Mike Tarullo is SVP of Corporate Development at Venture for America. Mike has run and managed nearly every department at VFA and most recently has focused his efforts on helping Fellows build companies via our seed fund, the VFA Accelerator and Innovation Fund. 
Read on for his advice on prioritizing and productivity and follow his thoughts on jobs, learning and startups on his blog “Outside the Echo Chamber“. 

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We’ve all been told that there are seven habits of highly effective people. That billionaires get up early. People ask how Elon Musk worked 100+ hours a week his whole career and assume this is desirable and imitable. Mark Suster describes his stress and health struggles in a really personal, revealing post, and then in a post 6 months later suggests entrepreneurs should be working past 10pm and on nights & weekends or they’ve basically given up. We’ve even been criticized en masse for feeling overwhelmed when it turns out we aren’t actually that busy.
Multitasking is doing us no favors. It makes us feel busy when we’re not. It is correlated with having a smaller brain. I am reminded several times a week (via a colleague’s eye-roll) that I can’t process what someone’s saying to me if I am also looking at a screen. Granted, males are worse at this than females, but none of us are especially good at juggling our burdens in a healthy way.
This is not news – we are somewhere between overworked, under-attentive, procrastinating, exhausted, and poorly prioritized. Take my present situation:
I have 15 tabs open on my laptop, 34 more on my phone, seven documents across Excel, Word, and PPT, Spotify playing, and a baseball game I turned on in the background.
This is while I’m trying to write. A post about prioritizing.
I don’t like baseball.
I know how bad I am at multitasking. When I told someone I was writing a post about my strategy for not multitasking she said, “you mean, just ignoring people?” Meanwhile, probably someone is reading this and scoffing and being like “lol only 15 tabs?! Get at me when you have sixty,” and being strangely proud of themselves. In conclusion, I am not going to cure your multitasking disease.
Do not lose hope! There are still some cheat codes and extra lives to be had. You may have as many tabs and screens as your heart desires, and I won’t try to stop you. You will have more productive days, and less productive days, and having a few of one or the other in a row doesn’t change your value as a human being. Nor does working a 70 hour week when 50 would do fine make you a better person.
The best thing most of us can do is to aggressively do fewer things. Those who attempt to boil the ocean fail. Be strategic with your time.
I’ve taken to limiting the number of things I try to do. By focusing on a smaller number of things, I do them each better, and end up with extra mental energy to invest in big picture thinking. I also reduce decision fatigue, which keeps me from making as many bad calls or having frequent lapses in judgment.
I’m trying to not make too aggressive an effort at this – I don’t want to punish myself if something comes up, and I don’t think drastic behavioral changes work too well or last too long. There are no shortcuts, but I feel like the positive feedback loop from being focused is making it possible to be more balanced and not feel overwhelmed.
To wit, I’ll share what I’m focused on now:

Work Life

The ocean boilers always appear overworked and super productive on the outside, but I was never sure what they’re doing. Until I saw the “Eisenhower Box” above (Dwight says, “What is urgent is seldom important and what is important is seldom urgent“). They are doing “not important” constantly. I have known many of these people. You have, too. If you don’t know what I mean, you are one of them, and you should close your eyes and take ten slow, calm breaths. Then, decide on one goal for the remainder of the day and ignore everything else until you accomplish it. Spend every possible minute in the important but not urgent bucket. You will naturally get pulled into the urgent bucket and do not need to prioritize it.
I try to get down to three or so areas of focus per week. One is a project I’m point on, one is my team’s most important project, and the final is a working relationship I need to improve. Each day, if I make significant progress on one of these important items, the day is a success.
The most common mistake is assuming things are urgent or important that are not. If everything is important, nothing is. If everything is urgent, you’re set up to fail and need to rethink.
My best exercise for this is to write all of your responsibilities and projects on post it notes, then move them into the four quadrants above. Do it with someone else (a manager?) to help you prioritize, so they’re aware of your workload. The two hardest things: pushing things that are urgent into unimportant, and pushing things that are important into a reasonable order of priority. Do not be upset when you come to a manageable plan – some people love that feeling of being busy or overwhelmed, but I promise everyone else will love you more when you have a manageable amount of stuff to do and it’s turning out great.

Social Life

Prioritize the people who matter most (important, but not urgent). Each week, pick two people whom you really like, and schedule something to do with each of them. If you have a significant other, they should permanently be one of those people. Watching TV with someone doesn’t count as a scheduled activity.
Second, I’m sure you have a big acquaintance circle, because only popular people read my blog. You’ll find you can comfortably see these friends pretty damn frequently at meaningful social functions (birthdays, weddings, concerts, etc.), of which there will probably be at least one a week. This applies to people 22-35 with no kids – beyond that I can’t speak to. Do not succumb to the pressure to do network-y things or show up at every routine gathering where no one will remember if you were there in three months. This will ensure that you’re balancing social life, self, and side projects, which is very tenuous and in my experience gets taken over most often by social life.

Self

This includes exercise, eating, sleeping, etc. I’m not great at this one, so no promises about these strategies. I do avoid setting goals like “go to the gym 4x and run 20 miles a week” because I would eventually (immediately?) fall behind and then be demotivated and stressed.
My current modus operandi is to try to work on good long term habits such as “cook more of your dinners,” and “play a sport occasionally so you remember why you’re bothering to be in shape.” These items also count as hobbies, and thus form a useful psychological defense when confronted with an aggressive overachiever who tries to intimidate me with a laundry list of hobbies like they’re reading a resume.

Side Projects

Pick one. Just one. Do it until you want to do a different one more. For my part, I’m writing more frequently – every day or two. Sometimes I’d prefer to watch a game instead of trying to be a better person (just, you know, not a baseball game), and that’s ok too.
I’m ignoring other side projects until one of them becomes too compelling to ignore and replaces writing. I chose writing because it’s good for me professionally, I can get to real milestones quickly (like hitting publish),  and most importantly because it’s a great feeling to be able to produce something and share it – which is key because my job presents few opportunities for that. I told a couple of people I was working on this, and now they reinforce (hassle) me every few days about it, which is the perfect level of reminder. It is incredibly non-urgent and feels important to me, although I guess the measure of that is how many people actually make it to this point in the blog post.
You shouldn’t have to try too hard to do all of this stuff – I find things should feel important and not urgent if you’re picking the right/most natural priorities. The trick is to take the painful step of not doing certain things that someone else asks you to do, or that you’re used to doing. You’ve got to take a step back and stop thinking that being overwhelmed means you’re awesome. Sometimes people who do too many things are simply searching for something worth investing in that they haven’t found.
Maybe someday I’ll close those tabs. For now, just going to try to keep focused on the few that matter.

When it comes to the stories of how our Fellows chose VFA, no two are the same. We wanted to check in with our upcoming class of 2015 Fellows and hear why they made the move to go VFA.
Lizzie, a native of Mobile, Alabama, will graduate as an honors student from Tulane University with a degree in Marketing and an Entrepreneurship specialization. She discovered her passion for entrepreneurship at the young age of 9 when she and a friend started a gourmet dog biscuit business called Dog Dayz. Her love for startup culture was rekindled this summer as a marketing and communications intern for VertiFarms, a local New-Orleans hydroponic farming business. She devotes countless hours and energy to her community, whether it is as a Tulane Community Service Scholar or as an HIV/AIDS Unit Intern in Cape Town, South Africa. In her spare time, she enjoys exploring new places and eating snoballs in New Orleans.
Curious about who’s joining Lizzie in the class of 2015? Check out the rest of the 2015 Fellows here.

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Name: Lizzie McDonald
College or University: Tulane University ’15
Major: Marketing
Hometown: Mobile, AL
Fellow Class: 2015
When I found out about Venture for America my freshman year of college, my post graduation life seemed eons away. My mom had read about the new fellowship in the Wall Street Journal and passed the article along to me. When I started my senior year five months ago, I still couldn’t seem to shake the idea of being a VFA Fellow.
I guess you could say I’ve been destined to join VFA since I was younger; 9 years old to be exact. In 4th grade, my best friend and I founded a gourmet dog biscuit company called Dog Dayz (yes with a z). And this wasn’t just a rainy day activity – we had a full-fledged business. Once we developed a customer base by attending events around the city, we spent every moment baking dog biscuits and developing new products.
I learned many of my first business lessons from this startup. We optimized production, discovered and marketed to our target customers, and managed our own finances.
On one occasion, we printed a huge stack of business cards without realizing we had made a typo. Instead of including “collars” on our product offerings, we had typed “coolers”. Being resourceful (and not wanting to waste the $10 we had spent to print the cards), we decided we should just create a new product offering: beef broth “coolers,” or ice cubes, for dogs to enjoy on a hot day.
When spending every Saturday at Farmers Markets and every Sunday baking dog biscuits in matching “Dog Dayz” polos suddenly became “un-cool”, Avery and I slowly disbanded our business. But as a (almost) college grad, I once again find myself wanting to explore my entrepreneurial side.
When I came to Tulane I decided to join the business school, and I quickly realized how uninterested I was in corporate America and how intrigued I was with social ventures. However, I know that I need a bit more training and experience before I’m able to start a venture of my own.
The training, networking, and exposure VFA provides its fellows with is unmatched by any other program I’ve come across. Through VFA, I hope to gain the confidence and the network to be able to begin my own venture. Not only does VFA provide an incredible web of established professionals, but also the opportunity to create and brainstorm with like-minded recent grads. For me, this is all really exciting and exactly how I want to kick of my career.
And hey, if I ever need a back up plan, I have a really killer dog biscuit recipe.

Andrew Yang
March 23, 2015
Originally published on qz.com
A s entrepreneurs, you, the builders of Silicon Valley, are our heroes and role models. You have forged a place where billion-dollar companies that didn’t exist a decade ago dominate the landscape. A place where “entrepreneur” is actually a respected career path as opposed to a cue for confused follow-up questions. Where investors regularly plunk down $10 million bets on untried ideas, and they actually work out (sometimes)! Where failure is, genuinely, a pothole on the path to success, often because you can join a different company across the street.
I’m writing with a plea—please don’t leave the rest of us behind.
By “us” I mean the rest of the country. Most of you grew up someplace else—like Michigan, Maryland, Missouri, or New Jersey. You have parents, friends, family, and classmates who are still there—you see them when you visit for weddings and holidays. Chances are you think to yourself something like, “Wow am I glad I left,” and “I can’t wait to get home (by which you mean your new home of SF).”
I get it. Things are awesome where you are. The air is clean and crisp. It gets chilly in the mornings when the fog rolls in, but as soon as it leaves, every afternoon is glorious. There’s a bit of traffic, but your commute goes from leafy suburb to mammoth office complex—one that could easily serve as a movie backdrop (and has)—and back again. Plus, your produce is better, which means you have the best fresh-squeezed juice anywhere.
I’ll tell you something you already know—things are a little bit less awesome in other places. There are a ton of communities throughout the country where “change” is a four-letter word, something to be feared. Because the only changes that Johnstown or Grand Rapids have experienced in the past number of years have been bad. Companies leaving, plants closing. And in their case, nothing else has sprung up to restore the vitality. Good people start leaving too, looking for richer opportunities.
You uniquely know what’s possible if smart people hunker down and try to make something better. Whole industries can be built. Ideas can come to life and transform entire economies. New business models can be born. Who knew people would rent their homes to perfect strangers? You don’t fear the future because you build it.
The rest of the country needs your optimism, ingenuity, passion, and energy. Badly. We need you to share some of what makes Silicon Valley amazing with the rest of us, to make innovation and growth the drivers of our economy.
I know, you’re cringing a little just thinking about it. You’re afraid that we’re bureaucratic and slow, unimaginative, and resistant. Trying to get us to get with the program would be painful and difficult, as we’re hamstrung by legacy processes and sclerotic institutions.
And all that is correct, particularly compared to you. But isn’t solving painful and difficult problems what you’re all about?
By helping us, you’ll help yourselves and people you care about. We’re your friends, families, customers, and fellow citizens.
You’re more than economic actors—you’re cultural carriers. You exhale the essence of Silicon Valley each day. You have seen what’s possible and made it happen. Simply meeting you and talking to you will open our minds.
It’s amazing when Sheryl Sandberg takes on female empowerment, or Mark Zuckerberg donates $100 million to Newark schools. But you don’t need to be at their level to have an impact. A friend of mine, Eric Bahn, advises startups in Detroit where he’s from. Chris Schultz moved to New Orleans and started investing in and mentoring startups there. Chris Olsen from Sequoia went back to Ohio in a bet that great companies will be built in the Midwest—and he’s helping make that happen.
We’re not asking you all to move back. That would be a bit much. But the next time you’re home, take an extra day or two. Find a business or organization to support. Connect with a local entrepreneur to advise and mentor. Speak at a school. Reach out. I promise you that you will be stunned by how eager people are to have you. You will be welcomed with open arms, so much so that you’ll find it embarrassing. Everyone will look up to you and be grateful. Your time and energy will go farther than you can imagine. Soon you’ll be hooked. You’ll tell your friends in the Valley about how the food in your hometown isn’t so bad. Your parents will be pumped and have something else to talk about. It’ll be good for the soul and great for the country.
The more Silicon Valley the rest of us get, the better off we’ll all be. Please help us get excited about the future too.
And if you’re interested in Baltimore, Detroit, Cincinnati, Nashville, St. Louis, Columbus, Providence, New Orleans, Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, Newark, San Antonio, Miami, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Charlotte, Denver or Birmingham, give me a call—I have some people that would love to hear from you.

BUY TICKETS TO 2017 SUMMER CELEBRATION AT THE BOWERY HOTEL

 
We don’t know about you, but here at VFA HQ, we are just about finished with winter. That’s why we are so excited to announce that Summer Celebration tickets are finally on sale! Join our friends, Fellows, and supporters to celebrate clear skies and sunny days at the annual #vfaparty on June 4th at the IAC HQ.
This year, Rackspace Co-Founder and Chairman, Graham Weston, will join us for a keynote address about his work in San Antonio, moderated by Lee Woodruff of CBS, along with dozens of other Luminary guests and leaders in business, tech, and more. We’ll be honoring our graduating Class of 2013 Fellows and the Fellows who are building companies with the first ever VFA Accelerator this spring.

Get your tickets today!

General Admission Early Bird tickets: $300
Get ’em while they’re hot! Early Bird pricing is in effect until May 1st at which point the ticket price will increase to $400.
VIP Tickets: $1,000
VIP ticket holders will have access to designated seating in view of the stage for the duration of the #vfaparty along with a waiter and speciality cocktails and hors d’oeuvres.

Visit our ticket page for discounts on packages of 5 and 10 General Admission tickets!
If you weren’t able to join us last year, check out a recap of Summer Celebration 2014 here.
Visit summercelebration.ventureforamerica.org for more information or email events@ventureforamerica.org.

Fiona O’Leary Sloan is a 2013 Venture for America Fellow working as an urban planning consultant with U3 Advisors in Detroit, MI. She recently launched IARA (pronounced yiah-rah), an artisanal, handmade, and individually designed line of beaded jewelry, as part of the VFA Innovation Fund. Support Fiona and IARA by visiting her Indiegogo page.

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Last summer, I was mugged. I was heading to after-dinner drinks with a couple of friends when three men approached us, stole our belongings, and raced off in a waiting car. It all happened quickly—10, maybe 15 seconds—and apart from a few scrapes and bruises, we stood on the street corner in Detroit, my home for the past two years, physically unharmed.
When I tell people I was mugged, they all want to hear my story. They ask if the muggers had a gun, if they threatened my life. They ask if I fought back, what time it was, where it happened. And with each answer I give, I see their empathy dissipate bit by bit: Did they have a gun? No. Did they threaten you? No. Did you fight back? No. What time was it? 11PM. Where did it happen? Corktown (a neighborhood as well known for its new restaurants as its petty crime). Well, they say, it could have been worse.
Yes, it could have been worse. I guess one could say it was a “gentle” mugging. Nonetheless, it left me rattled. A week later, I started beading again. At first, I didn’t connect the two, but I see now that returning to that craft in the wake of my mugging—a craft I found focus and solace in as a girl—was not coincidental.
The process of setting a loom, threading a needle, and weaving a tapestry of beads had always been therapeutic for me. Growing up in New Mexico, my godmother, an artist and jewelry maker, had taught me how to crimp wire ends and drape strands of beads. For an eleven-year-old perfectionist, the tactile nature of making jewelry was a far cry from the rote memorization required in my middle school classroom, and I soaked up every minute of her instruction.
Now, years away from those early lessons, I called upon my muscle memory and re-taught myself the bead weaving techniques historically employed by the Zuni and Navajo nations I grew up around, bought dime bags of beads in colors that reminded me of the year I lived in Rio de Janeiro, set the warps and wefts on my loom, and began beading.
Weeks went by before I realized how much my life had changed since the mugging. I came straight home from work most nights. I stopped leaving my apartment after dark. I invented migraines to explain my absence at parties and social gatherings. I watched my friendships wither and then vanish, like cold breaths in a Detroit winter.
All the while, I continued to bead, and before long I had made so many pieces of jewelry that I decided I should try to sell them. I registered as a vendor at a local farmers’ market and gave my fledgling company a name: IARA, after a fearless water siren found in Brazilian mythology. Naming my company IARA was emblematic of the person I had once been and wanted to be again: fearless.
The late Howard Thurman, a theologian and civil rights leader, tells us that we should not ask what the world needs of us, but what makes us come alive. To my immense surprise, IARA has lit my soul on fire in the best possible way. Founding IARA has been my own personal act of courage, a way to make productive use of the time I still spend indoors, a way to make something beautiful in a world I temporarily saw as dark and unkind.
Someone once said that everything will be okay in the end, and that if it’s not okay, it’s not the end. Things in my world are not okay yet. I still tremble when I have to walk to my car after dark; I still invent migraines; I still stay home more often than not. I still wince at the memory of my mugging, but I now realize that if I hadn’t needed comfort, if I hadn’t leaned my head on the shoulder of my childhood hobby, I would never be in the position I am now.
I am not healed but healing, and there are many women—some of whom may one day wear this jewelry—who are in the same place. I officially launched IARA last month as an Indiegogo campaign in coordination with Venture for America, the fellowship program that brought me to Detroit and encouraged me to think of my pastime as a potential entrepreneurial venture. This company is just starting, and I am producing a product that makes me proud. I hope that my jewelry can empower other women to walk confidently in the direction of their own dreams. That is life, after all: this cycle of one helping the next, finding the one glowing streetlight among rows of unlit streets.
The Innovation Fund is a four-week crowdfunding competition that gives VFA Fellows the opportunity to launch their business ideas and projects. Nine Fellow-led teams are off to the races sharing their new ventures with the world and hustling to raise as much money as possible on Indiegogo between now and March 16th. 

We’re heading into week three of the VFA Accelerator in Philadelphia, and our six participating teams are off to quite a start.  They’ve been busy coding like crazy, selling everything from boxers to weather insurance, and choosing their company names (no pressure). After setting up shop at VFA HQ in New York for two days of mentor “speed-dating” and some quality VFA bonding time, the teams are back in Philly working away.
So who are these enterprising all-stars that are growing into the next generation of American entrepreneurs?  They come from California, Long Island, and everything in between, with backgrounds in finance, engineering, and coding.  They’re fluent in Mandarin, Java, and tech-jargon, and spend their weekends at BYOB sushi restaurants or playing pickup basketball.  So without further adieu, meet the 2015 VFA Accelerator Class:
 

Ash and Anvil: Eric Huang and Steven Mazur

Ash & Anvil is dedicated to making clothes designed to help shorter men look and feel good.

Eric: After graduating from Notre Dame with a degree in Entrepreneurial Studies, Eric moved to Detroit to work as UX Designer and Web Developer at Stik (now Social Proof).  When he’s not busy building businesses or websites, Eric can be found either on the squash courts or devouring the newest season of ‘House of Cards.’

Steven: Prior to working at Social Proof in Detroit as a Business Development Manager, Steven attended North Carolina State University where he studied Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.  Despite studying abroad in Istanbul and South Africa during college, Steven’s love for NC State sports remains strong as he rarely misses a basketball game after January.

 

Compass: Mike Wilner and Taylor Sundali

Compass uses a network of talented freelancers to build awesome, affordable websites for small businesses

Mike: A basketball and entrepreneurship fanatic, Mike hails from Baltimore, MD.  At Washington and Lee University he studied Math and Business, spending his time consulting for local businesses and serving as treasurer of his fraternity. As a VFA Fellow, Mike worked as a Product Manager at BoostUp in Detroit, MI.

Taylor: Originally from rural Idaho, Taylor went to Middlebury College where he competed in both Cross Country Skiing and Cross Country Running.  While in Detroit, he worked as an Executive Associate at Rock Ventures… when he wasn’t frolicking in the indefinite Detroit winters.

 

LeagueSide: Evan Brandoff and Zubin Teherani

LeagueSide helps local youth sports leagues get sponsorship from big national brands

Evan: Originally from Long Island, NY, Evan attended the University of Texas-Austin where he studied Finance.  At Benzinga, a financial technology company based in Detroit, he focused on Business Development.  Evan is a die-hard Jets and Rangers fan, and is excited to make it to at least one Phillies game this spring.

Zubin: Zubin grew up in Dallas, TX before studying Business at Georgetown University.  In New Orleans, he worked at IDScant.net as a Manager of Business Development while developing a fondness for beignets and alligators.  Outside of work Zubin loves a good game of pickup basketball and cheering on the Alabama Crimson Tide.

 

Melville: Matt Fulton

Melville makes media consumption collaborative by allowing users to annotate the web

Matt: A Denver native, Matt majored in Finance and Entrepreneurship at Colorado University-Boulder before becoming the Lead Growth Engineer at Roadtrippers in Cincinnati, OH.  When he’s not enjoying the mountain life Matt stays busy by teaching himself to code and becoming friendly with the nearest Chipotle.

 

Pugs: Claire Kim and Kate Leisy

Pugs is a woman’s loungewear brand that enables you to live comfortably, confidently, and true to yourself.

Claire: Claire grew up in Irvine, CA and graduated from Harvard with a degree in Social Studies after taking a semester off to work on a political campaign.  As a VFA Fellow she worked as an Account Manager at Swipely in Providence, RI.  Although she misses California dearly, she’s been happy to find oyster happy hours and Frank Sinatra impersonators East of the Mississippi.

Kate: One of the few real southerners in the Accelerator, Kate grew up outside of Atlanta, GA before studying Human and Organizational Development at Vanderbilt University.  Kate has already made a home in Philly and spent her Fellowship as a Marketing Manager for Curalate before starting her own company.

 

Sky Mutual: John Yarchoan

Sky Mutual provides weather insurance for business and events using novel models and algorithms

John: After graduating from Amherst College, John joined Resource Environmental Solutions in New Orleans, LA as a Land Analyst.  A self-proclaimed weather nerd, he loves chasing tornados and in the winter months can be found leaving fresh ski tracks from Colorado to California.

 
 
Stay tuned over the next few weeks as we dive into more detail on each team and the companies they’re building!

Kate Leisy and Claire Kim are 2013 Venture for America Fellows who are teaming up with the VFA Innovation Fund and VFA Accelerator to launch Pugs, a women’s lifestyle brand that makes apparel for lounging. They recently launched their first product, boxers for women, on Indiegogo for all those out there that appreciate living a comfy life. If this sounds like you, consider supporting their campaign here.

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We’re living in a time of the ‘couch professional’. Judging from the hoodie-clad entrepreneurs, the coffee shop creatives, and the night owl coders, it’s apparent that people are most creative and productive when they’re most comfortable—comfortable in where they are, how they feel, and with what they’re wearing.
As queens of this comfy life, we created Pugs – a loungewear brand for women who appreciate living comfortably, being confident in their own skin, and wearing what makes them feel best.
Despite the fair share of women’s clothing out there, it’s slim pickings for a loungey item that’s better-fitting and more functional than sweatpants, yet more comfortable and er, public, than lingerie. With our first product, women’s boxers, we hope to craft a piece of clothing for the creative professionals, confident couch dwellers, and timeless tomboys out there. As self-professed all-of-the-aboves, we’ll leave you with some tips on how to embrace this type of comfy life:

1. Own the couch, don’t let the couch own you.

Sitting comfortably in boxers on your couch isn’t merely a sign of sluggishness, it’s about you feeling good and setting the agenda you want for your couch session—whether you’re watching The Bachelor or polishing your presentation for the next day, you’re crossing something off your list.

2. Creativity never goes out of style.

Being intentional about how we dress isn’t 100% vain. The most successful creatives among us were not necessarily the best dressed, yet they wore what felt right. Wearing Pugs feels effortless—leaving room for you to think about what’s really important, like finger painting, which is always in vogue.

3. You do you.

As the founders of Pugs, we’ve embraced the relationship between what we wear and how we feel. Whether we’re at our favorite coffee shop cranking out emails or in the living room crafting a poetic haiku, we know that when we’re most comfortable, we’re our most productive, happy, and authentic selves.
To the women who’ve long searched for loungewear that’s well-made, stylish, and comfortable, we hear you. Pugs is providing a new option that’s every bit as comfy as your old ratty tee and sweatpant combo, yet just as unique as you. We’re here to help you embrace your creative, confident, and comfortable life.
The Innovation Fund is a four-week crowdfunding competition that gives VFA Fellows the opportunity to launch their business ideas and projects. Nine Fellow-led teams are off to the races sharing their new ventures with the world and hustling to raise as much money as possible on Indiegogo between now and March 16th. 

The Innovation Fund is a four-week crowdfunding competition that gives VFA Fellows the opportunity to launch their business ideas and projects. Nine Fellow-led teams are off to the races sharing their new ventures with the world and hustling to raise as much money as possible on Indiegogo between now and March 16th. 
David Roger is the CEO/Founder of Felix Gray and a 2013 Venture for America Fellow. After working at Downtown Project in Las Vegas for the better half of his two-year commitment, he is now focused on growing Felix Gray. David and his team are dedicated to relieving Digital Eye Strain with awesome glasses that make you feel and look good.

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At Felix Gray, we’re starting a company to solve a problem that affects more than 60% of us.
People are constantly staring at digital devices: they’re using dual monitors at work, checking their smartphone, Facebook stalking on their laptop, late night reading on their tablet. I mean, I’m staring at a computer right now to write this article.
My first job out of college meant being in front of two monitors building financial models. Whether I was staring at tiny Excel cells, answering email, or messing around on Facebook (yeah, I did that too), I stared at a computer for 9 or more hours a day. And by 4 pm, my eyes would hurt…a lot. Many of my friends had similar experiences as they also worked jobs that involved lots of screen time: investment banking, consulting, web development, advertising. You name the profession and it most likely means being in front of a computer. And guess what, that’s not so good for you.
It turns out Digital Eye Strain (DES) is a real problem.
Our eyes never evolved to stare long hours at objects up close; in fact, they’re at rest when looking 20 feet away. When staring at closer things, the ciliary muscle in our eye spasms back and forth to adjust. This overworks the muscle and makes our eyes tired. Digital devices also have the adverse effect of producing glare, which was never meant to be such a prevalent part of our eyes’ daily lives.
I used to think that DES was a pseudo-syndrome, but my online reading consistently pointed to it being a growing modern issue. 70% of all Millenials experience its symptoms. These include dry eyes, sore eyes, blurred vision, difficulty focusing your eyes, and increased sensitivity to light.

I started Googling solutions and what came up again and again was the optometrist-recommended computer glasses. However, when I went to buy a pair, I discovered that the brands and designs did not suit my taste. Nothing looked cool. I couldn’t help but think about how many other people stared at a computer all day long that would want a pair of sophisticated, affordable glasses to combat their digitally caused eye fatigue.

So that’s how Felix Gray started. We want to help relieve DES while simultaneously making people feel good and confident in our stylish, intelligent frames.
Our lenses address both issues that our eyes cannot handle naturally. They increase the magnification, which tricks our eyes into believing we’re staring at objects further away. This helps ease the workload of the ciliary muscle. Our lenses also have two high quality anti-reflective coatings to combat the two types of glare. We apply an AR coating that eliminates back-glare by equalizing the light reflected from the inner surface with the light reflected on the outer surface of the lens; our EMI coat eliminates static glare that digital devices produce.
But enough science stuff, our glasses are also supposed to make you feel good. Feel sexy. Feel confident. Otherwise, we’d have gone out, bought a pair of gamer glasses that look straight out of The Matrix, and never started Felix Gray. But we couldn’t do that. Our frames are classic with a twist: in touch with both the modern, digital world and the older, analog past.

Right now, we’re in the middle of a 40-person beta to test different lenses and frame styles. However, for Felix Gray to reach the next step, we need to raise more capital. We’ve launched an Indiegogo campaign to create our first self-designed frames. We have plenty of perks, many of which are frames at a discounted retail price (we plan on selling glasses for $85).
Yes, it’s important to make your eyes feel better. That’s why we will continue to source high quality lenses. But it’s equally as important to us that when you sit down to your computer at work or read your iPad on your couch that you perk up a little bit knowing that—frankly—you look pretty damn sweet.
 

The Innovation Fund is a four-week crowdfunding competition that gives VFA Fellows the opportunity to launch their business ideas and projects. Nine Fellow-led teams are off to the races sharing their new ventures with the world and hustling to raise as much money as possible on Indiegogo between now and March 16th. 
2013 Fellow Astrid Schanz-Garbassi has teamed up with Hilary Cunningham and Nick Jasset to create Phi Bar, an energy bar designed to help you rethink the way you eat, and refuel during less active parts of your day. Read more about their project below and visit their Indiegogo page if you’d like to support them! 

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By Astrid Schanz-Garbassi
As Venture for America Fellows, we’re encouraged to challenge paradigms. Our very entrance into the program is such an acknowledgment; we value critical thinking in the face of tradition. One paradigm that’s always stuck out to me as ripe for improvement is the way we (Americans) learn, transmit, and interpret health and nutritional wisdom. How did we decide that low-fat diets are healthy? That “an apple a day keeps the doctor away”? That it was sensible to eat muffins for breakfast but not chocolate cake? That it was reasonable to eat 6-11 servings of grains each day? The more I read about these questions, the more I realized the scientific community wasn’t providing the answers. Our parents, the media and the USDA seemed to be the main sources of information, and two of those three were being largely influenced by massive corporations and lobbyists with vetted interests in getting more of a certain food—wheat, corn, soy—on our tables. (Depending on who your parents are, perhaps three of three…)
I began to search for actual scientific validation behind mainstream nutritional dogma. It turns out there’s shockingly little. Our obsession with cholesterol and our conviction that it caused heart disease was actually not well-founded, and has been debunked time and time again, my favorite compilation is this excellent history of cholesterol research. The notion that dietary fat makes us fat has come into question multiple times over the course of the past couple of years, with physicians, nutritionists and investigative journalists all raising excellent critical points. Even the ubiquitously accepted idea of calories in calories out has compelling arguments against it.
I won’t explore the myriad arguments for these points here; Dr. Peter Attia, Gary Taubes, and Dr. Paul Jaminet have already made eloquent and exhaustive cases for these ideas.

After reading the logical and impossible-to-ignore attacks on the fallacies of the modern diet recommended by the USDA, I was infuriated that this dietary advice was creeping into the everyday food choices that were available to me. Most often, I was cornered into making these choices when I was on the go, unable to cook, and had to reach for something convenient: an energy bar.
Most energy bars are made with a nutritional profile in line with the “low-fat” label that is now so closely linked with health, or with a profile well-suited for pre or post exercise consumption. Consequently, these bars are packed with protein, glycogen-building carbohydrates, and sugars.
But as it turns out, I am not often spending the majority of my day summiting peaks—I’m actually sitting. In an office, on public transportation, or at social events. As it turns out, staying fit during less active times requires a drastically different dietetic paradigm—one that involves higher fat foods.
It turns out I wasn’t alone—which is how Phi was born. A nutritional science graduate student, a health nut, and a frustrated office dweller came together to create an energy bar with a macronutrient profile that rejects “conventional” dietary wisdom and embraces that nutrition is situational.

We cut out the sugar, brought protein to liver-safe levels, and swapped the high-carb content for healthy fats from nuts. Better yet, we do this without the use of scary sounding chemicals – in fact, our bars are compatible with vegan and paleo diets.
This bar feels like a first step towards beginning a conversation about reevaluating the way we think about what we eat, when we eat it, and why. Lets not let shoddy science, powerful corporate lobbies, and a fractured American food culture define the next generation of eating. We hope that you’ll join the conversation: check out our Indiegogo campaign to learn more about what we’re building at Phi Bar.
 
 

Originally published on businessinsider.com
I recently read an article about “The Babadook,” an independent horror movie that received rave reviews (97% on Rotten Tomatoes).
The writer and director is a woman, Jennifer Kent, and the movie features a psychological treatment of various family anxieties. It’s so good and revolutionary that one movie critic exclaimed in response, “From now on, all horror movies should be directed by women.”
Hundreds of horror movies have come out over the years that were kind of similar to each other. And yes, they were probably all directed by guys.
Then a woman comes along and delivers a different kind of horror flick that goes to different places and is a commercial hit. It struck me that the same thing applies to companies.
Elizabeth Holmes founded Theranos, a blood diagnostics business, eleven years ago when she was only 19 years old.
Theranos developed technology that enables blood tests with only a drop of blood, eliminating pain, discomfort and costs.
Theranos today is valued at $9 billion, and Holmes, now 30 years old, is a multi-billionaire.
Sara Blakely had the idea for hosiery that was slimming and firming while she was selling faxes door-to-door.
She started Spanx with $5,000 16 years ago — she was originally turned down by every hosiery manufacturing mill before one operator, who had 2 daughters, agreed to work with her.
Today, Spanx is a billion dollar company and Blakely is another self-made billionaire.
Kristin Groos Richmond and Kirsten Tobey noticed that meals offered in public school cafeterias were high on calories but low on nutrition. They started Revolution Foods in 2005 to provide healthier alternatives. Today, Revolution Foods provides over 1 million healthy meals per week in schools and grocery stores around the country.
Pain-free blood tests, slimming hosiery, better food for children — these are problems that women started companies to solve. Each of these companies is thriving, employing hundreds of people and touching lives each day. And the world is a much better place for it.
Of course, women are free to start any kind of company they want. But women sometimes identify different problems than men do and start different sorts of companies as a result.
The organizations they run are run differently too. We need more women solving different problems, starting companies, and creating jobs to drive our economy and society forward.
It is already happening. But not at the levels it could be.
More women start companies than men — women started over 400,000 businesses in the U.S. in 2011-2012, about twice as many as men.
But 88% of women-owned businesses were sole proprietorships that didn’t have employees, and only 2% reached $1 million in revenue. Women start more companies but they have a hard time growing.
If a woman is successful in getting investment, she’s likely to be successful. Women-led private technology companies achieve 35% higher return on investment than male-led tech companies.
But there are a number of structural impediments for women starting bigger companies.

1. Women start with less money.

As one female investor put it, “if you make 77 cents on the dollar and you compound that over a lifetime, you end up with women having a lot less free cash flow.”
The first money into a business is typically your own. Women make approximately 23% less than men in terms of salary, which gives them less risk capital to start a big business.

2. Investors are generally dudes.

The proportion of angel investors who are women is higher than it’s ever been, at about 20%. This is up from only 5% in 2004. But 1 out of 5 is still pretty bad.
It gets much worse in the venture capital context, where only about 4% of partners, who typically make investment decisions, are women.
Most male investors don’t consciously exclude women; they just want to make money. But venture-backed women-led companies bring in 12 percent more revenue than male-led companies — and yet only 3% of venture capital between 2011 and 2013 went to companies with a female CEO.
This suggests that there’s some bias at work — that women have to be better than their male counterparts to get venture backing.

3. Women have fewer role models.

There are fewer female entrepreneurs and CEOs to look up to as role models and mentors. For example, only 5% of Fortune 1000 CEOs are women.
If you try to engage a male mentor, the odds of him going creepy on you are non-zero. The images of entrepreneurs still tend to be brash, male, iconoclasts.
I’ve met hundreds of young women who have the makings of an entrepreneur but are still hesitant to see themselves in that light, in part because they don’t have as many role models that they see themselves in.

4. Women sometimes have children (and stay home to nurture them).

I became a parent a couple of years ago so I’m sensitive to this. Thank god that some women want kids or else none of us would exist! But mothers face a choice that most fathers don’t.
Women sometimes take a step back from work for a few years to take care of children — the labor force participation rate for women with infants drops to 57% before rising back to 75% for women with children 6 years or older. Women are the primary caregivers to children in 70% of married households as well.
In my experience, entrepreneurship tends to be kind of cumulative, like a layer cake. Taking some time away can make it hard to rev up. Women face this challenge more often than men.

5. Women can be more conservative

I spoke to a woman entrepreneur who’s married to another entrepreneur.
She related how tough it was to get her women friends to invest in her new company, contrasting it with her husband whose friends had been lending each other money or investing for years. Studies have shown evidence that women are more risk-averse (and, on a related note, better performing) investors than men.
Men are often kind of slobs. We’re like, “Eh, we’ll figure it out.” Women, perhaps less so.
Today most of the brainpower that our colleges are producing are women (57% of college graduates are women, 62% of Master’s degrees, etc.). I started an organization to encourage entrepreneurship in the U.S. To me, we need to get more women entrepreneurs starting significant companies REALLY badly, or else we’re taking the majority of our talent off the field.
Happily, there are promising signs. The National Venture Capital Association is trying to get women into positions at firms in the worst way. The tech community is becoming increasingly sensitive to gender issues.
Female Founders Fund, Golden Seeds, Plum Alley, Gotham Gal, and many others are getting more capital to female entrepreneurs. Girls Who Code is introducing more young girls to coding early.
One friend who’s a female investor, Kimmy Scotti, commented that she thought women come back to entrepreneurship after they’re a little bit older and more confident. She’s also optimistic about the future.
But there’s a lot of work to do.
We can all do more. Here at Venture for America, our class of fellows this year is currently about 40% women, not ideal but getting better.
We’re enlisting female mentors and looking to partner with more companies with women leaders. We’ve set up a task force to focus on empowering women internally. Our team is 50% women and we want to achieve the same ratio among our fellows and companies in the next few years.
The process starts early. Tell young girls they can be anything, including entrepreneurs and self-made billionaires.
Encourage your friends/daughters/female students/yourself to take a shot. Lend a hand. Invest. Women can make it happen — remember that you’re probably as smart (or smarter) than the guy who’s trying anyway.
Women will start companies that will be distinctive, operate differently, and solve different problems in different ways. It will lead to a much better world. We need more “Babadooks,” fewer “Friday the 13th’s.”

The Innovation Fund is a four-week crowdfunding competition that gives VFA Fellows the opportunity to launch their business ideas and projects. Nine Fellow-led teams are off to the races sharing their new ventures with the world and hustling to raise as much money as possible on Indiegogo between now and March 16th. 

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By Drew Jankowski

I Love My Golf

During high school and college summers, my family spent Sunday afternoons playing golf and watching the PGA Tournament du jour. Dad would DVR CBS or NBC (adding an extra hour and a half of course, in case of a playoff), and the family would sit down to watch the end of the event during dinner. Since graduating and entering the working world, I can’t afford the expense of a DVR, which leaves me stuck with the schedule dictated by the networks, or the compacted highlight reel somewhere on the internet. Some other media has gone online, but sports remain on the existing system of networks and content providers.

The State of Sports on TV

As a sports fan, you have few options for watching your favorite events without illegally streaming them. Of course you can watch live, but you need a basic cable package, and you can only access from your specific home and receiver. Unfortunately, if you want a channel your basic package doesn’t provide, you might pay $30-$40 more per month for the sports package, only to watch a couple events. My parents, big hockey fans, CAN NOT get the NHL Network at all, because their cable company can’t reach a deal the network. If you can afford a DVR system, you can watch whenever you like, as long as you remembered to record and happen to be at home.
Dish Network recently announced its service, Sling TV, which will allow live access to a limited number of networks, including ESPN, for $20 per month. While an improvement, fans will still need to purchase the entire package, and if they want to watch the Premier League on NBC, they will still need their other cable or satellite package. Dish seems to market Sling TV as an innovative new solution, but this new product only changes the technology and the delivery mechanism, while the same business model remains.

What Does TV Look Like Going Forward?

With exponential growth continuing in technology, the possibilities for media grow as well. We only limit our ability to provide innovative media services by our ability to apply new business models. Some simple improvements come to mind:

1. Omni-Channel Delivery:

Services will provide the same content across TV, desktop browser, and mobile delivery channels with seamless experiences. Some of the existing services, such as Hulu, have already mastered this design challenge, but the content remains limited by the service.

2. Cloud-based DVR:

Services will capture and record content that you pick for later streaming to any device. This amounts to a simple playlist if the content itself already exists online.

3. The death of the cable box:

Viewers will access every piece of content they want online. The content will get transmitted by simple web protocols to any browser or app, and cable boxes will disappear. Viewers will no longer need a dedicated piece of hardware, but rather will access their content anywhere they have an internet connection.

How Do Sports Fit Into That Vision?

First, sports fans will watch any event they want, wherever they have an internet connected device. They’ll watch the Sunday football on their smart TV, the SportsCenter highlights on their phone, and March Madness on their tablet. With a new “Pay for what you watch” model, viewers will have the freedom to watch events as they wish, without needing a full package of channels they don’t watch. Additionally, services could provide ad-free recorded events for a premium, allowing viewers to watch without the distraction of commercials. With everything happening online, we will enable new event experiences like interacting with other fans in chat rooms and sharing clips on social media, all while watching the event live in real time.

What Challenges Do We Face?

The technology to enable these media innovations will come along whether or not we use them for sports media. It seems we have a stakeholder problem here, and I feel confident we can build a model that works for everyone. The value chain has many constituents right now: teams, leagues, networks, advertisers, content carriers, cable companies, and viewers. Maybe there are more I don’t even know about. However, the cost burden right now seems to get passed down the chain to the viewers, who end up paying for a lot of content they simply don’t watch.
From my perspective, the model today rewards cable companies when viewers DON’T watch. Additionally, stakeholders up the value chain like advertisers and teams also suffer when viewers don’t turn on the TV. This means that cable companies have few incentives to provide good products and services to their viewers. No wonder everyone hates their cable company. The sports media market in North America was worth $12.5 Billion in 2013, and PWC projects this market will grow by 9% yearly through 2018 (PWC 2014). Certainly we can slice it so that consumers don’t have to bear the burden alone.

What’s Next?

Soon, tech startups will follow in the footsteps of Netflix and Hulu in creating a new model for sports media. Small companies will have a number of advantages over the incumbents, and will have the opportunity to create truly innovative new ways for sports fans to enjoy events from anywhere. Soon I’ll unplug from my cable provider in favor of more specific services that better serve my needs and desires. However, before I can sit on my couch and watch live golf on my laptop, we need a revolution in the way we deliver sports media. I decided to start Zelustream to figure out how to start this revolution and make my dream a reality.

Mike Tarullo is SVP of Corporate Development at Venture for America and program director for the VFA Accelerator.

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Our favorite thing about working at Venture for America is seeing our Fellows change and grow throughout their time with us. We meet thousands of aspiring entrepreneurs on campus or early in their careers who say they want to launch a business one day, but don’t know where to begin. Then after a few years with VFA, we’ve seen them grow and are helping them make it happen. It’s hard not to love what we do.
From our first class, people like Brian Bosche and Dan Bloom have gone from first-time startup employees, to cofounders who have already hired five people in Detroit for their company Slope. Chelsea Koglmeier spent two years as a Fellow on the founding team at Roadtrippers, and is now staying in Cincinnati to launch her own company, Bikes of Reckless Optimism. Max Nussenbaum, Tim Dingman, and Scott Lowe went from three recent college grads figuring out the working world to owning a seven-bedroom house in Detroit and managing dozens of properties via their startup, Castle. Brian Rudolph turned a recipe he tinkered with in his kitchen into Banza, now in 750+ stores across the country.
Like many entrepreneurs, they’ve done it pretty much on their own – sure, we were there to help with intros, advice, and an occasional teaspoon of funding, but as they’ll all tell you, it’s a tough and uncertain road.
The truth is, launching a company is hard no matter who you are. Our Fellows are creative, high-character, and scrappy, but it’s hard as a young, first-time founder without much cash. The last thing you want to think about is where you’re sleeping, eating, and working, and it’s even better if you know you’re going to get the guidance and resources you need to get started. When you’re launching a company, you need time, space, and support. So feeling the pressure, a few enterprising 2013 Fellows came to us last summer and said, “Hey, starting a company with a full-time job is hard, and we want the time and space to do it.”
So that’s why we created the VFA Accelerator. In partnership with our lead sponsor, the Blackstone Charitable Foundation, we’ll give six Fellow-led teams the chance to go from side project to flourishing business. We’re covering housing, food, and transportation for our teams, but we’re not asking for equity – there’s no cash, but no catch.
These 2013 Fellows launching their nascent companies will live together in Philadelphia, spending each day based at First Round Capital‘s generously donated coworking and community space. First Round’s investment in Philadelphia’s startup community is showing great returns, and we’re excited to be welcomed in.
Most of all, we’re lucky to have the services of more than forty amazing and diverse entrepreneurs, investors, and builders who will serve as our Fellows’ mentors and trainers as they embark on their entrepreneurial journey. We’d love for you to meet them and learn more about them here. The Fellows will learn about design thinking from IDEO, receive pro bono counsel from McCarter English, and learn about building and fundraising from Chris Fralic of FRC and Dave Tisch of the Box Group. They’ll be shepherded through the process of company building by Taylor Davidson, VFA’s Investor in Residence, and Mat Farkash, our Entrepreneur in Residence.
A special thanks to all our mentors; we’re truly lucky to have your support: Andrew Cleland, Bea Arthur, Brett Topche, Cassie Lancelotti-Young, Charlie Kroll, Chris Fralic, Chris Paik, Christian Anthony, Christian Brucceleri, Darren Herman, Dave Ambrose, David Tisch, Ellie Wheeler, Eric Cantor, Jalak Jobanputra, Jeremy Goldberg, Julie Fredrickson, Karen Kwak, Karen Moon, Keith Petri, Kelsey Morgan, Kimmy Scotti, Leslie Bradshaw, Mary Park, Micah Rosenbloom, Michael Fisher, Michael Jaindl, Michael Lefenfeld, Miles Lasater, Nick Chirls, Peter Stuart, Prabhdeep Singh, Ron Braunfield, Ryan Darnell, Shara Mendelson, Stuart Schultz, Ted Mann, Valeria Maltoni, and Wiley Cerilli!
To keep up with what’s going on with the Accelerator and meet our teams, check back on our blog in the weeks to come or follow along.