Grad school and working at a startup couldn’t be more different — but every year, we meet a lot of college seniors and recent grads trying to decide between the two.

Grad school, to many, seems like a safer bet. Where a startup career can seem murky and uncertain, grad school can look transparent and predictable: there’s a timeline from beginning to end, specific requirements to meet, and an instant network that comes with registration. If all goes according to plan, you’ll finish two years with a shiny new degree, a higher expected salary range, and increased job prospects.

But choosing the startup route offers a number of things that grad school cannot. Like: a level of real world work experience that even the most hands-on, internship-heavy graduate experience can’t provide. The opportunity to gain a wide range of new skills all at once, in order to decide what you really want to do. A resume that proves you can solve all kinds of problems. And the peace of mind that comes with knowing you’re not incurring student loan debt.

We’re not saying that graduate school isn’t the right path for some people. But if you’re teetering between grad school and the startup route, it’s worth really interrogating your reasons for applying.

We spoke with a group of VFA Fellows who have attended grad school, are grad-school bound, or decided the timing wasn’t right. Here’s what they think you should consider before buying those GMAT flash cards.

1) Do you need a graduate degree to have the kind of career you want?

Sometimes, the answer is yes.

For heavily technical fields, there’s a good chance you can’t get by without an advanced degree.

2014 Fellow Jessica Smith considered grad school for urban design as an undergrad, but didn’t feel certain enough to commit the time and money. Instead, she joined VFA, and while working in Providence discovered a field she really loved: industrial design. “It just felt right,” she said. “It pulled together all my favorite parts of the seemingly disconnected fields I had been interested in until that point.” Once she knew industrial design was the right choice, she needed to figure out the best way to pursue it.

At first, she considered trying to learn on the job. But she was friends with a number of senior industrial designers and hiring managers in Providence, and most agreed that they wouldn’t seriously consider hiring someone who without an advanced degree. This fall, she’s heading back to school—with infinitely more direction than she felt as a college senior.

Sometimes you can get by without a master’s—even at a highly technical startup.

2014 Fellow Forrest Miller, the co-founder of biotech startup Synotrac, doesn’t have a graduate degree. Because his company designed a biomedical device, this isn’t always easy for him. “Not having an advanced degree means I always have a high burden of proof that I know what I’m talking about,” he said. But when he does prove to investors, advisors, and medical experts that he really knows his stuff, he finds that they’re impressed by his scrappiness and doubly willing to go to bat for him. While he hasn’t written off going back to school eventually, his bachelor’s degree is enough for now.

If you’re not planning to work in a highly specialized role, a graduate degree might not be necessary.

While graduated degrees can help you learn useful tool sets, no education can fully prepare you to excel at a startup or launch a company. In our experience, the best way to learn startup-specific skills (think marketing, operations, product management, or sales) is to work for a startup—ditto for starting a company.

There’s little data about whether or not an MBA increases performance at a startup job or helps you launch a company. Anecdotally, though, the vast majority of founders in our network view them as non-necessary, and a slew of think pieces make the same argument.

2) Is the timing right?

The Fellows we spoke to thought grad school timing was everything. Here are a few themes that came up most frequently.

If you don’t know what you want, grad school can buy you time.

2012 Fellow Tim Dingman got his MS in electrical engineering right after undergrad. Now he’s the co-founder and COO of Castle, a property management startup. He doesn’t use the skills he learned in grad school day-to-day, but he’s still glad he got a master’s when he did. “For me it was definitely the right decision. It was a short program (one year), and it bought me time to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. It was very much a continuation of undergrad.” After earning his degree, Tim joined VFA’s first class.

If you’re burned out on school, it might be wise to take a break.

It can be easier to appreciate the flexibility of student life after a few years in the working world—easier still if you know exactly what you’re trying to achieve through your degree. If you feel like you can’t write one more paper, it might be time for a break from academics—you might discover that you come to miss the classroom. (Or, you might not.)

Grad school will always be there, while other opportunities might not.

After gaining several years of work experience through VFA, Forrest wrestled with whether to go full-time on Synotrac or go to grad school. Ultimately, when he and his co-founder were accepted into the VFA Accelerator, he chose his company. It came down to the fact that he can always go back to school—but the opportunity to work on Synotrac with his co-founder and attend the VFA Accelerator wouldn’t always be there.

3) Do you know what you want to achieve? Can you accomplish something comparable at work?

Getting a master’s will not automatically advance your career, and it will almost certainly cut your income for the years you’re in school. If you feel stuck but don’t know exactly what you want to achieve, it might not be worth giving up the year or two that you could spend learning on the job.

2014 Fellow Jolene Gurevich has been thinking about grad school for a while, and still intends to get her MBA eventually. But right now, she’s not sure exactly what she wants to gain. “When I thought about what I wanted out of the MBA, frankly, every answer I came up with at that point I could also achieve by being in the workforce for a few more years,” she said. “I consider an MBA a huge investment, and I can’t in good conscience make that investment without knowing exactly what I want on the other side.”

4) Do you have to choose?

While it’s certainly a challenging path, many grad programs are designed to accommodate students with full-time jobs.

There are part-time MBA programs at great schools all over the country. If you’re eager to get your degree but don’t want to sacrifice your salary and work experience, this might be the road for you.

One caveat: it can be easy to underestimate the commitment of a full-time job before you’ve joined the working world. It might be worth giving yourself a year or two to adjust before taking the job plus school plunge.

So, what’s the verdict? Grad school can help you gain the technical expertise you need—but you can find plenty of startup success without a degree.

On April 27th, a panel of experts from Comcast NBCUniversal and VFA came together to judge the Social Impact Awards, a competition that grants funding and mentorship to aspiring VFA Fellows whose companies aim to alleviate social issues through technology and new media initiatives.
We’re so grateful to Comcast NBCUniversal for the funding and expertise that made this award possible, and we couldn’t be happier to announce the winners: Bridge the Media and Recline!

Bridge the Media, Founded by Pamela Taylor ’16

Bridge the Media is a Chrome extension that hopes to expose online news readers to different viewpoints. When a Bridge the Media user reads a news article online, the plugin will display an article on a similar topic from a different angle. With the hover of a mouse, this nonpartisan plugin will help expose readers to a wider variety of viewpoints than they might otherwise encounter.
Pamela earned her initial round of funding through the VFA Innovation Fund, our annual crowdfunding competition. With funding from the Social Impact Awards, Pamela plans to expand current functionality and develop a mobile version of the plugin, as well as run a marketing campaign.

Recline, Co-founded by Asher Lipsitz ’16 and Magdalene McArthur ’16

Recline aims to make mental health care more accessible and affordable. Through Recline, users can talk with a vetted active listener for 30-minute sessions intended to improve emotional well-being.
With this new round of funding, Asher and Magdalene plan to hire a software developer, run a marketing campaign, and offer free trials for new users.
Other finalists included Pollo con Leche, a video production company founded by Austin Blouin ’14 and Jon Galpern ’14; Potluck, a video chat platform that helps users forge new connections, co-founded by Dillon Meyers ’14; and GiveBackHack, a launchpad for social innovation co-founded by Louisa Lee ’13. All will receive ongoing advisement from Comcast NBCU.
Entrepreneurship can seem like a lonely endeavor. At VFA, we know that behind every successful startup is a community of advisors, funders, and supporters helping to make the business possible. We’re grateful to Comcast NBCUniversal for their support of our Fellows’ work, and we can’t wait to see what Recline and Bridge the Media build in the years to come!

Read more about the Social Enterprise Awards on Comcast NBCU’s blog.

 

by Alyssa Gill ’15

Social entrepreneurship is often framed as being global in nature, and charged with addressing issues such as hunger, poverty, or climate change at scale. However, aspiring founders can leverage the same principles to approaching challenges at a local level while creating lasting economic impact.
My passion for cities and the organizations that help them boost their economies led me to launch Hometeam Brand. Hometeam’s an apparel company that connects representing your hometown with contributing to the organizations that make it great and help it grow. With this mission in mind, I’ve launched Hometeam in my VFA city of Providence, where a portion of sales are going to entrepreneurs out of Social Enterprise Greenhouse.
In getting Hometeam off of the ground, I’ve proudly enlisted other Providence entrepreneurs such as designers, videographers, and screen printers. I’ve also given a lot of thought to the impact that businesses can have on cities. For inspiration, I look up to the entrepreneurs whose organizations are profiled below, as they’ve launched successful ventures for and by their communities. They’re creating opportunities for people to build businesses, wealth, and skills in and for their cities and neighborhoods. Their models are exemplary as they invest in local people and places for the long run – tapping into, and subsequently bolstering, the power of existing resources such as talent and real estate assets.
If you’re interested in launching your own social enterprise, consider looking at CoFound Harlem, Century Partners, StartupBox, or EforAll for their creative and intentionally inclusive business models making sustainable, local impact.

CoFound Harlem – John Henry

The CoFound Harlem accelerator evolved out of a monthly meetup for people in Harlem interested in startups, and is now working to help create 100 new businesses above 96^th street. Instead of giving up equity, portfolio companies are required to host free, educational programming for community members while in the accelerator, and remain in Harlem for at least four years after completing the program. In exchange, they’re offered resources such as office space, in-kind services, and mentorship from leading companies based in New York.
So many great organizations start out as small groups that get together consistently around a common passion. As an aspiring social entrepreneur, think about how starting a meetup or club could benefit your organization down the road. By building in a networking component from the beginning, you can foster an ecosystem by creating a way for stakeholders such as local funders, mentors, and talent to connect and collaborate!

Century Partners – Andrew Colom and David Alade

Century Partners is a real estate development startup with community wealth building baked into the business plan. The firm is flipping the traditionally exclusionary home owner’s association on its head to build Black wealth in a city that once had a particularly high rate of African-American homeownership. Century Partners purchases homes in disrepair, then invites neighbors to invest in their rehabilitation. Residents moving into the formerly abandoned properties bring new life into the community while generating returns for their new neighbors via rents paid.
A grassroots strategy can help you learn from the very community you are working to impact through your social enterprise. Welcoming local input in whatever form it may come (monetary investments in the case of Century Partners) can be beneficial and even critical to your success. Inviting people to contribute and deservedly reap the benefits of your collective efforts will take you further and create tangibility for your mission. Century Partners is not just sharing a grand vision of how their firm will help shrink the wealth gap in Detroit. Instead, they’re showing people how they can contribute to eliminating blight in their city and enjoy the financial and community development benefits.

Startup Box – Majora Carter and James Chase

Startup Box was founded by urban revitalization strategist Majora Carter and her husband and VP of Marketing with the Majora Carter Group, James Chase. The pair is a part of the urban reshoring movement to bring technology jobs back to the U.S., specifically to the unlikely Hunts Point neighborhood in the South Bronx. Carter and Chase have found their niche in creating quality assurance testing jobs, which have been moving overseas for the past couple of decades. “Startup Boxers” address a need for NYC software development firms that have found subpar services abroad. They test video games, for example, while providing focus group quality insight for their client companies. StartupBox is creating a point of entry into the tech industry for members of the South Bronx community while combatting unemployment and brain drain.
Are you considering starting an educational organization to help people develop the skills they need to compete in today’s innovation economy? Consider building a model that helps them to support themselves and their families at the same time. By creating a setting where people can develop and leverage new skills in their neighborhood, you’ll demonstrate that your community can be a source of experienced tech talent. More importantly, people in your community will know that they can enter the rapidly growing tech industry locally, or branch out and apply their homegrown skills in the tech sector anywhere!

EforAll – David Parker

Short for Entrepreneurship for All, EforAll is revitalizing mid-sized cities through inclusive entrepreneurship. The small business and nonprofit accelerator equips entrepreneurs across Massachusetts with skills and resources to help them launch successful ventures. Most importantly, the organization operates with the understanding that an EforAll entrepreneur has the strongest understanding of their community, its challenges, and how to address them while creating opportunities in their own career.
EforAll promotes a local entrepreneurial culture by engaging community stakeholders as experts and mentors while hosting pitch nights and other relevant events. Created for and by the Latinx community in Lawrence, EforAll also offers EParaTodos, a Spanish-language small business accelerator helping Latinx immigrants start their own companies and contribute to the local economy. EParaTodos helps participants learn to conduct business in English so they can compete in diverse markets. A model of inclusion, 40% of EforAll’s entrepreneurs are immigrants, and over 50% are minorities. Their model has seen a remarkably high success rate with 80% of portfolio companies still in business creating nearly 300 jobs thus far.
Consider what inclusivity might look like for your company or nonprofit, whether it be through your hiring practices, and/or who you dedicate resources to! If you’re intentional about diversity and inclusion you can broaden the pool of people you work with and serve. EforAll recognizes that the people experiencing the challenges they’re addressing are always the experts. In other words, the customer is always right!
Again, while the language around social entrepreneurship is often global in scope, the organizations and founders above prove that impact can be made by having a local focus. Arguably, by narrowing in on your community’s unique challenges and advantages you’ll be best positioned to make long-term impact. Think about which socially minded businesses and nonprofits you most admire, and how their models may be applicable to your own social enterprise! This exercise served as the inspiration for Hometeam, and now I’m proudly building a brand that will help people represent and build their cities.

We spent the last six months meeting thousands of impressive candidates from across the country, and we couldn’t be more excited about our 2017 Fellow class! There’s just one more step before Training Camp: helping every Fellow on their hunt for the right job.
No two Fellows share the same skills or career goals, which is why we never place Fellows at jobs. To ensure the best match, Fellows drive their own job searches.
But they’re not on their own! On top of resume help, email edits, and interview prep, we’ve created two tools to help Fellows find the right fit: VFA Match, where Fellows can see open opportunities, and a series of job fairs in VFA cities across the country.

VFA Match

VFA Match is a job portal just for Fellows, where the startups we work with post their open positions.
Match lets Fellows search for jobs by city, industry, size, role, and more. It allows Fellows to reach out to companies directly, and for companies to contact Fellows with promising resumes, too.
It’s an easy way to keep track of every exciting opportunity, so Fellows never miss a thing.
See the startups where Fellows work.

Regional job fairs

It’s one thing to research companies online, and a whole different thing to meet your potential future coworkers in person. That’s why we host regional job fairs all around the country!
Fellows head to cities like Birmingham, St. Louis, Cleveland, and Baltimore to interview with startups from the area—and get to know the cities they might soon call home.
Every job fair weekend includes interview prep with the VFA team, conversations with about 4–8 companies, several opportunities to meet the other startups in attendance, and plenty of time to hang out with older Fellow classes who know the cities, companies, and job search process well.
Job searching doesn’t get more fun than this!
Read about our southeast regional job fair.

At a large corporation, regardless of the field, most entry-level jobs look pretty similar: an assistant or associate-level title, a manager who knows exactly what you’re working on, and consistent, predictable, often repetitive work — tasks that closely resemble the bullet points on the job description.

If you decide to work at a startup, it’s a lot harder to know what’s coming your way. There’s a lot of unpredictability, yet plenty of reasons to work at a startup as an early-career professional. After helping more than 1,500 VFA Fellows launch their careers at startups across the country, we can shed some light on what to expect — and the benefits of working at a startup.

If you’re interested in solving significant business challenges, getting the autonomy to own projects, and taking part in meaningful work, you can also learn more about our Fellowship.

So, what even is a startup company?

When you read the word “startup,” what comes to mind? Three programmers guzzling Red Bull in someone’s aunt’s garage? Or maybe a Silicon Valley tech behemoth with a buzzed-about IPO and an office kitchen lined with $400 juice machines?

If so, let’s start over. The startup ecosystem in the US is much more diverse—and much more interesting—than what most mainstream narratives would have you believe. You might be wondering what types of startup jobs there are.

For every tech startup with millions in venture capital and an in-house masseuse, there’s a bootstrapped operation making upright furniture, streamlining the logistical headache that is fleet management, or helping local entrepreneurs open up their own escape rooms across the country.

No precise formula can tell you if a company is a startup or not. But generally speaking, a startup is an early-stage venture that’s in search of a profitable business model—one that can be scaled up rapidly as demand for the product grows. Often, it’s a company that decided to take a stab at solving a knotty, complicated problem—the types of issues that make you say: how is there not a better way to do this yet?

Most startups have fewer than around 80 employees. (The difference between working at a 5 person company and a 60 person company is pretty vast, but we’ll talk more about that later.)

So, Facebook was a startup in its early years, but it’s too large and established to be considered one now. Same goes for Instagram, Dropbox, Airbnb, Snapchat, Uber—you get the picture. It’s not the type of work that makes a startup, but the size, the pace, and the approach.

How is working for a startup different from working for a more established organization?

Your responsibilities will change more frequently.

The biggest difference between a job at a startup and a job at a bigger, more traditional company is the rate at which things change.

At a large corporation, you might do the same set of tasks for several years, until someone above you retires or gets a promotion. On the other hand, startup benefits include unpredictability and an escape from mundane work. At a startup, your role and responsibilities will evolve frequently, even multiple times a year. Within six months, you might be doing something significantly different from the role you were hired to do. That means your skill set will have to grow at an equally fast clip.

The type of work you perform will necessarily change based on the organization’s current challenges. Whether launching a new product, working with a big client for the first time, redesigning the website, or trying a new marketing campaign, startups are always experimenting. If you’re committed to learning and adding value, your priorities will shift with every trial and error.

The smaller the startup, the more frequently you’ll be picking up new responsibilities — because there are simply fewer people to tackle any given challenge. At a startup with 40 or 50 employees, you might have a fairly well-defined role. At a startup with 4 or 5 or even 15 people, you’re going to be doing a lot of blocking and tackling.

You’ll need to solve problems on your own.

At a large, established company, most roles are highly specialized, and when a new problem occurs, it will be addressed by the person or team with that specific set of skills. If you try to solve a problem that isn’t “owned” by your department, you’re likely to step on some toes.

At a startup—especially a very small one—nearly every problem is an opportunity for you to step in and add value. Your coworkers are more likely to appreciate an action-oriented, problem-solving approach.

You’ll have the opportunity to experiment.

Identifying and solving problems has one major professional upside: it allows you to grow your skill set and try new things.

If you technically work in marketing but want to gain experience as a programmer or designer, jumping in where you see the need can be a great way to learn and grow (as long as you keep up on your core responsibilities).

You probably won’t be managed super closely

At most large companies, being a manager means keeping a close eye on the people beneath you. It means fairly rigid expectations, a well-defined breakdown of responsibilities, and a good amount of time spent teaching new hires how to do their job.

At a small company, it’s likely that your manager will be too busy tackling their own projects to spend a lot of time managing you. You’ll have a lot of autonomy—and if you want to succeed, you’ll have to learn how to manage yourself. This means: setting deadlines for yourself, Googling your way to victory, asking for help when you need it, and probably burning some midnight oil.

So, what do startup employees actually do all day?

Generally speaking, if you work at a startup, you are either building a product or selling it.

At early stage companies, there’s less need for internal departments, like human resources and accounting. It often makes more sense to outsource tasks like office management and bookkeeping, or to have different members of the team pitch in rather than hire a specific person to do the work.

Building and selling, though, will always be core functions. Depending on the role, and the size of the company, sometimes you might be doing a little bit of both.

Here’s what titles and roles could look like at a typical software company for entry-level employees:

On the building side, you might have a job title like software developer, product engineer, UX/UD guru, product manager, or quality assurance specialist.

On the sales side, your title might include phrases like business development associate, account manager, content creator, customer acquisition, or community manager.

Spanning both sides are roles that involve things like operations, data analysis, and customer onboarding/success.

Don’t you have to know how to code to work at a startup?

Some people opt to work for large companies because they assume startups require programming skills. If you’ve heard that before, repeat after us:

You do not have to know how to code to be an integral part of a startup.

The vast majority of our Fellows—over 75%, in fact!—work in non-technical roles. We don’t need to tell you how valuable coding can be. But it’s absolutely not a mandatory skill to add value and have an amazing career at a startup.

The truth is really simple: startups need smart, dedicated people tackling all kinds of problems — technical and otherwise — in order to succeed.

Don’t think that you have to go the corporate route just because you don’t know Java from PHP.

If you work for a startup instead of a large corporation, how will that impact your career down the line?

The rapid pace of startup life gives you the opportunity to learn a variety of transferable skills. While degrees can help you learn useful tool sets, no education can fully prepare you to excel at a startup or launch a company.

Someone who has demonstrated that she can build or sell a product will always be a coveted hire, and will be able to find a job at a two-person startup or at a giant company.

Someone with a deep understanding of data analysis, or great community or content creation skills, will be able to perform those roles across any industry.

In every business, there are customers, there is a product, there is data, and there are operational challenges. By working at a startup you’ll learn how these pieces fit together, and be ready to apply that knowledge anywhere.

Experience working at a startup is intrinsically valuable to other growth stage companies (and to larger ones with an entrepreneurial bend or experimental wing). Regardless of what you’re working on day-to-day, you’ll be constantly interacting with folks who have other functional roles, and these skills will rub off on you and make you better rounded, with a deeper understanding of how businesses are built.

Feeling nervous about starting a brand-new role? Check out our blog on navigating the first six weeks at a new job.