2014 Fellow Mike Patterson recounts his VFA experience, from his acceptance all the way to the 2nd day of Training Camp. A great read and insight into the passion and drive of our Fellows – you inspire us, Mike!
64 days ago, I accepted an offer from Venture for America (VFA), a fellowship program that trains recent grads to revitalize America through startups and entrepreneurship. I initially looked into VFA on a whim after a brief chat at Penn’s career fair and I’ll admit that, at first, the application was daunting. But the more I looked into it, the more I realized that this was what I wanted to do. Not only would it be a slightly smoother transition out of college, but I would gain a valuable network of friends, an incomparable training experience, and an amazing mentorship.
42 days ago, I graduated from the University of Pennsylvania (or as Kurt Vonnegut would say, I went through a puberty ceremony). Penn classes taught me a great deal but my friends, mentors, and teachers taught me a lot more. From my teachers, I learned persistence through strife and that I should never be afraid to ask for help. From my mentors, I learned that constraint breeds creativity and that 3 am chats don’t need sound. From my friends, I learned that love truly conquers all and that I have to believe the best in everyone.
34 days ago, I accepted an offer from
ZeroFOX, one of VFA’s many startups. ZeroFOX is a social media security company in Baltimore, Maryland. While I had just finished a course on security and found it interesting, it was not something I wanted to do initially. For the last couple of years, I have always known that I need to go into educational technology and build something there. But while I was considering the offer and looking at edtech startups, I realized that edtech will be me for the rest of my life. And this, this is my opportunity do something that I will probably never do again. Not only that, but I saw this as a truly amazing opportunity to learn from a great CEO who has succeeded repeatedly and to stretch my coding prowess. So I took a leap of faith and signed on.
And 3 days ago, I arrived at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island for VFA training camp. Days -2 and -1 (move-in days) consisted mainly of wandering around for food, meeting and helping fellows as they moved in, and mildly freaking out at this new adventure that I was about to embark on.
Day 0 was unbelievably only yesterday. We started our day at 10 am discussing what being a part of VFA really means and why we’re all here. We also went through a massive round of introductions with over 120 introductions (over 100 fellows and nearly 20 VFA team members). Quick break for lunch and group photo opp and then we hopped right back into our first challenge of camp. We were split into teams of five or six and tasked with building a Lego structure. The catch: one person briefly observed the structure, another had to build it based solely on the observer’s statements, another clarified and communicated from builder to observer, and the other two managed the rest of the team. Once this ridiculous but fun challenge ended, we were tasked with our second challenge: designing a team name and logo. After much pandering about, we finally settled on our name Hammerhead. During this time, we were also pulled aside for one on one goal setting. I set my goals to be that I wanted to learn more from the guest speakers and that I wanted to understand more about the business side of business. These goals then turned into actionable items in which I would work on marketing a product on days 6 through 10 of camp. Once we’d presented our teams, we were off to a delicious banquet, where I had the good fortune to sit with a VFA sponsor.
Day 1 started at the extremely bright and extremely early hour of 8 am this morning. We kicked off with a talk from the
American Graphics Institute on User Experience and User Interface. One of the most valuable pieces of advice I took from that talk was that you should fiercely cut the unnecessary. Following that was a talk from
The Flatiron School on working at a tech company. We broke for lunch and I was among those picked to have lunch with our two wonderful and gracious guest speakers. Our impeccable Indian food was covered by conversation ranging from the future of design to the functionality of the brain. After lunch came quick coding school on JavaScript and jQuery. Since these were topics I had covered previously, I took the opportunity to help my fellow Fellows. After the coding session was over, the VFA team presented us with the challenge to build a better VFA website. We were then introduced to the film crew that would be creating a documentary about VFA to help spread its message and mission. Dismissal sent us back to our dorms but we were by no means dismissed because we had to get started on our challenge due in only two days. Within a few short hours, we managed to come up with a great design, settle on who would work on what, and gather the necessary data for the project.
During those 32 days between accepting the Fox’s offer and arriving in Brown, my emotions ran the gamut on this entire VFA experience: doubts about myself, excitement for training camp, fear of competition, sadness at what I was leaving behind. You name it, I felt it. But now that I have arrived and training camp has begun, all those negative feelings are gone. I have never felt more passion or desire coursing through my veins than I do right now. I want to excel at this camp, not because I want some achievement tacked on my wall, but because I want to show everyone just how passionate I am about this. For the first time in my life, failure is not an option.
