By now, you probably know that you don’t have to be a programmer to work for a startup. Even at the tech-heaviest companies, other areas of expertise—like marketing, sales, and operations—are vital parts of the business.

But this doesn’t mean you can waltz in without a lick of relevant experience and a resume that’s blank except for your phone number, a charcoal sketch of Freud, and your rounded-up GPA. If you chose to study something that doesn’t directly translate to building a company (like I did!), and you can’t develop startup-relevant skills in the classroom, landing a startup job can seem a little daunting. But there’s good news: with a little strategizing and some elbow grease, a great startup job is well within your grasp. Here are a few of the things I wish I had known as a job-seeking philosophy-degree-addled 22-year-old.

You need more than potential—you need skills.

It’s great that you’re smart, curious, capable of crafting an argument, and interested in plumbing the depths of the human condition. That will serve you well, both in life and as a startup employee. But academic strength and real-world potential are rarely enough. You need to prove that you can actually do the job.

If this sounds harsh, or overly-demanding, try putting yourself in the hiring manager’s shoes. Let’s say you’ve started a business of your own, you have limited time and resources, and you want to hire someone to manage your company’s myriad social media accounts. You won’t be able to teach this person as much as you’d like—you’re extremely busy, other areas of the company need more attention, and you don’t even really understand what Snapchat is. But a robust social media presence is important for the growth of your business, and it has to be done well. At the end of a long day, you scroll through the application materials of two candidates:

Candidate A: A smart, curious recent grad with a passion for modernist literature, excellent grades, a thesis on Virginia Woolf for a writing sample, and no discernible startup-ready skills.

Candidate B: A smart, curious recent grad who has managed social media accounts for an on-campus club and a local restaurant, and has meticulously-documented data to back up her claims of social media prowess.

Like all processes that involve human decision making, hiring can be opaque and mysterious. Maybe someone with a soft spot for English majors will take a chance on Candidate A. These things happen! But most of the time, Candidate B will get the interview, because she has more than smarts, work-ethic, and potential—she has a demonstrated, relevant skill set.

Potential is not enough. But this is a surmountable problem! There are all kinds of ways to develop and prove your own skill set outside of the classroom.

1) First things first: learn about startup jobs!

To prepare yourself to work at a startup, it’s helpful to know what the work might actually look like. This one’s easy! A couple ways to go about it:

• Look at job descriptions for the kinds of jobs you’re interested in. Take note of the specific tasks you might be asked to perform, the platforms used to perform these tasks, and the skills you would need to develop in order to do the job well.
• Talk to people who have jobs that pique your interest. Find out what kind of work they do day-to-day, which of their skills have proved most valuable, and how they developed those skills. Don’t be shy about asking for informational interviews or quick coffee meetings—people love to talk about their experiences.

Now let’s talk about gaining those skills…

2) Get a job, join a club, volunteer for a nonprofit, or launch a side project—and be deliberate about the work you take on.

Set specific goals that will both help the organization and allow you to build specific skills. Tackle problems at your club or workplace in a way that suggests you could tackle problems at a company. If you have a job that’s not particularly startup-relevant, try to initiate some additional skill-building responsibilities on top of the work you’re already doing. A few ideas:

• Event planning: Initiate an event that encourages new audiences to engage with your club or company, or help make a recurring event bigger and better. Track number of attendees, resulting new customers, or any other data that proves your success.
• Social media: Make a plan to build your organization’s social media following. Track data.
• Crowdfunding: Plan a crowdfunding campaign to raise money for an event, project, or product. And, you guessed it: quantitatively document your success.

3) Strengthen your skills—and your resume—by helping family or friends for free/cheap.

You probably know someone who 1) owns a small business and 2) could really use some help. Immerse yourself in online tutorials, and then try tackling projects like these:

• SEO: Help a small businesses owner or blogger optimize their website, and track website traffic over time to assess your work.
• Social media: Help a freelancer develop and implement a social media strategy. Track growth.
• Graphic design: Design logos, business cards, letterhead, and anything else you can think of. Suddenly, you’re a freelance graphic designer!

All of these projects are in the marketing sphere—but this principle can be widely applied. Find ways to add value, do as many projects as you can, and track your results.

4) Work on your own projects with an eye towards getting hired.

Develop and showcase your skills by building something for yourself: a consistent, well-executed blog (track those analytics!); a carefully thought-out portfolio website; you get the picture.

5) Intern at a startup (if you can).

This isn’t feasible for everyone—but if you manage to find a paid internship, can wrangle funding from your school, or find that it’s financially viable for you to work for free, interning at a startup is a top-notch way to gain relevant experience.

6) Get your foot in the door via a less-than-perfect role, and learn on the job.

These days, I’m the marketing manager at VFA—but that’s not what I was initially hired to do. When I joined, I had a philosophy degree, a few years of publishing experience, and very little marketing know-how, so I started as a part-time contractor and helped out with odd jobs. During my first few months, I assembled IKEA furniture, ferried checks to the bank, and took sandwich orders for team lunches. But I consistently asked for more work, learned on the fly, and took on additional projects—and less than six months later was offered a full-time job on the marketing team.

This is anecdotal, and not every company places such a high value on the growth and development of its contractors or employees. But at most workplaces—especially startups, which skew lean and understaffed, with gaps that need to be filled—there’s opportunity to take on additional work, learn, grow, and prove that you can add value in an area that you’re genuinely interested in, no matter what you were initially hired to do.

So there you have it!

No matter what you studied, you can build skills that will help you land the right job at a startup—and excel once you’re there.

Learn about startup jobs. Gain skills and experience by taking on projects deliberately—and then carefully track the results. And don’t mention your senior thesis during your interview unless you have, like, a really good reason.

This week Jeremy sits down with dermatologist, entrepreneur and reality show star, Tabasum Mir to talk about developing her personal brand and founding her skincare line, MirSkin. Tabasum was ambitious from an early age, enrolling in high school at only 12 years old, going on to attend NYU medical school directly after graduating from college. After building up her medical practice for 10 years, Tabasum knew she was ready to build her web presence and start her own skincare line, which caught the attention of Bravo TV producers and landed her a spot on The Singles Project in 2014. Tune in to this week’s episode to hear Tabasum’s scrappy road to success and why she hasn’t relied on her fame to continue building her brand.

Click here to listen

During the early days of my career, I was often the youngest, least-experienced person in the room. Although it was tempting to chalk this up to my own prodigy status, I instead took advantage of the opportunity to learn from those wiser and more experienced than myself. But I know it’s not always easy to be the least-experienced one. At my very first job out of college, I hired and managed (and sometimes fired) dozens of temps 10+ years my senior—not a simple task. And it always amazed me that older colleagues and clients wouldn’t hesitate to ask, “How old are you, anyway??” though it would have been totally unacceptable for me to reciprocate with the same question. (Which is the first hot tip, by the way—never do that.) Here’s what I’ve learned about making a great impression when you’re the new kid on the team.

1) Prove your worth.

The first few months of any new job are all about proving your value and putting in the time, and that’s especially critical when you‘re one of the less experienced members of the team. Even if you notice that more senior colleagues or coworkers who have been there longer come in a bit later, are lax with the dress code, or are taking some leisurely time off, don’t assume that means you should follow suit. To earn this kind of flexibility, you have to first build trust and respect by putting in time and effort to prove your effectiveness and commitment. If you give 110% and over-deliver early on at the job, you’ll earn more leeway down the line. Your first few months are the time to show up early (unimpeachably dressed), stay late, and take on the less glamorous tasks—i.e. probably not the time for taking the unlimited vacation policy for a joy ride or for announcing a new volunteer gig that requires you to leave early on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and sometimes Fridays.

2) Dress for success.

There is some truth to the Silicon Valley adage that you can always identify the most important people in the room because they’re dressed the schlubbiest. The more senior you are, the more you’ve probably earned the right to play it fast and loose with the dress code. Many offices have unofficial, casual dress codes, but when I’m the youngest person at a company or on a team, I often aim to overdress just a bit, to sidestep the assumption that I’m not experienced enough for the task or meeting. This is doubly true for external meetings. Even though Venture for America has a pretty casual dress code, when I have external meetings, especially with a big firm or financial institution, I dress the part. Besides, I always feel more comfortable and confident when I’m not self-conscious about wearing the wrong thing.

3) Google your way to victory.

Do your homework. There’s always a lot to learn at a new job, and by studying old blog posts, annual reports, board or committee lists, past meeting notes, and customer/client pipelines, etc., you’ll be a few steps ahead, retain more information in meetings, and impress your colleagues. Always keep a running list of unfamiliar terms and names that come up in meetings or conversations and look them up on your own time. The same goes for any of the platforms or tools your company uses—there are plenty of tutorial videos online, and no reason not to study up in advance. My newest team member impressed me by watching several Salesforce tutorials before we sat down for the formal training. Leverage your teammates to learn as much as you can, and don’t be afraid to ask questions—but it’s always a good idea to resolve something with a good old-fashioned Google search if you can.

4) Seek professional growth (but get your job done first).

When you’re in a new or entry-level role, take the opportunity to explore other ways to add value and learn about the work other teams are doing. Showing the initiative to expand your impact and develop new skills is always a positive. But keep in mind that these extracurriculars should always be in addition to performing your core goals and job description. Are you already meeting and exceeding expectations at your core job? That’s the time to start using your extra time (probably not more than 10%) to explore other areas of interest and develop new skills.

5) Study the problems before proposing a solution.

Maybe you have some great ideas and prescient vision—that’s great! But keep in mind that your team has probably already tested a lot of ideas (including some of the ones you have), so it’s always smart to get a sense of what they’ve already tried before making suggestions. Week one might not be the time to request a sit down with your CEO to propose your vision for a radical new direction for the company. Once you get to know the problems really well, you’ll be better positioned to come up with innovative solutions.

6) Check yourself before you wreck yourself.

When you’re taking on a new project, ask for feedback early and often so you don’t go too far down the road in the wrong direction. It’s great to build something new, but make sure it’s something that your company actually needs.

Onward and upward.

The first few months on the job are your shot at making a great professional first impression. When you’ve found the right team, being one of the youngest or least-experienced members means a real opportunity for growth and mentorship—and if you play it right, when you’re running the place, you’ll get the chance to hire the kind of entry-level archetype you helped create.

At Venture for America, we have the privilege of working closely with a few hundred startup employees across the country—our Fellows. VFA Fellows live and work in 15 US cities, helping to grow young, innovative companies, strengthen local economies, and create jobs. They’re a smart, capable, and resilient bunch, prepared to work hard and eager to do their jobs well.

It’s a good thing the Fellows are up for a challenge, because what they’re doing isn’t easy. While no two jobs are alike, our Fellows find themselves wearing a lot of hats; navigating nebulous, ever-changing roles; tackling big problems with limited resources; picking up complex skills on the fly; and operating with a sometimes daunting level of autonomy.

We work hard to equip our Fellows for the challenges they’re bound to encounter at a startup. And while there’s no perfect formula, there is one thing all of our Fellows seem to look for at some point: advice. Lots and lots of advice.

How do you add value from day one? What does it mean to set meaningful goals? Should you, or should you not, text your CEO? Our team loves fielding these questions—after all, we‘re building a startup too, and we’ve tackled plenty of similar challenges firsthand.

We know our Fellows aren’t the only ones with questions about navigating the startup world. That’s why we’re launching Office Hours.

Whether you’re a college student eager to build entrepreneurial skills, a recent grad just entering the workforce, or a professional transitioning to a startup from a more traditional field, we’re here to answer your questions. Every Tuesday, we’ll cover topics from the granular (like how to take a vacation without anything falling apart) to the general (like how to handle being the least-experienced person on the team). And we’re taking requests.

If you have a question for the VFA network, or have a piece of hard-won insight you’d like to share, get in touch with us. Our door is open.

Originally published by Chip Koziara ’14 on Elite Daily

What do Snapchat, Instagram and Twitter have in common (besides being huge social media networks)?
They were not the first projects their founders started working on. Snapchat wasn’t Evan Spiegel’s first startup idea. Instagram came to be after Kevin Systrom edited his previous project, Burbn. Twitter was a project Jack Dorsey was working on at a podcasting startup called Odeo. The CEO of Odeo decided to completely redirect the company and returned their investor’s money to focus entirely on Twitter.
I’ve previously written about how to validate an idea through selling, as well as how to turn your side hustle into a startup. But logistics aside, the most important question to answer is, “Do I actually want to build this?”
Noticing a problem in your life is fundamentally different than having a passion for solving a problem. Founders need to be obsessed with the domain they’re working in. This obsession can grow gradually, but it needs to exist before the startup.

Pivoting can be a horrible decision.

I was working on a project that curated greeting cards for birthdays, anniversaries and other occasions. Over the course of several months, it evolved into a letter-writing subscription service with paying users. My team was incredibly excited that we had built something that was encouraging a new, positive behavior and that customers were paying us for.
We were so excited about the prospects of this business that I even quit my job to focus on growing the business. Nearly simultaneously with my first day full-time on the project, my team and I had a frank conversation about our desire to build this business. We were all excited about the domain of making it easier for people to be more thoughtful, but our implementation had clear flaws that only started to manifest after customers completed their first purchase.
We had built a solution that was a fantastic way to start writing, but almost certainly not the best solution to continuously write to friends and loved ones. It quickly became apparent that we could not deliver a radically better experience for writing, so we frantically tried to engage in the infamous pivot.
Pivots often sound sexy, as illustrated in this Business Insider piece entitled, “Groupon’s Billion Dollar Pivot.” Pivoting was massively successful for Groupon (they’ve since struggled to build a sustainable business), but pivots aren’t always all they’re cracked up to be because they’re often misunderstood.
A pivot is when one key aspect of a business model changes, while everything else remains the same.
In Groupon’s case, they changed their value proposition from being a site about raising money for charity to becoming a site that is solely focused on helping customers discover and purchase great deals. They came to this realization because the majority of their successful “causes” were actually group deals. Most of the mechanisms the company used stayed the same, but by tweaking this one thing, they created a massive appeal for their customers.
My team tried pivoting, but found that we could not resolve our problems by changing one aspect of our business model. We continued to explore the thoughtfulness space for weeks before determining something uncomfortable: we didn’t want to build a business in that domain. So, we shut the project down.
Our pivot-happy actions weren’t the result of us identifying something our users loved and focusing on enhancing that aspect like Groupon. We were clinging to a market that seemed comfortable and aligned with the image we wanted to portray. But this can be dangerous if that isn’t the best business for your team to build.
We had an idea and backed into the thoughtfulness space from there. That’s where we went wrong. Sticking with a broad area of interest is a fantastic idea if you pick that area first, and reason into solutions second. We started with a solution and tried to attach it to a larger general concept, and then tried to make the jump to other solutions within that general concept when the solution fell apart. We didn’t understand the thoughtfulness space, but thought we did after putting forth our (flawed) solution.

Build the road ahead.

Based on our experiences, the best way for our team to identify what we’ll build is clear. We’re picking an area that excites us first, and we’ll work toward solutions second.
While we’re not the first to think of this approach, it resonates with our experiences and we’re ready to get started down this path.
Happy learning, thinking and building.

• Name: Chip Koziara ’14
• Alma mater: University of Michigan ’14

The VFA Innovation Fund is an annual month-long crowdfunding competition with more than $40k in prizes (!). During the Innovation Fund, participants work closely with the VFA team to refine their idea, set a fundraising goal, devise a plan—then spend four intense weeks raising money for their projects. And we’re not talking small change: this year, our 11 Fellow-led teams raised $83,918 on Indiegogo.

We are so excited to announce the winners of the 2016 Innovation Fund (drumroll, please…)

1. BikesORO: Chelsea Koglemeir’s socially conscious, everyday bikes
2. PINCH Crawfish Kitchen: San Antonio’s very first Vietnamese-style crawfish boil brought to you by Sean Wen ‘14
3. Al-Dente by Simple Kitchen: A rice cooker for healthier rice, created by Swad Komanduri ‘14

All of this year’s participants hustled to get their projects off the ground, and they learned a lot along the way. Here are some reflections from the 2016 teams:

What was your team’s main takeaway?

“Crowdfunding takes a lot more commitment than I thought. Great to help you figure out your brand/story/language, too.” – Pinch Crawfish Kitchen
“Anything is possible! You have to listen first in anything you do. Go to people smarter than you know and gain the knowledge you need for whatever venture you go on.” – Native <> Newcomer 
“Crowdfunding campaigns can have multiple goals, on top of raising cash $$$.” – The FORGE

What are the next steps for your project?

“Host more hack nights for code improvement, and expansion to Colorado.”  – Women Rising
“Making the thing! We have a great team with diverse skills, and each of us is tackling a wide variety of separate work streams. I’ve been most impressed by our team’s ability to communicate, share, and listen openly to feedback. We all respect that the others know something we don’t, and we treat it as a learning experience rather than a competition.” –Wakeable
“Fulfill perks and build the bike! After I find a place in which to work and assemble.” – VegCycle 

Hindsight is 20/20. What’s one piece of advice you would give to next year’s Innovation Fund participants?

“Make sure everything is quality – from your copy, to your story, to your video.” – PINCH Crawfish Kitchen
“Start networking early and often.” – Women Rising 
“Start selling to strangers. Family and friends don’t take much time to persuade, but strangers do. Start with a broad plan of how you want to approach your market and start talking to them about it early!” – VegCycle

Final Thoughts?

“It was a great way for me to figure out what I wanted to do. Throughout the campaign my understanding and vision changed. It was a great exercise and it took a lot more work than I realized! Great experience.” – VegCycle
“The additional funds are a game-changer and giving me (probably the others too) the opportunity to keep going. Thank you!” – BikesORO
“Make sure you understand your company’s story/brand BEFORE you start building out your Indiegogo page.” – PINCH Crawfish Kitchen

Congratulations to all of our participating teams – we are incredibly proud of all of you, and can’t wait to see you take your projects to the next level.

Interested in learning more about the 2016 Innovation Fund projects? Check out their pages on Indiegogo.
 

Originally posted on Quartz

I’ve always taken pride in relating to the underdog or little guy or gal. I grew up a skinny Asian kid who was often ignored or picked on. It stuck with me and branded my soul. As I grew up, I tried to stick up for whoever seemed excluded or marginalized. I became a Mets fan. I’d go to a party and find the person who seemed the most alone or uncomfortable and strike up a conversation. My zeal extended to my professional life. For the past sixteen years, I’ve worked at little companies trying to help them grow. Five years ago, I started an organization to recruit and channel young aspiring entrepreneurs to Detroit, New Orleans, Baltimore, Cleveland, St. Louis, Providence, San Antonio and other U.S. cities to make a positive difference.

Young people + emerging cities + scrappy businesses = some of my favorite things.

As founder and CEO of Venture for America, I’ve found myself thrust into the role of ‘leader.’ I got invited to the White House (twice). I wrote a book. I won a couple awards and went on TV. I’ve traveled making the case for VFA in dozens of different cities and venues big and small. Our team has grown, our budget has expanded to $6 million, and we now have hundreds of talented, earnest young people building businesses across the country with more set to join them.

We are still a very small organization in the scheme of things. But to our audience–mostly 22 year olds who want to become entrepreneurs–we can loom increasingly large. And for the first time in my career, I’ve been experiencing life on the inside. When I show up to a party now, I often am trying to find the most prominent or powerful person instead of the opposite.

This might sound like a good time–it’s kind of what you want to happen starting out. But I’ve found it’s brought a different set of internal struggles that have made being a ‘leader’ difficult in ways that I would not have predicted. There have been times when I’ve feared that I’ve lost my way. I’m sharing some of these struggles because I think others might find them useful, either because they are facing similar issues or to understand how people in leadership positions can lose their bearings.

Here are some of the things that I didn’t see coming:

Time is your most important resource.

When we were starting out, I’d take a meeting with absolutely anybody and respond as generously as possible. I was eager to share, and we had nowhere to go but up. VFA was about empowering a generation to make a positive difference in places that were often overlooked. I wanted to be as open and responsive as possible, particularly to young people.

Today, I still try to be responsive and accessible. But I have a company relying upon me to use my time efficiently and effectively. When I get outreach, I do my best to forward inquiries to the right team member. But I’ve started saying ‘No’ more and become more judicious.

This may be obvious, but the people and organizations I say ‘Yes’ to generally are able to drive value for VFA in some way. Sometimes, they have money. Thus, the trend is for a non-profit leader to become more responsive to people and companies who are rich and/or powerful and can help us achieve goals. This is resource-effective, and I love everyone who supports VFA, but it makes it natural to calculate a return on time spent.

One thing I disliked about being a lawyer was billing for my time. It’s not that bad in the non-profit context–people expect you to be close to your work and want to support you–but it can feel a bit like that at moments.

The team gets bigger.

When there were only 3 of us, we would talk all the time. I knew what was going on both at work and with people’s personal lives. I often met colleagues’ families or loved ones.
Today, we’re bigger and more institutional by necessity and design. I’m on the road a lot and folks often need to make decisions without me in time-sensitive situations. People are hired that I haven’t worked closely with. Tension arises between personal connectivity and effective functioning of the organization. As you grow you let things go and hopefully empower others.
When things come up, I still think my experience from 2012 is the right one–so my instinct is to make a decision based on info that may or may not still apply. And my relationships are not as highly developed with the person on the frontline.
We’re not very big yet so this isn’t too major a problem. But I used to rail against people who made decisions without knowing what the heck was going on on the ground. Now I know how it happens.

People don’t tell you what’s on their mind.

Several times in the past months I’ve had an extended conversation with someone and everything seemed great. And then a little while later I heard that I was getting the most rose-colored version of events and the situation.
People don’t like to tell the CEO bad news. There’s a pervasive instinct to emphasize the good and minimize the bad. I’ve seen this apply even to people who were not responsible to me – people have a natural desire to defer and keep it positive. When I hear something bad, it generally means that others have tried to solve it themselves for a while or it has risen to a certain level.
My CEO filter is now that I assume anything negative I hear is probably one or two degrees worse than is being conveyed, and half the good things I’m told are people just being polite. I have the feeling that even this doesn’t account for the full picture.

You talk a lot.

I’ve historically thought of myself as an operator, not a talking head. But I started a non-profit trying to rekindle entrepreneurship throughout the US (down a ton by the way, we’re starting 100,000 fewer businesses a year than a decade ago, it’s a train wreck), and making the case is a key part of the job.

I’ve now spoken to gatherings of thousands of people in different places. And I’ve noticed that the more often I get asked to share what I think, the more I start feeling my thoughts are important.

I’ve always believed that talking about something is not the same as doing something about it. But if your job involves a lot of talking, it’s easy to get confused. I now see this confusion around me all of the time and occasionally get confused myself.

The people you deal with are fancy.

I was the relatively anonymous CEO of a GMAT prep company prior to VFA. Now, I’m the CEO of an entrepreneurship non-profit that recruits college grads. One might think they’d be quite similar.

But as the CEO of Manhattan Prep I worked with 3 types of people–instructors, team members and students. All were pretty normal, though the Instructors were nerdier than most and just about everyone had a college degree (which isn’t the norm).

With VFA, I’ve met some of the most prominent people you can imagine, trying to get them to agree that channeling young builders to Detroit, Baltimore, New Orleans, and other cities is an awesome idea and we should do a lot more of it. Happily, supporters of Venture for America now include a couple billionaires and a sports team owner, CEOs of public companies, venture capitalists, major foundations and entrepreneurs. Many of them are tremendous human beings.

I’ve found myself in all sorts of unlikely situations and in some of the nicest buildings in the country. Humans are social animals – context is important. I’m reminded of politicians who wind up trading favors because they’re hanging out with friendly titans of business. The impulse to defer is strong. I almost feel glad that in my case I have nothing to offer but a worthy cause.

I will say that even the fanciest people I’ve met in Detroit, Baltimore, New Orleans, Providence, San Antonio etc. still tend to be pretty down to earth. Though I spend most of my time in Manhattan and Silicon Valley so my perspective on this is not the greatest.

I’m on a quest for growth.

I see myself as a performance-oriented executive. I want to win. In a business context, that meant increasing revenues, profits, market share, and beating our competitors. In the non-profit context, it means increasing impact and training hundreds of aspiring entrepreneurs to revitalize communities around the country.

Increasing impact corresponds generally to growing our budget year-over-year. If put in a position to retrench and do the same thing for consecutive years to tighten up personnel and processes, I’d resist. My natural inclination is to be ambitious, stretch a little, put the organization in position to learn new things and maybe encounter a new problem or two.

Occasionally, someone asks about the right size for Venture for America and the need to maintain a strong culture. I agree that there’s a balance, and that there’s such a thing as getting too big too fast. But, perhaps because I’m a product of the American meritocracy in this era, I want to grow.

I feel bad for managers of public companies who have to report results to analysts every quarter and have their stock value constantly scrutinized. I’m sure that it sometimes leads to poor decision-making. Yet if I’m honest, I have a phantom VFA stock price in my head. And if I listen too closely to it, I’ll probably make a bad decision.
I was talking to a friend of mine, Fagan Harris, about Ta-Nehisi Coates’ book, Between the World and Me. And Fagan commented, “There’s a difference between being a truth teller and an organization builder. You can speak truth to power if you don’t have an institution you’re responsible for.”
He’s so right. Most leaders find themselves in position to be responsible to, and for, an organization. Incentives, efficacy, ego, social norms, context and a desire for success can lead to actions that wind up being counter to our dearest values. In a vacuum, you’d say, “How the heck could that person let that happen or take that position?” In practice, I’m finding it easier to understand.
I know that I say this from a position of rare privilege. I run a non-profit so if anyone has the opportunity to be a nice guy and stay true to a mission, it’d be me.

I started VFA in part because I was plagued by the sense that we weren’t producing enough builders and leaders of character in the U.S. The stats scared the heck out of me, and the legion of disaffected young people I encountered motivated me.

Now, I think our problems are born in part of institutions that make leadership all the more difficult. Going against the grain isn’t rewarded, as much as we might wish otherwise. That is, to me, the challenge.

How do we reward and recognize the right kind of leaders, the quiet builders who lead by example and work outside of the spotlight?

I’ve now met many of the people building businesses in Detroit, Baltimore, Providence, St. Louis, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Birmingham and other cities without fanfare. They don’t have massive institutions beneath them. They’re short of social media followers. But it’s these quiet leaders who often reflect the best and truest values, who demonstrate character through sustained action and years-long commitment to unglamorous pursuits. I continue to admire them, in part because it’s even harder than I’d believed.

In this week’s Digest: a look inside one startup that makes a point to treat its employees right; how the serial entrepreneurs behind THINX approach building things; and the trick to making a new skill automatic.

Why this startup offers its hourly workers equity Managed by Q is an office management startup that does things a little differently. In an industry dominated by low-wage contract labor, Managed by Q offers its hourly employees a suite of benefits (health care coverage, equity, and real paths for career growth, to name just a few.) Turns out, this isn’t just good for employees—it’s also good for the bottom line. Find out how these labor practices are helping Managed by Q find its competitive edge. READ: “Managed by Q’s ‘Good Jobs’ Gamble” by Adam Davidson

Meet the serial entrepreneurs behind THINX underwear (and Wild, and Daybreaker, and…) Miki and Radha Agrawal are the co-founders of THINX, a line of game-changing period-proof underwear. In just three years, THINX has crowdfunded over $100k, grown to a team of 30+, and earned praise from the likes of WIRED and the New York Times. But Miki and Radha are hardly first-time success stories. Between them, they’ve launched a popular pizza spot; created a nutrition-focused kids’ show; written a book on entrepreneurship; founded a monthly, nation-wide early-morning dance party—and more (!). Listen to their recent episode of the VFA Podcast to find out what drives them to build things. LISTEN: Miki & Radha Agrawal on the VFA Podcast

Overtrain to make that new skill automatic—then pick up another one If you wear a lot of hats at your startup job, some of these hats are probably brand new to you. And odds are, you can feel the cognitive burden of picking up skills on the fly: a new ability requires more attention and mental bandwidth than a worn-in skill. So how do you turn a new skill into something you could do in your sleep—what psychologists call “automaticity”? It takes overtraining: a combination of repetition and a strategic ramping-up of difficulty. (And it’s worth it.) READ: “How To Learn A New Skill Well Enough To Do It Automatically” by Benjamin Hardy

Mike Rothman built his career at communications and media companies including Digitas, Hachette and Thrillist. After spending 7 years at Thrillist growing the company from $0 to $100m, Mike yearned to go back to the days of wearing many hats while growing a nascent business. Several months after leaving Thrillist, Mike and his co-founder began incubating Fatherly, a parenting resource geared towards men who want to be great fathers without turning into cliches. Fatherly bootstrapped for a year and a half and has raised $2m to date while becoming the go-to resource for new fathers and even some mothers! Download this week’s podcast episode to hear more about Fatherly and how Mike became the godfather to the child of one of his first cold call recipients.

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Nadia Boujarwah went to Harvard Business school with the express goal of starting her own company. When she dove into the plus size market for women and saw how underserved this market was, she knew she had discovered her customer. After surveying hundreds of influential bloggers, Nadia co-founded Dia&Co, a company that, based on an online style survey, mails each subscriber a hand-picked box of garments to try on in the comfort of her own home. Today, Dia&Co has over 50 employees and has raised over $6 million. Listen to this week’s episode to find out how Nadia and her team are inspiring radical self-acceptance through style and transforming the shopping experience for plus sized women.

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Originally posted on Forbes

Last week, tens of thousands of high school seniors across the country got bad news. Acceptance rates at selective colleges hit record lows, down to a minuscule 4.7% at Stanford and 5.2% at Harvard from an already stingy 10.9% and 10.5% ten years ago. The same trend was true at Brown, Penn, Duke and just about every other national university.
Why is it that competition for college degrees is heating up despite the arrival of online resources that offer college-level classes nearly for free? Part of the explanation is demographics – there are more 18-year olds right now than at many other points in history. Part of it is that the economy is more competitive than ever, and a college education is seen as more and more necessary to prepare.
But perhaps the biggest driver is that young people want more from an education than just to learn; they crave an identity and community, and this desire holds more strongly than ever and drives interest in certain institutions.
What do I mean? I ran Manhattan GMAT, the country’s largest GMAT prep company by enrollment, for five years.

Here were the top reasons that students told me they wanted to attend business school:

1. Credentialing

They wanted to get a degree that would mark them as smart and qualified for the rest of their career and set them up for good opportunities.

2. Network

They wanted to become friends and colleagues with smart, ambitious people that would look out for them for years to come.

3. Social/personal

They wanted to socialize, party and meet an appropriate mate (Yes, I heard this all the time).

4. Confidence

They didn’t feel confident in their career direction and wanted to become a manager or professional.

5. Coursework

They wanted to learn finance, basic accounting, marketing and the like.
The big point is this – what they learned in class was not the primary draw. Many applicants had spent years at a bank or consulting firm or had studied business as an undergrad and saw the coursework as mostly review. Yet they were willing to spend $100k+ and two years of missed wages for what they felt was mostly credentialing, networking and socialization.
We see it here at Venture for America too. Over 1,300 college grads applied for 180 spots this year to work at startups in Detroit, Baltimore, St. Louis and other cities.

The main draw, if you ask them, is “the network of other smart, enterprising people.”

The same motivations apply at the college level. Most parents and students have little idea who individual professors are or how departments stack up before applying. They’ll visit schools to see what they think. They might look at a few third party rankings. But they’re primarily seeking for their son or daughter or themselves the credentialing, network, socialization, identity formation and job prospects that come with a particular school. What is learned is less central – learning is simply presumed to happen above a certain baseline and come packaged with the degree.
You can literally take a Stanford or MIT computer science course online right now nearly for free. But applications are up at these schools, not down.
Top educational institutions today don’t confer lessons. They confer a brand, a network, a credential, friends, a personal life, a residential experience, a set of opportunities and a sense of self. In short, an identity. This is the main reason why the Internet isn’t displacing traditional education and, in the face of increasing pressures, people are applying to selective colleges more than ever.
This isn’t to say that there won’t be changes upcoming. Marginal schools will struggle in the coming years due to increased costs and competitive pressures. And entrepreneurs will find ways to supplement learning with the non-classroom benefits that students and parents are seeking.
Perhaps the most prominent example of the latter is the Minerva Project, a startup university now entering its third year. At Minerva, students take classes online.* But they do so while living together in dorm-style housing. They spend up to one year each in different dorms in San Francisco, Buenos Aires, London, Seoul and Istanbul. Minerva is selective – the acceptance rate for the latest class was only 2.8%. Students socialize and build connections because they live and travel together. Minerva delivers learning yes, but it also delivers the credential, network, socialization and identity that students crave. And it does this at $28k a year, a little more than half of what similarly selective universities charge.**
Minerva is a signal of the future of college education. College as an institution is safe. What students and parents want is constant. But it’s going to be the combination of old and new institutions that successfully compete to deliver credentialing, networks, socialization – and learning – in innovative ways that will thrive.
*Minerva’s online education is unusual in that the student’s face is shown the whole time and they get called on to ensure accountability and engagement. This ‘facetime’ is even the main performance metric – there aren’t final exams.
**Minerva saves money by not investing in things like libraries, athletic facilities, sports teams and the like. So if you really love those things and don’t like public libraries and gyms, it’s probably not the school for you.