, my venture grew more in 3 days than it did in 15 months. I came into the 3DS event with a concept called Launchange, which was a concept for an online platform that would connect students within universities based on skills and interests so they could build businesses together. Launchange was one of two ideas that were selected. After being grilled with tough questions from the 3DS faculty advisor, I was convinced that Launchange was not worth building. This led me to pivot to ComeFail. I believe that our product is now much stronger and more likely to succeed. Also, my teammates (who participated in the event with me and are pictured below) are more excited. Shortly put, 3DS energized my team and improved our product significantly.

Q | What advice would you give a student that’s interested in building something?
Go for it. Fail early and fail fast. Learn with each failure. Embrace uncertainty. Have an open mind. Have fun during the process. Be up for the challenge. Be resilient. Starting a business can be tough, so you have to learn to enjoy the process.

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Ethan is just one of 60 individuals officially representing VFA at universities across the country. His experience at 3DS is just one example of the many opportunities available to our campus ambassadors.  If you are interested in joining our team, learn more about the position and apply on our jobs page.

Check out the final excerpt from “Smart People Should Build Things” below, as seen on FastCompany.com. You can still get your copy at www.smartpeopleshouldbuildthings.com!

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Who was the eighth employee at Google back in 1999?
I don’t know either; I tried to Google it and couldn’t find out. But I’m pretty confident that the eighth employee joined before the company was cool, built some amazing things, and had an incredible experience—and is now loaded.
Google is perhaps the most important and influential company in the country today. But most people can only name its founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and maybe its former CEO Eric Schmidt. Same thing with Amazon and Jeff Bezos, Apple and Steve Jobs or Tim Cook, or Starbucks and Howard Schultz. We have a very human tendency to associate large organizations with their leaders, particularly if, as in the cases above, the leader is also the founder. It makes the narrative easy. You can show a picture of the person, interview him or her, and ask for lessons learned. This also shapes people’s aspirations; hundreds of books and classes on entrepreneurship exist to teach us how we can be a bit more like these visionary leaders. It’s as if Howard is actually running around and opening all of those Starbucks branches in our neighborhoods.
But with every growth company story, there’s a whole team of capable, talented, motivated people who have worked for years to make it happen and whose lives have been transformed as a result. It’s not just the founder—it’s the people who have been a part of the organization throughout its progression. If a company happens to go on to become a household name, as in the cases above, you typically have dozens or hundreds of early employees who have their careers defined by it.
The vast majority of companies don’t go public and mint dozens of millionaires. And most companies don’t go around doling out stock options; private companies tend to be very tight about ownership. But the same collective transformation is true on a lesser scale with any growth company that makes headway. At Manhattan GMAT, Danielle DiCiaccio started straight out of college in 2006 as an entry-level hire and now runs a whole department. It’s very different being a director at a $20 million company from working at a $2 million company—imagine seeing and making that happen throughout your twenties. Moreover, you’d know and trust the people you’re working with because you’ve been a part of the team that built the enterprise to that level.
Sounds great, right? You’re thinking, Sign me up! The trick is that by the time it’s evident that a company is going to take off, it’s often too late to be a big part of the team. If I joined Google today as employee number 53,862, no one would care. But back in the day, Google was no sure thing. Larry and Sergey even offered to sell Google to Excite in 1999 for $1 million, which Excite’s CEO turned down at the time (to his eternal regret).
So it’s a bit of a bet. You want to join a team before it’s cool and hope that the company takes off. If it does, you could have yourself a very good run. You could even wind up being the difference between the company taking off and languishing on a small scale. Maybe you will attain a position of real responsibility—maybe it even gives you a career. If it doesn’t work out, you almost certainly will have developed some skills that will make you a contributor for the next thing.
These people—the builders who work with the founders to help these companies grow and prosper—are, in many ways, more appropriate role models. The plan should not be, for the most part, “start a company.” More realistically, the plan should be “join a team.” If you’re positioned to start your own organization, that’s great—but rare. You’ve got an unusual profile.
If you join a growth organization, you’ll likely do different things in different roles throughout your career. It’s excellent to learn and build with others. You’ll meet people you want to work with. If you have a good run, you can always come back and start something later. For example, Alexis Maybank worked at eBay with Jeff Skoll for years. She launched and ran eBay Canada and helped start eBay Motors. Years later, she went on to cofound Gilt Groupe, a major e-commerce company that makes my wife and many others happy.
And it’s not just coders and engineers that these new companies need. Just about any growth company is going to need smart salespeople, account and project managers, business development, marketing, operations, customer service, content creation, communications, analytics, and social media. If I told you that there’s a startup company in New York founded in 2005 that has grown to over $1 billion in revenue with over 1,000 employees, you would probably think it must be a tech or finance company. But it’s not. It’s yogurt maker Chobani, founded by Hamdi Ulukaya, a Turkish immigrant who bought a defunct yogurt plant in New Berlin, New York, in 2005. Now it’s the top-selling yogurt in the country (and quite tasty). I’m sure the eighth employee at Chobani is also having a pretty good run.
Make no mistake—it’s not easy to find or pick a good team or early-stage company to join. Even professional investors mess this up all the time and they’re looking at dozens of companies for a living. You hope to find an outfit with experienced, high-character, capable leaders. As we’ve seen, even if everything is in place most companies will not achieve their goals. Have confidence that if the company doesn’t work out, you will take lessons from the experience and apply them to your next endeavor, giving it a much greater chance for success. People can grow from adversity as much as they do from prosperity.
When the tech bubble burst in 2001, virtually everyone I knew lost his job as companies flamed out right and left—mine included. Some people did something totally random to pay the bills for a while as the smoke cleared (like teach the GMAT). But most everyone bounced back. My friend Robin worked for a company that went under; then he went corporate for a little while, and then years later he started a company that was acquired by Zynga. My friend Brian, who worked with me at Stargiving, also went corporate brieflyand later became an independent film producer who produced a successful documentary on a then obscure college basketball player named Jeremy Lin. Another friend whose business went under, Matt, became the cofounder of a tech company called Videolicious that’s funded by Amazon.
We’d all gotten in the habit of building things. Sometimes you’re the founder, sometimes you’re a team member, and sometimes you’re just in the vicinity and scheming. But once you become a builder, it’s hard to let go.

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From SMART PEOPLE SHOULD BUILD THINGS by Andrew Yang© 2014 Andrew Yang. Reprinted courtesy of Harper Business, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.