Originally posted on Entrepreneur.com

I first encountered Birchbox back in 2011. My wife Evelyn had subscribed, and I’m responsible for getting our mail. Each month, I would deliver to her a box full of beauty samples that she would excitedly open, sniff, touch and use. It was like a mini-holiday at random, complete with an element of surprise and, if a product really fit the bill, joy.
So I was very happy to meet Katia Beauchamp, the co-founder and CEO of Birchbox last year when we were on a panel together out West.

It turns out that Katia is an absolute boss (no surprise)—but what really staggered me is that Birchbox is an incredibly important company that I, for one, didn’t properly appreciate.

Birchbox has addressed a massive customer need—discovery of new products—and consumers have responded at unprecedented levels. Katia laughs about how they surpassed their most aggressive five-year projections within the first seven months after their launch in 2010, but Birchbox today has over one million subscribers in six countries. For comparison, leading magazines like Allure and Vogue have similar-sized audiences, and only a small proportion of magazine readers try a featured product. With Birchbox, the trial rate is close to 100 percent—because it’s in consumers’ hands.
Birchbox’s subscription base provides recurring revenue and also feeds a growing ecommerce business as consumers head to Birchbox to buy full-sized products, which already account for 35 pecent of revenue. Birchbox is up to over 800 product partners, as manufacturers have increasingly recognized the need to use Birchbox as a marketing and distribution channel. Their market dominance will only increase as department stores begin to struggle and contract. Birchbox has expanded into men’s grooming and lifestyle products and has even opened its own brick-and-mortar store.
Birchbox is more than a subscription service—it’s reinventing how consumers experience products and defining the future of retail. Its last investment valued the company at upwards of $750 million.

So Birchbox is a big business and category killer. But of equal importance is the company’s significance and meaning.

In an era where women comprise 57 percent of college graduates but only 5.1 percent of Fortune 1,000 CEOs, Birchbox is an example of positive, inclusive leadership and building for the long-term. Katia, for one, sees it as her responsibility to be a role model for a different approach to building a company.

“It’s important to me that this company is the kind of place where people want to work,” she says. “We’re here to build a ‘forever’ business. My hope is to continue building this company for the next 20 or 30 years. And culture is central to that.”

Katia’s approach is a refreshing change of pace from the “quick flip” mentality that many entrepreneurs bring to the table. And her emphasis on culture is natural, because she lives it every day. “Before I had my twin boys, I was happy to come in at 7 a.m. to take calls with Europe and then stay until late at night. But now, I prioritize getting home before the boys go to sleep and spending time with them when I wake up. I find it rejuvenating, and it makes me a more effective CEO and leader to have that time.”
Being a Mom has only strengthened Katia’s belief in the importance of her work. “I want to create a company that evolves and treats people well, the kind of company that I’d be glad to have my sons working at years from now.”
From meeting consumer needs and redefining retail to demonstrating a different mode of company-building and leadership, Birchbox represents the future in more ways than one.

College is filled with exciting things, like living with your best friends, dedicating your time to topics that interest you, and staying up late on Tuesdays with limited consequences. A slightly less fun but still exciting reality: it’s also an important time to arm yourself with the professional skills that you’ll need to succeed once you put on that cap and gown and say goodbye (eek).

I graduated from Vanderbilt exactly one year ago (GO ‘DORES), and looking back there are some valuable professional skills I could have added to my repertoire by making very small tweaks to the way I approached my academic work and extracurriculars. Lucky for you, hindsight is 20/20! So after one year in real life, here’s what I’ve learned about how you can build professional skills in your everyday undergraduate lives.

The Essentials:

Like finals, that pesky math requirement, and brushing your teeth, there are some things you just can’t avoid—including these next two steps. They are the crucial building blocks on your journey to being a successful real person with a real job — start here, and start now.

1. Leverage your career services center.

Everyone has heard (and likely ignored) this advice before. But what you have probably not heard is that many services that are available through your career center for free as a student can cost big $$$ when you graduate. True story: a day-long Excel training I attended last month cost almost as much as a full month’s rent. YIKES.

So in order to save yourself some serious cash (and self-loathing), take advantage of the free programming and advice while you’re an undergrad. Aim to attend one workshop or panel session per semester. Both your mind and your wallet will be happy you did.

2. Get an internship (or job)!

Surprise! One of the best ways to learn the do’s and don’ts of the real world is to actually spend some time in it, even if you’re just getting your feet wet at the proverbial office water cooler. Part-time jobs and internships are a valuable time to gain practical experience, and to learn how to deal with some of the tricky situations you may encounter when you’re on the job in the future. If you can, allocate your credit hours so that one semester allows you to work or intern during the school year. And if you’re on the hunt for a summer gig, check out some tips from 2014 VFA Fellow Hetali Lodaya on how to find the perfect summer internship.

The menu:

Fast forward a few months, and you have the essentials locked down. You (1) have hustled to get an awesome job or internship, and (2) have put in some time at the career center exploring your options, workshopping your resume, and building some advanced Excel skills and other fun things. Now its time to go beyond the basics, and beef up your professional skills toolkit.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Between club meetings, a full semester’s course load, and trying to enjoy your carefree college days, checking all of these things off of your list might not be realistic. So I would encourage you to identify the goals that are important to you, and work backwards.

Below is a starting menu of some key professional skills you can get check off while you’re in school, and some strategies to do so. Once you’ve identified the three or so that are most important for you, get going. Happy learning!

Public speaking.

No matter what your future job will be, the ability to communicate clearly and confidently will be key to your success. So face your childhood fear and volunteer to take the lead on your next class presentation. Or, if your course requirements allow it, take it one step further and enroll in a public speaking class for a semester.

Crowdfunding.

Coordinate a crowdfunding campaign to raise money for a club event or launch a product. A well-documented, successful crowdfunding campaign is something you can point to on your resume for years to come, and it can teach you a lot about product validation, marketing, and so much more. (I recommend using our friends at Indiegogo.)

Time management.

Time management is (hopefully) not a foreign concept to most of you. The difference is, during a full-time job you’ll be working for 8–10 hour periods of time, five days a week. So in order to check this one off of your list, you need to practice time management techniques that apply both in the library and beyond. Below are two of my favorites:

Time blocking.

Consider the following two versions of a 4-hour day studying:

Version 1: You head to the library, purchase an iced coffee, start on your history reading, and realize you have a Spanish assignment that will take you 30 minutes. Fifteen minutes in, you remember your politics paper is due next week, and decide to take a crack at the intro. Four hours later, you’ve scratched the surface of a bunch of random projects, including changing your Instagram bio.

Version 2: You head to the library, purchase an iced coffee, knock out your history reading, complete a short Spanish assignment, and write two pages of your American politics paper that’s due next Thursday.

So how can you ensure that your days look like the latter? Enter timeblocking, my personal favorite technique to get the maximum return on time. The practice is simple: maximize productivity by preplanning your day into specific blocks of time that are designated for certain tasks. If you still need to be convinced, take it from productivity guru Cal Newport, “In the context of work, uncontrolled time makes me uncomfortable. If you’re serious about working deeply and producing high-end value, it should probably make you uncomfortable as well.” Try timeblocking to study for finals, when you’re camped out in the library from 8am–8pm and have a slew of important subjects you need to tend to.

The Pomodoro technique.

A pomodoro = 25 minutes of straight work, followed by a 5 minute break. After completing four pomodoros (2 hours), take 20 minutes to go for a walk around the block, read the NYTimes, or eat lunch. Then rewind back to the start and pomodoro again. Try this when you’re cranking out one of those 12-page papers you probably should have started last week.

Teamwork.

…Makes the dream work. But seriously — working well on a team doesn’t only matter when you’re playing intramural sports. It’s crucial to your success as a professional, and lucky for you teamwork is actually a skill you can learn and develop!

But, just as in intramural soccer, practice makes perfect. To hone this skill during school, join classes where you’re graded on a group deliverable, run for the exec board of your on-campus organization, or try planning a social event with some friends that requires complicated logistics. Whatever you choose, the more time you spend working with others towards a common goal, the more you’ll learn about your personal strengths and weaknesses while operating in a team setting, which is key to learning how to be a stronger leader and team member.

Digital skillz.

Calling all non-coders. Because of tools like WordPress and SquareSpace, you don’t need to know a single coding language to build a beautiful website these days. Next time you have a week that’s light on school work, try making yourself a personal portfolio or website and polish that online presence to impress future employers.

How have you built professional skills as an undergrad? Share your strategies with us in the comments section!

After founding and working at FOSSIL for 26 years, Tom Kartsotis was looking for the next chapter in his career.

He decided to visit Detroit in 2011 to see if it would be possible to build a watch factory there with the idea that this factory would create jobs by making watches for other watch companies. His coworkers at Bedrock Manufacturing Company didn’t know what to expect. They were pleasantly surprised by how enthusiastic and supportive the Detroit community was about the idea. The team became convinced that the concept was possible.
The factory was built out and opened in May of 2012 and for the next nine months, Bedrock’s Swiss partner, Ronda, began to train dozens of manufacturing employees in Detroit, many of whom came from the auto industry, to manufacture intricate watch movements. In March of 2013, the team felt certain that the workforce in Detroit could, in fact, make a product that could be competitive on a global scale.
The next step was to make a watch. The factory needed something to show to their future customers. They ordered the parts for 2,500 watches that would be produced under the irreverent brand name of Shinola. An ad was placed in newspapers where consumers were being asked to pay $550 four months in advance for a watch that nobody had ever seen or touched under the brand of a long defunct shoe polish, Shinola.
The Bedrock team did not think that many of the watches would sell, but they hoped that by placing this order that the workers would begin to start making a real watch and that would lead to orders from other companies. They were astonished when the watches sold out in eight days.

The team realized that there was a massive appetite for what Shinola was producing—beautiful products made in America that lead to world-class manufacturing jobs.

Shinola had $80 million in total orders in the first 18 months after its launch, the kind of momentum that most companies can only dream of. They began sourcing leather and other materials as fast as they could from Florida, Maine, Illinois and other domestic suppliers. Fast forward to today, and Shinola sells watches, bikes, journals, leather goods, apparel, pet accessories, footballs and other lifestyle items at retail locations across the country. The company has over 500 employees, almost 400 of which are based in Detroit (including one Venture for America Fellow). It is not yet profitable but hopes to be in the next two years.

I first met Tom when we were both speaking at the same event in the Midwest. I heard pieces of the story above—and it blew my mind. Tom is the humblest, most down-to-earth entrepreneur I’ve ever met. You literally can’t even find a picture of him online.

He started Shinola not as a money-making venture, but as a project to see how many American jobs he could create.

When I asked him about it, he shrugged and said, ‘We did it for sport. We did it to create jobs and simply to see if it was possible.’ I’m proud to say that several Venture for America alums are following Tom’s example in starting companies in Detroit. Banza makes chickpea pasta and has almost 30 employees in its Michigan factory. Castle helps property owners manage their properties digitally and employs 25 plumbers, handymen and contractors. Ash and Anvil makes shirts for short guys.
But no one has impacted the national conversation around the Detroit manufacturing revival like Shinola. Shinola wasn’t born of a government policy or tax—it was born of an American entrepreneur’s desire to build things in America again. They’re meeting a demand that no one knew—creating great products and providing hundreds of jobs to people that need them.
I visited Shinola’s Detroit showroom last year, and I bought a Brakeman watch. I love it. I used to wear a Swiss watch—I haven’t worn it since.
P.S. We’re thrilled to have Tom Kartsotis at Venture for America’s Summer Celebration on June 2nd—come join us if you want to hear his story for yourself!

In an effort to avoid having to get a “regular” summer job while studying at the University of Texas, Phillip Krim identified companies that would drop ship products that he marketed online so he could make a few bucks. Within no time Phillip was running a $10 million business with 40 employees including his mom, dad and sister! After winding down his college business and dabbling in some other sectors, Phillip met his 4 co-founders at a coworking space and found himself commiserating about the horrible consumer experience purchasing a mattress. Even though he had vowed not to get back into the mattress space, Phillip and his 4 co-founders created Casper, a company disrupting the mattress industry with a proprietary mattress design that ships mattresses direct to consumer in a box the size of a mini fridge. Listen to this week’s episode to hear more about Casper’s growth and how Phillip and his co-founders have created an awesome company culture.

Click here to listen

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Originally published by Mike Wilner ’13 on Forbes

Startup ideas don’t appear on whiteboards.
Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp didn’t come up with Uber in a brainstorming session; they came up with it when the frustration of trying to hail a cab in San Francisco hit a boiling point. Startup ideas come from going out into the world and learning first-hand about the problems that exist in it.
Over the past few years, I’ve been fortunate to be surrounded by impressive Venture for America (VFA) Fellows who have started their own companies. None of their company ideas came from brainstorming sessions—they all came from being out in the world and encountering unique problems.

Networking can lead to new ideas

Don’t network for the sake of networking; take an interest in other peoples’ experiences. Everyone has problems they’re struggling with, and if you listen to what those problems are, you will be flooded with startup ideas.
This is how we came up with the idea for my company, Compass. I was talking to my parents about their online presences and how they were managing their time running their businesses. They expressed to me that they really wanted to have professional websites but struggled with dealing with unreliable web developers and receiving unaffordable quotes for custom sites. As someone who knew dozens of web designers who used modern tools like Squarespace and WordPress, the idea for Compass became obvious–just connect the dots between people who needed professional web design and those who could provide that service efficiently.

Do things outside of your comfort zone

There’s a reason that such a high percentage of college students come up with startup ideas for social apps, getting jobs, or finding cofounders–those are the problems that they experience in their college bubble.
If you are going through the motions of the same routine, you’re not going to stumble across any new problems that need to be solved.
Actually, if you’re trying to solve a problem outside of your comfort zone, your inexperience could become a competitive advantage, as you’re immune to the biases of an industry.

Take the founders of Castle, a property management startup in the current YC 2016 class. After graduating from college they leapt out of their comfort zones by moving to Detroit to work for VFA partner companies. Immediately they were exposed to problems that only those in Detroit see. They decided to do something they had no experience doing: buy a 7-bedroom Detroit home for $8,000 at tax auction and restore it on their own. Through this experience, three 20-somethings who majored in creative writing, mechanical engineering, and computer science, experienced how difficult it was to manage a property. So, they decided to create a new type of property management company. They would never have come up with that idea if they hadn’t exposed themselves to something new.

Solve your own problems

Slope, another business birthed in Detroit, was actually a startup video production company called TernPro before they were Slope. The founders were new to video production and they were shocked by how convoluted the process of collaborating on a video project was. So they created software to make that process easier. They solved their own problems and now seek to solve their customers’.
Brian Rudolph started Banza, in his apartment in Detroit because he loved pasta but the ingredients were making him sick. He started tinkering around with different recipes and learned how to make a much healthier, gluten-free pasta, made from chickpea flour.
James Fayal loved tea but wanted it to give him the same energy boost as a cup of coffee. What he did next didn’t require hackathon or a startup weekend—he simply founded Zest Tea, a company that makes their own blends of caffeine-infused teas using high quality blends. It turned out that he was just one of many people who wanted this product. By solving a small problem for himself, he also solved it for the millions of tea-lovers just like him.

Go out into the world and you’ll find ideas

Startup ideas don’t usually come from a whiteboard, brainstorm sessions, or thinking to yourself. Game-changing ideas come from getting contact with real problems that exist in the world, and coming up with ways to solve them.
It’s nearly impossible to find a startup idea in a vacuum, but if you’re as proactive as possible, a startup idea will find you, not the other way around.

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• Name: Mike Wilner ’13
• Alma mater: Washington & Lee ’13
• Role: Co-Founder
• Company: Compass, the easiest way to get an affordable, professionally designed website.

The beginning of Bleacher Report almost reads like the beginning of a corny joke: “Four high school buddies launch a sports site…” Back in 2007 Dave Finocchio and 3 friends saw a gap between the sports coverage that was available and the “snackable” coverage that young people desired. Dave and his co-founders saw an opportunity to make sports fans happy and they took it! In this interview Dave takes Jeremy through the early days of Bleacher Report when the team, admittedly, had no idea what they were doing, to a pivot from a technology company to a media company, and the eventual sale to Turner Broadcasting System for $215 million. Along the way Dave leaves the company, travels for a year, and then comes back as CEO. Listen for yourself on this week’s episode of Smart People Should Build Things: The Venture for America Podcast!

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PSA: despite everyone’s favorite Game of Thrones tagline, winter isn’t coming. Summer is the season actually speeding our way, and it’s dragging the memories of sweet, sweet three-month vacations in its wake.

As a young professional fresh enough out of college that I still refer to the period of time between Christmas and New Year’s as “winter break”, I empathize with the struggle to transition from a student’s mentality to one that doesn’t involve twelve annual weeks of unstructured free time.

Vacationing while employed requires far more thoughtfulness and preparation than it did as an undergrad. Luckily, we’ve got you covered. Here’s how to get out of the office and onto the beach in six easy steps.

When you first start thinking about a vacation….

1. Consider waiting at least three months. Starting a new job means learning new names, a new employer history and modus operandi, new engagement platforms, and plenty more. You’re figuring out your new daily routine and trying to impress your manager and the rest of the office by showing them exactly how committed you are to helping your company thrive. This is not the time to road trip across America, embark on a Eurotrip, or try to hit up every country between South Africa and Morocco. Waiting three months before you start checking Google Flights during your lunch break is a good rule of thumb — by this point in time, you’ve (hopefully) established your presence and dynamic on the team.
2. But if the vacation’s been planned since before you accepted your offer, this is the exception to the rule. A pre-planned vacation is something to discuss with the hiring manager or your future team lead in the last stages of the hiring process. Be forthcoming about the time and duration of travel, although you do not need to be specific about the reason. This is part of negotiating your new position, so consider being flexible with your start date. Try: “What do your needs look like during the week of XX/XX? I have a pre-planned vacation at this time, and want to make sure that the work I do and the team’s work will not be unduly affected.”

Once you’re ready to relax….

So you’ve been at your new job for three months and two days, the office dog makes a beeline for you when it wants a walk, and you’re starting to generate and pursue your own leads. It’s still too soon to aim for that two-week sabbatical, but a four-day reprieve is now probably warranted. Planning for a vacation can be tough for many reasons; like a parent or the proud owner of a Neopet, you now have more to worry about than just yourself. Your vacation shouldn’t involve stressful back and forths about who was responsible for what component of a project—for you or your team. So:

1. Ask for those days off! Have this conversation in person, but it’s good practice to follow up in an email afterward. Let your manager know that you’re thinking of taking some days off, and when you’re hoping to do so. Especially as a junior team member, avoid taking extra time off around busy periods or already-scheduled holidays. During this discussion, check in with your manager about email — are you expected to be on-call, or can you just screen your emails?
2. Before you leave, check in with your manager and team. When you’re out of office for more than a few days, emails and tasks will pile up. Make this inevitable deluge easier on yourself and your office by speaking with your coworkers about where you are on your projects, what needs to be done while you’re away, and who will be filling your shoes while you’re out. (This person should be listed on your out of office responder, which you should not forget to set up!) Put your time off on the team calendar and your personal calendar, and send a reminder in advance to update your manager and collaborators on where you are in your workload and where you expect to be before you leave.

When all that’s done, go forth and enjoy your well-deserved time in the sun!

And when it’s time to come home…

1. Don’t schedule meetings the first morning back! This may not be in your control — and if it isn’t, try to plan your travel to allow for time either the night before or earlier than usual the next morning. If you can, however, try to block off your first morning back. Coming back from vacation only to be bombarded with emails, requests to respond to emails, or questions about your uneven tan lines can be a little distracting and stressful—but it’s not so bad if you‘re prepared!
2. Ease yourself away from the beach and back into the office. Take an hour or two to respond to emails, plan out your day and the rest of your week, catch up on what’s happened while you were gone, and reacquaint the office dog with your scent by bribing him with strips of jerky.

And that’s it! Now you’re ready to vacation like a pro(fessional).

Bea Arthur is the definition of a hustler. Before finding her calling as a therapist, Bea dabbled in real estate and personal training, among other things. Bea had a rough start with In Your Corner (formerly Pretty Padded Room), appearing on Shark Tank with some less than friendly sharks who made her question her ability to build a real company. Bea kept at it and was accepted into Y Combinator in 2014 as the first African American female founder! For the past 5 years In Your Corner has found success as a tele-health platform that provides instant, expert support when you need it. Bea has a lot of exciting things in the works, including a new service to help military families and service personnel. Listen to this week’s episode for a sneak peak of all that’s coming up in Bea’s world and the inside scoop on how to survive the Shark Tank.

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They say that the resume and cover letter are going the way of the dinosaurs. We agree! Personal websites, LinkedIn profiles, and overall internet presences (including social media channels…but you already knew to keep your spring break TikToks to yourself — right?) along with the tailored questionnaire that many applicant tracking systems offer will likely constitute the whole of a job application in the near future. 

For now though, it’s important to have your resume and cover letter game on lock. Plenty of great resume templates exist around the web, so let’s talk about the bane of every job seeker’s existence: cover letters.

Let’s get the bad news out of the way first. You cannot use the same exact cover letter to apply for every job. The good news is that you can create a template that’s easy to replicate. Plus, it can be fun!

Read more below on how you can write a great cover letter. And if you’re interested in getting access to other resources, coaching, skill-building, and support you need to accelerate your career, learn more about our Fellowship. 

Step 1: Figure out to whom you’re writing.

When we ask you to figure out your audience in order to address your cover letter, we’re suggesting that you not only take your best guess at the individual who might actually read your cover letter (by browsing the company website and/or LinkedIn for the head of recruitment or potential hiring manager) but also that you get a sense of who your audience is more broadly. You’ll want to adjust your tone to mirror the job description; it can be just as jarring to receive a stuffy, formal letter at a laidback startup as it can to receive a conversational note at a place where etiquette demands a sober tone.

Step 2: Write an opening sentence.

So you’ve addressed a specific person and decided how to start the cover letter. Now, you’ll state the position to which you’re applying and mention how you heard about it. Something like, “I’m writing with enthusiasm regarding the Marketing Associate position at Compass. I found the posting on Indeed and was immediately intrigued,” will do the trick. If you’ve decided to adopt a casual tone, a version like, “I’m reaching out to express my excitement about the Marketing Associate position at Compass. I’d like to think it was fate that brought this opportunity to my attention, but I found the posting on Indeed.”

Step 3: Research the company and mention specifics to express your interest.

The next step is to show that you have the work ethic, savvy, and enthusiasm it takes to write a truly tailored cover letter. This will entail some background research; if you do it right, browsing the website (the About, Team, and Press sections can be particularly useful) for a few minutes is sufficient to sound impressively knowledgeable. You just mentioned in your opening sentence that you’re pumped about the opportunity, so tell the reader why this company is where you want to be.

Here’s an example of a brief, yet effective few sentences to do so:

First, I admire Compass. An innovative and values-driven startup dedicated to helping the small business owner craft a compelling digital presence, Compass represents an exciting next step for me. Your focus on transparency, simplicity, and efficiency speak to exactly the kind of customer-first mentality and operational excellence that I’m looking for, and I know it’s exactly the kind of environment in which I could contribute and learn a great deal.

Step 4: Explain why you’re qualified for the role in a few punchy bullets.

One way to avoid the potential for your cover letter to become a dry block of text – other than to make it personal and specific – is to break up the formatting. The bulk of the content will be your explanation of your qualifications, so why not keep it clear and powerful by pulling out three core competencies of yours that most closely relate to the demands of the role. To continue with the example we’ve been working on – a letter for the Marketing Associate role at Compass  –  you could whip up something akin to the below:

Second, I’d be a fantastic Marketing Associate because:

1. Writing is my strong suit. I’ve maintained blogs for two student organizations and the company I’ve interned for, producing three posts per week on average. My senior thesis is set to be published in a journal next fall, and I won a creative writing prize my sophomore year, so content creation is something I could practically (or maybe literally, if it’s the end of finals week) do in my sleep.
2. I know my way around Google Analytics and Ads. From creating custom GA URLs and tracking down referral sites to building effective Ads campaigns on a budget, the tools that are essential to generating and monitoring site traffic are squarely in my wheelhouse.
3. I’m fearless. I learned Photoshop in three days when a contractor at my last internship went MIA, I went to study abroad to Morocco armed with only a semester of elementary Arabic under my belt, and — true story — I once participated in a county fair pie eating contest. Novelty excites me, though I have a strong foundation of skills and experience, I will do what it takes to adapt and deliver at a high level on even the most unfamiliar challenges this role poses.

Step 5: Summarize and complete the cover letter.

By keeping it personal and to-the-point, you’ve minimized the risk of the hiring manager merely skimming the letter, but it’s powerful to restate the most powerful parts of your “why me” argument nonetheless. Think of a synonym or word that captures the gist of each of your three competency bullet points. Then, figure out how to summarize the goals of the position. From there, simply put ’em together and tell your reader that your shining qualities will help you hit it out of the park as the newest member of their team.

For example:

To sum it up, my proclivity for written communication, experience with relevant tools and metrics, and my enthusiasm and comfort with new challenges make me an excellent candidate for your next Marketing Associate. I’m certain I have the skills and mindsets I’d need to help Compass reach more of the right people with your digital outreach, resulting in more customers for you (and more customers for them — what a beautiful thing!).

Again, it would be a privilege to join the Compass team. Thank you for your consideration, and I hope to continue the conversation in person soon.

Now end it with an appropriate closing and your name, and  – boom –  you’ve written a pretty badass cover letter.

Step 6: Templatize the cover letter for future use!

That wasn’t so hard, was it!? If you have the luxury of being the world’s most marketable recent grad, with skills, accolades, and high-powered friends out the wazoo, or, if you encounter great luck you might get the first job you apply to. But, if you’re at all normal, you’ll likely have to throw a lot of hats in a lot of rings before you nab a job that feels like a great next step. For the sake of efficiency, turn the steps outlined above into a template. By making a template, when it comes to crafting your next job application, you’ll be saving yourself a ton of time and stress.

I’m reaching out to express my excitement about the [TITLE] position at [COMPANY]. I’d like to think it was fate that brought this opportunity to my attention, but I found the posting on [SOURCE].

First, I admire [COMPANY] . An [ADJECTIVE 1] and [ADJECTIVE 2] company dedicated to [MISSION], [COMPANY] represents an exciting next step for me. Your focus on [THINGS THEY FOCUS ON 1, 2, and 3] speak to exactly the kind of [HALLMARKS OF THEIR CULTURE 1 and 2] that I’m looking for, and I know it’s exactly the kind of environment in which I could contribute and learn a great deal.

Second, I’d be a fantastic [ROLE] because:

1. [RELEVANT COMPETENCY 1]. [EXPLANATION OF RELEVANT COMPETENCY 1]

2. [RELEVANT COMPETENCY 2]. [EXPLANATION OF RELEVANT COMPETENCY 2]

3. [RELEVANT COMPETENCY 3]. [EXPLANATION OF RELEVANT COMPETENCY 3]

To sum it up, my proclivity for [PARAPHRASED COMPETENCY 1], [PARAPHRASED COMPETENCY 2], and [PARAPHRASED COMPETENCY 3] make me an excellent candidate for your next [ROLE]. I’m certain I have the skills and mindsets I’d need to help [COMPANY] [GOAL].

Again, it would be a privilege to join the [COMPANY] team. Thank you for your consideration, and I hope to continue the conversation in person soon.

So there it is. A relatively painless cover letter! So satisfying that you might even miss writing them once you do get that dream job. Want to learn more professional tips and tricks? Be sure to check out the rest of our blog!

Originally posted by our Baltimore company partner Leverege on Medium.

We recently added four young and talented Leverege team members thanks in large part to Venture For America — so I felt it was a perfect opportunity to write about VFA and share our experience. Venture for America is an organization started by Andrew Yang (author of an excellent book: “Smart People Should Build Things” — definitely worth checking out) with the goal to

“channel talented young people to early-stage companies in Detroit, New Orleans, Providence and other U.S. cities to train as entrepreneurs. This would help the companies succeed and create jobs in these communities. It would also prepare our young people to go on to become the builders and entrepreneurs our country needs.”  — A.Y.

In an effort to achieve Andrew Yang’s vision, VFA created a “fellowship program for recent college graduates to launch their careers as entrepreneurs. Fellows spend two years in the trenches of a startup in an emerging city, where they learn how to build a business while making an impact. VFA trains Fellows to become highly productive startup employees who can help their companies grow, then provides the mentorship, network, and resources they need to become successful entrepreneurs.” — A.Y.

VFA has already helped over 400 recent grads kick off their careers in a meaningful way — with 26% of their Fellows going on to start their own business. It certainly looks like VFA is well on its way to achieve its goal of creating 100,000 new jobs by 2025 by getting our best and brightest building again.

Now that you have some context on VFA you can probably see why we were so excited to be involved. We started our association with VFA a year ago when we were a judge at their Selection Day in 2015. Selection Day is an event where all the Fellow hopefuls come to NYC and are put through an intense, competitive business experience — just imagine a hyper accelerated version of the Apprentice, but with judges and entrepreneurs watching your every move.

Unfortunately, last year we were unable to hire any VFA Fellows since the location of our headquarters was too far from Baltimore. But, if Selection Day was any indication of the level of talent we could add to our team, we knew we had to expand our presence into Baltimore to qualify for the program. That is exactly what we did. So this year we were able to participate in the entire process and compete to hire VFA Fellows.

After Selection Day this year, we were sent a list of the accepted Fellows for the Class of 2016 and we immediately started digging in. We reviewed their LinkedIn profiles, resumes, etc. and began ranking 160+ Fellows based on our needs and organized everything in a shared Google doc. A few weeks after this, VFA sent out credentials to join their Match portal where companies and Fellows have the opportunity to securely connect with one another and begin the interview process. Fellows created profiles about themselves, and companies created job opportunities for Fellows to explore and apply for.

We intended to let the Fellows come to us but soon discovered we were way too eager and started initiating the process. We began sending connection requests to our top choices to set up initial phone interviews. By the time we finished our culling process, things had gotten a little out of hand (in a good way). We had over 50 interviews scheduled over a 2–3 week period! The level of talent was just so good we couldn’t resist. Although that number of interviews put a burden on us internally, we felt it was worth it.

(One thing we did discover was that sometimes the impression you get from reading someone’s resume vs. actually speaking to them can be very different.)

Next, we came up with questions — everything from general strength and weakness questions to an abstract set of logic questions that gave us insight into the candidate’s thought process. When you ask someone, unexpectedly, “Which state in the U.S. would they get rid of and why if they had to choose one?”, or “How would you describe the color yellow to someone who is blind?”, you get to see how they think on their feet.

The next couple of weeks flew by with interview after interview (sometimes 6 or 7 in a single day). As we worked through the process and updated our shared Google doc, we started to realize how difficult our decision would be. Each candidate was remarkable in his or her own way. But we’re a startup and difficult decisions are what we do for a living.

So we ranked all of the candidates for each of the four positions we had available and invited the top picks to our offices for a more in-depth 2nd interview. The in-person interview was a critical component of our hiring process and allowed both sides to quickly judge cultural and technical fit. We also found that we were able to get verbal commitments in some cases.

After the on-site interviews, we began extending official offers to our top choices. While a few wanted to extend their “free agency” to explore all of their options before committing one way or another, we were ultimately able to land our top picks for each position. We couldn’t be happier with the way things worked out and know our company is stronger now than before we started.

The Fellows begin their two-year fellowship in August after they go through an intense 5-week training camp at Brown University over the summer. Needless to say we are eager to get them up to speed on things here at Leverege and look forward to doing great things together.

(BTW — the entire experience helped us come up with some cool, fun ideas for next year’s VFA recruiting cycle — stay tuned — it will be worth it, I promise.)

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Leverege will be releasing a follow up post about their keys to success during the VFA recruitment process — follow their Publication to get notified when they post.

Originally posted by Marino Orlandi ’15 on Medium.com

At an early stage company, tight budgets and even tighter timelines are cause for constant pressure. Simultaneously, web and mobile software development remains one of the most costly components of any startup’s early budget.
One of the ways to reign in the often astronomical costs of developing a product is to outsource that work overseas to countries where developers work for far more affordable rates than they do in the United States. Outsourcing often gets a bad rep among entrepreneurs; everyone has heard the horror stories of lost time, wasted money, and failed companies that suffered at the hands of poor offshore development.
The truth is, any time you relinquish control you are inevitably taking on risk. Knowing how to properly manage that risk is the key differentiator between success and failure. Here are five things we learned — many the hard way — about successfully outsourcing development work:

#1 — Recognize that you are building an MVP.

One of the easiest mistakes to make when outsourcing development work for your startup is to bite off more than you can chew. Web and mobile applications, just like the ideas behind them, are constant works in progress. Think about when you first had the idea for the product you’re building. Since then, you’ve probably re-worked, re-molded, and improved on that idea many times. And you are going to continue to do so, long after this first version is built.

One of the safest ways to avoid wasting valuable time and money is to focus on using the offshore development team to produce the simplest, leanest version of your product that still demonstrates the value that it will bring to users (hence the term MVP, or minimum viable product). Whittling your product down to an MVP, and setting aside all extra features for a later build, will allow you to keep both your budget and timeline intact as you build something that proves your value proposition.

#2 — Compare multiple developers to find the best fit for you and your team.

A common misconception is that developers are tools that you are bringing in to do a straightforward technical job and leave. The inconsistency here is that you are asking these developers to bring an idea to life: that requires a transfer of key information from your team to theirs. As a result, you are going to want to make sure you place as much value on the interpersonal compatibility and communication skills of the offshore team you hire as you do on their technical expertise.

Finding a team that you feel comfortable communicating with will save time and money in the long run, as it will minimize the need to repeatedly backtrack and fix things that were done incorrectly the first time.

The best and most cost efficient way to compare teams is to break your MVP down into milestones, and use the first milestone — what should be a very small project — as a test for three or four offshore agencies you are considering. Assign the same small milestone project to each team you are considering for the full build, and use this time to find the best team to move forward with for the rest of the project.

Paying a couple of development teams for one to three weeks of preliminary work will cost a little bit more in the short term, but will save you time, money, and immeasurable headache in the long term.

#3 — Establish clear understanding of the product: nothing is intuitive.

Once you hire a team, it is important to avoid mid-project iteration and backtracking as much as possible, because this will inevitably lead to scope creep. In order to best manage this, it is very important that you never assume anything about your product is intuitive.

When you spend most of your time thinking about an idea, and discussing it with the people around you, it is easy to begin to see certain aspects of what you are building as obvious and naturally apparent. Do not make this mistake. When you outsource development work, you are bringing people on board who are quite likely from a very different place and culture than your own. Their perspective will differ greatly, as will their propensity for seeing your product through the same lens you do.

Once you’ve selected a team, it can be tempting to have them start hammering away at their keyboards as soon as possible. Do not do this. Instead, begin the project with a comprehensive kickoff call. Use this call as an opportunity to explain the project from top to bottom to the development team. Explain the product idea, and explain the problem it solves. Go through each feature they will be building and explain what it does, how it should function, and why it is a valuable component of your MVP.

Finally, follow up this call by sending your development team a detailed summary of everything you discussed. This will help you to make sure everybody is on the same page, and establish a paper trail of accountability across teams.

#4 — Understand what it means to work with a team in another country: logistics and culture.

When outsourcing work, it is likely that the team you end up hiring will be working in a part of the world far from where you are located. This presents a unique set of requirements that can be easy to overlook; sometimes in focusing on getting the most from a technical standpoint out of an offshore team, one can neglect the very real challenges logistics and culture can present.

People conduct business very differently depending on where they are from. Without an understanding of the business culture in the country you have hired developers, miscommunications can arise that are frustrating and time-consuming. Taking time to learn about the cultural differences between how you conduct business in your own culture and how the team you’ve hired conducts business in theirs is not only efficient, it is also respectful.

Beyond general cultural practices, there are a number of more specific things to make sure you are familiar with when you begin working with an offshore team. The first has to do with communication practices. Knowing how employees communicate with their boss is very important for managing an offshore team. In certain cultures, it is common practice for employees to answer in the affirmative, even if this is untrue, in order to avoid a perceived “disappointing” of an authority figure. Being actively aware of these varying eccentricities will allow for more effective management throughout a project.

Additionally, it is important to be aware of holidays that your team will be taking off. When we were working with a team in Chennai, India for the first time, our project suffered from this initially. The office in India would be off of work Thursday and Friday for a holiday, which was perfectly reasonable. However, when that wasn’t something we were planning for, work commencing on Wednesday and not starting back up until the following Monday (two days off and then the weekend) felt like a huge setback to our team and our clients. The biggest lesson here was that a lack of cultural understanding on our part lead to surprise delays, which created unnecessary stress on our team.

Finally, from a pure logistics standpoint, working with teams in different timezones can be very difficult. To illustrate the logistical difficulties that can arise from working across timezones, we’ve created this tool to help visualize some of the constraints.

 

As you can see, there are often narrow or non-existent windows during a typical 9am-6pm workday during which your two teams can communicate. This generally means that somebody is going to have to get up early or stay late in order to keep communication consistent. Recognizing this at the onset of a project and scheduling meetings outside of the workday to account for this as necessary is key to maintaining the project scope you’ve agreed upon.

#5 — Buffer. Buffer. Buffer.

Speaking of project scope: no matter how many precautions you take to mitigate confusion and maximize productivity, the truth is that something will always come up and cause delay. When you choose to outsource your development work, you are giving up control, and putting that control in somebody else’s hands. With this comes the reality that when a project sees delays, there is little you can do first hand to right the ship. There are few quicker ways to detract from the confidence of your team, investors, and clients than by missing promised deadlines. In order to be absolutely certain (or as certain as possible) that this does not happen, you as a manager need to buffer your timelines. Here’s how we recommend doing it:

Using the techniques outlined above, work with your development team to come up with a realistic and achievable timeline for how long your project should take. Take into account all the tangibles — and intangibles — we discussed above, in order to have the most feasible date for project completion. Now, double that timeline.

That new doubled number is the number you, your team, and your investors plan around. Missed deadlines cause bottlenecks and waste time and money that can be detrimental to an early stage venture (or the success of any project). It is far better to be pleasantly surprised by a project coming in early and under-budget than frustrated by the stress of a deadline being missed.

We hope these lessons are as helpful for you as they have been for us. Outsourcing isn’t easy, but when it is managed properly it can be a highly effective and impactful resource. Best of luck!

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Marino Orlandi is a Washington and Lee University alum and a member of the Philadelphia Class of 2015. He works in Business Development at Deckspire, a strategic technology consulting firm that is focused on providing product development and tech advisory services to companies across all industries.

 
Want to be the next #VFAPodcast guest, or know someone with a great story to tell? Contact Leandra Elberger at leandra@ventureforamerica.org.