This post originally appeared in Forbes.

Dylan Kim is a VFA Fellow and and co-founder of the lifestyle design company Brevitē. Elliot Kim is also co-founder of Brevitē.

Little to lose, but a lot to gain
The risks of starting a company in college are almost non-existent. In other words, you have little to lose but a lot to gain.. You likely don’t need to rely on revenue from your company to pay rent or cover health insurance. If it fails, your living expenses are already covered in your student budget. These same safety nets may not exist post-graduation. You will also meet like-minded individuals and learn more than you ever thought possible. No class in college will teach you how to prepare for the everyday challenges of getting a company off the ground. And you never know, what you start in college today could become wildly successful tomorrow.
Thanks to modern technology, the barriers to starting a company today are lower than they ever have been before. With less than $300 we created a self-sustainable business, and we weren’t even working alongside one another on the same campus. Remember, you have the time and resources, and little to lose but everything to gain.
About us
Elliot, Dylan, and Brandon Kim are three brothers from Boston and co-founders of the lifestyle design company Brevitē. Brevitē has a mission to design functional travel accessories to help people experience the world around them. The three brothers founded Brevitē while in college and currently run the company out of New York City.

There’s a lot more to it than asking for help.

We believe that Google and stick-to-it-iveness can get a person pretty far in life. Sometimes, though, you cannot Google your way to victory, despite your best efforts. Sometimes, you just need to talk to someone who’s been there.

For questions that your boss or friends or parents can’t answer, for longer-term guidance, and for connections to an industry you’re eager to learn more about, finding a mentor can be a real game changer. But how do you find the right mentor? And once you find one, how do you make the relationship stick? We’re so glad you asked.

Where are all the mentors hiding?

Not sure where to begin? First, look at your own workplace. You probably don’t want your current boss to be your only mentor, even if your relationship is strong—there will be times when you’ll want to strategize with someone else about asking for a raise, pitching a new idea, or dealing with a point of tension. Within your company, are there more experienced coworkers who aren’t your manager or your manager’s manager, but who do work that you admire? That’s a great place to start. Your college or high school alumni network is another solid place to look—remember, mentoring can be remote! You can also look for professional development organizations in your city, and attend networking nights and events specific to your industry.

If you’re in a very niche field with very specific challenges, you might want someone working in the precise role you hope to land someday. But if your challenges are more garden variety — i.e., the general types of situations most seasoned professional have some experience navigating — you can broaden your search to include other professions.

It might also be helpful to find a mentor who shares aspects of your identity. There are a lot of professional development orgs that focus on connecting women and people of color — see what you can find in your city.

Be open-minded, and say yes to opportunities that might put you into contact with people you could learn from. Remember: you don’t have to keep the same mentor forever, and you don’t have to limit yourself to just one.

How do you make a potential mentor into an actual mentor?

What not to do: ask a total stranger to be your mentor.

Put yourself in the shoes of a your potential mentor. If you were a busy professional who already had borderline too much on your plate, would you respond to a LinkedIn DM from a random 22-year-old—or even an acquaintance—asking for some kind of official relationship? You might — but odds are, you’d me be more likely to respond if the ask was significantly more modest.

This isn’t like asking someone to prom—you don’t have to make anything official. Instead, think of finding a mentor as the gradual development of a relationship, rather than a yes/no interview. Ask someone for coffee, or for a brief phone call to address a specific issue, or for an informational interview, and see how it goes. If it feels like you’ve found promising mentor/mentee chemistry — the conversation isn’t hugely effortful and you feel like you’re understanding one another— propose another coffee or conversation. Read their cues, but don’t be afraid to ask. Most busy adults won’t agree to something they really don’t want to do.

Remember that mentorship can come in many forms.

Mentorship can mean the traditional long-term relationship—but it can also mean a season of help, or a one-off phone call with someone in another city. You might find that you want multiple mentors to guide you in different arenas of your career and life. In other words: don’t worry if you can’t find one single person to meet all of your mentor needs.

Once you’ve found a mentor…

Respect your mentor’s space and time.

Mentorship is rarely (if ever) a one way street; your mentor almost certainly wouldn’t spend time with you if they didn’t get something out of it, from a fresh perspective on their own work to an enjoyable relationship. But on some level, your mentor is still doing you a favor. Acknowledge that, and respect it. Don’t make enormous asks of their time. Unless you’ve built up this kind of rapport, don’t call them with every little problem. Find out how they want to be contacted (email? text?) and respect that wish. Be on time for meetings. (It’s a good rule of thumb to plan to arrive ten minutes early.) Meet in locations that are convenient for them, even if it it’s a pain. In general, show respect—it’s a good way to keep the relationship going.

Don’t ask for huge favors right away.

So you heard through the grapevine that your new mentor knows the CEO of your favorite company, or seems to be Twitter friends with an influencer you just know would love your new brand. Maybe your mentor is an angel investor or works at a VC firm. Maybe you’ve gleaned from Instagram that they have a lake house in the country, and you want to use it for a company retreat. If the ask feels big, save it for a while. It’s uncomfortable when someone you’ve just met asks you for a large favor. It seems opportunistic, and it never feels good to make an intro before you fully know who you’re vouching for. Spend at least a few months building trust and proving you’d reflect well on your mentor before pulling out the big asks.

Don’t treat your mentor like your best friend.

As you grow more comfortable with your mentor, the relationship will probably grow less formal and more casual. But you should still let your mentor set the tone when it comes to how you socialize — and even if they share personal anecdotes and the occasional wildly unprofessional musing, don’t assume it’s ok for you to follow suit. Don’t tell your mentor about any illegal activity (duh). While it’s ok to talk through office tension, don’t tell them that you think your boss is an idiot, even if you’ve had a very, very bad day. Basically, don’t say anything that will come back to haunt you if one day, you wanted to work for your mentor. You won’t regret keeping things above board.

Make it a two-way street.

Just because you’re less experienced doesn’t mean you can’t find ways to be helpful to your mentor. Maybe they could use a recent-grad’s take on a new social media platform or trend. Maybe they’d like your perspective on an area of tension with a coworker. You probably have at least a few skills they don’t have. Don’t hesitate to offer help just because you feel like they know more than you. Find ways to express your gratitude.

Keep them posted on big changes in your life.

Did you get a promotion, or move to another department? Thinking about getting a new job or switching industries? Moving across the country? Let your mentor know what’s going on! It’s the polite thing to do — and there’s a good chance they’ll be able to offer you new connections and opportunities.

Andrew Yang, founder of VFA, served our organization as its first CEO for several years before leaving the post this past summer to pursue a new chapter.  He is completing work on his second non-fiction book, which is scheduled for publication in spring 2018.  Andrew has also begun to contemplate running for elected office.  Accordingly, he will be stepping down as a member of our Board of Directors.
As the founder of VFA and then as a member of its Board of Directors, Andrew has led our organization from its creation through its infancy to its current status as a thriving non-profit impacting so many around the country.  As Andrew steps down from the VFA Board this December, he leaves a powerful legacy of entrepreneurial leadership, culminating in several hundred young graduates working hard in small businesses and start-ups across the U.S.  We salute his ambition and vision and wish him well as he embarks on his next service odyssey.

For many Venture for America Fellows, the three months between August 1st and October 31st  has been a time of unavoidable adaptation and rapid learning in completely unfamiliar environments. While 181 incoming 2017 Fellows moved to new cities for their first startup jobs, eight VFA alumni embarked on a risky entrepreneurial journey of their own.
After spending two years working at a startup and observing first hand how companies are built the VFA Accelerator Fellows decided that their side projects deserved a chance at becoming real companies. After applying to the Accelerator’s 3rd annual cohort, our Launch Team agreed that these potential founders were ready to go full-time.
In the last few days of July, the founders packed their bags and left their respective VFA cities (including Columbus, Providence, Cleveland, and St. Louis) and made the trip to the New Center neighborhood just outside of downtown Detroit. The group moved into the furnished eight bedroom house that VFA rented from four Fellowship alumni entrepreneurs who renovated the house just a few years prior.
Here they would dedicate the next four months of their lives working. With their rent and meals covered, a dedicated office pod, and breakout rooms where they could meet with mentors, trainers, and potential investors, the Fellows hit the ground running on day one.
While focusing on customer development during the first month of the program, the teams also had a chance to work with long time VFA supporter Scott Smedresman. An expert in startup corporate law, Scott helped make sure their entity formations and founder agreements were in order to make their companies ready to acquire customers and if appropriate, prepare for a future fundraiser. We also invited Vance VanDrake to teach the teams how to think about intellectual property protection.
In September, as many of the teams were ready to start acquiring their first customers, they met with recognizable Detroit area leaders: Monica Wheat talked about how to navigate Detroit’s entrepreneurship ecosystem, Dave Tear coached the teams on fundamental sales principles, local entrepreneurs like Ann Arbor’s Dug Song of Duo Security and many others opened up their networks and their expertise on what it takes to have a customer-first mentality to get a business off the ground.
During the last month of the program, and leading up to the Accelerator Demo Day on November 19th, the companies refined their pitches as they worked with public speaking expert Eleni Kelakos, and buttoned up their financials with Justin McLoughlin and his team at AirCFO.
Reading this timeline of events may make it seem like the days spent at the accelerator were fairly regimented and predictable, but this is far from the reality. In between the mentor meetings and scheduled trainings, the founders were constantly shifting priorities, racing to meet their weekly goals, and adapting to new realities as they learned the ins and outs of the businesses and industries they had entered just weeks and months before. One founder made the difficult decision to pursue a completely different business idea several weeks into the program as she discovered her true passion was hiding in a side project. The result? Faster progress towards sales than she thought was possible with her previous concept. Another team was surprised to receive a $1,000 award from a visiting mentor who loved what they were working on so much that he decided to provide them with an immediate grant to help grow their concept. A third team went from one pilot customer to three enterprise level deals in their pipeline in just a few weeks.
The seven companies in this year’s cohort of the VFA Accelerator have grown comfortable with uncertainty and have learned what levers need to be pulled to create sustainable progress in their businesses. Despite challenges, in just a few short months they’ve been able to find the focus to get their first customers, make their first hires, begin manufacturing, and so much more.
Here are a few words from the Fellows themselves about who they are and what they’ve been able to accomplish. We wish them the best of luck on their journeys, and can’t wait to see what the next class of Fellows behind them will build.

Balto Software

Balto understands phone conversations and, in real time, cues sales reps with the best things to say at high-impact points in the call. “During the accelerator, we increased our revenue month over month, acquired several new enterprise level pilots, hired one sales rep and brought on a new developer.”

Harriette

Harriette makes all-natural body hair care essentials for women. Our products are engineered to give women healthy, soft body hair that smells fresh, feels luscious, and looks beautiful. “Throughout the accelerator, we basically went from idea to launch! I launched an ecommerce site and a crowdfunding campaign, sold $3k of product, and grew my social media following from 0 to nearly 400 followers.”

Peak Performance Ninja

Eagleye empowers golfers to improve their scores through effective practice, strategic thinking, and a clear understanding of their strengths and weaknesses. “During our time in the accelerator, we developed and launched our MVP to our first 100+ Customers. We were also accepted into the Detroit Cohort of the TechStars Startup Boost Global Pre-Accelerator program.”

Sweat Seal

Sweat Seal makes custom undershirts that prevent pit stains! Made in Ohio, tested in Miami, Sweat Seal makes pit stains a thing of the past! “At the start of the accelerator, I launched a crowdfunding campaign that raised over $53,000 in 29 days. Now, after vetting over eight production suppliers, I’m wrapping up the production of 4,500 shirts.”

Clyde

Clyde makes it easy for SMBs to offer extended warranties and insurance for their products at the point of sale, drive passive revenue and enables them to offer a great service to their customers. “Post accelerator, Clyde is partnering with a Fortune 500 national insurance company, has secured 10+ companies to use the product, and has developed relationships with over five insurance companies. We also fully designed the application during the accelerator and began building it, with plans to finish the first iteration in Q1 of 2018.”

PathSpot

PathSpot is a portable device that protects against food borne illness. First launching in restaurants, PathSpot indicates the presence of harmful bacteria on a work surface, a cooking utensil, or an employee’s hands. “The VFA Accelerator was critical to PathSpot’s development over the past few months. Through the accelerator resources, we launched our company, moved from prototype to fully functioning product, installed our first pilots, and closed our first paying customer.”

[Place] Market

Place is an ecommerce website featuring products made across Metro Detroit. “During the accelerator, we honed our business model as a bridge for small fashion brands and large corporations. We also began user discovery by piloting with a startup here in Detroit.”

For more information about Venture for America’s Launch programs for founders in the VFA Fellowship, please reach out to our Entrepreneur-in-Residence Sergei Revzin at sergei@ventureforamerica.org

Your manager is busy. Here’s how to make sure your relationship is smooth, productive, and useful.

What is managing up, and why does it matter?

We believe startup work gives you far more opportunities to learn than more traditional office jobs—in fact, VFA was founded on that idea. The best way to learn how to build something is to get your hands dirty, and work on a wide range of projects in a frequently ambiguous environment. At a startup, you might bounce around from role to role, from account management to marketing, from biz dev to sales. From a learning and skills-building perspective, all of this ambiguity and change can be excellent.

But it can also be confusing and messy. Often your bosses are super busy, and don’t have enough time to sit down with you and hash out detailed plans. If you do get attention from your boss, it can come in the form of micromanagement, rather than big-picture prioritization. It’s unlikely that you’ll enter into a situation with clear goals in place, or have someone helping you figure out what to DO every day, week, or even every month. You might find yourself spending hours at work just trying to figure out what you should be working on.

In a situation like this, you might feel lost— like you’ve been told to set sail, but not in what direction. You might even watch your friends at structured organizations receiving structured opportunities to grow, and feel a little jealous. You might find yourself complaining to your parents or friends or coworkers after every frustrating day. You might develop an external locus of control.

But don’t despair! There’s a solution, and that solution is managing up.

On its own, the phrase “manage up” is corporate-speak, and advising someone to “just manage up” is about as helpful as asking an angry person to calm down. But there are plenty of tactical things you can do to have a relationship with your boss that’s supportive and complimentary instead of adversarial or resentful. Managing up isn’t telling your boss what to do. Nor is it something that you do from time to time. If you’re good at it, you’re always managing up.

Managing people is harder than you might think. Consider managing up as a way to give your manager a hand—it’ll make things easier for both of you.

The managing up basics:

Set and share your priorities.

“But that’s my boss’s job,” you might argue. In theory, sure. But most managers don’t spend enough time helping their employees select and order their priorities (especially in ambiguous environments)—often, they just don’t have the time. If you determine what three or four key things you can accomplish in a given period of time (say, a week), draft that list, and share it with your boss to solicit their input. You can save them the trouble of figuring out what to do with you, you can set your own priorities and feel out a reasonable workload, and your manager will develop confidence that you can manage yourself.

Check in more than absolutely necessary.

It feels great to be wanted!

There’s a common thread here, and it’s a little counter-intuitive: checking in builds autonomy. If you ask someone to build a house, it’s true that you don’t want to do the work yourself — but you also don’t want the house to be a total surprise. You want to share your ideas and vision, see blueprints, and be consulted on important decisions. You want a timeline, and to know how much progress is made each week. At your new job, be the over-communicative architect. Not only will you make sure you’re building the thing your boss wants, but with every checkin, your manager will trust you more. You’ll learn their preferences, and maybe even get some insight into their strategic process.

If you’re really good at this, soon your manager will barely even worry about what you send over — they’ll simply trust your judgment, and still feel in the loop. They’ll forgive mistakes, too. And in time, especially if they’re a typical startup manager who never plans more than a week or two ahead, they’ll let you create your own path for growth.

Figure out what’s on your manager’s plate.

Paying attention to your manager’s schedule and what’s on their plate can allow you to push your work forward more effectively. For example, if you see that her schedule is booked with meetings with the business development team, that might be a great time to give her an update on your marketing project to bring in more sales leads. Since business development needs are on her mind, her feedback and action steps to get you what you need may be more immediate. Similarly, it may not be the best time to talk about your website redesign project.

Autonomy can be awesome, but more independence does not mean you can cruise to the finish line without having to stop at several checkpoints along the way. Your projects will still need feedback and one or more levels of approval in order to happen, so keeping your manager’s schedule in mind can help you get what you need faster. At a startup, it often takes soft skills — reading people, being perceptive of their habits — in order to prove your hard skills and make your concrete work a reality.

The bonus round:

Give your manager a menu.

Designers often use this tactic — they’ll give a client three versions of a design, which makes the client feel in control while also minimizing the room for vague and/or untenable demands. That’s a little intense for most of your day-to-day work, but whenever you’re developing something that’s going to require strategic and/or creative decision making, present two or more options.

Stow the big ideas until you’re sure you know what you’re talking about.

Notice a process that seems a little ridiculous? Do it yourself at least a couple times before trying to figure out how to improve it. There are probably some variables you haven’t considered until you get hands-on experience—maybe there’s a reason for the things that seem illogical to you at the outset. Veteran input is respected for a reason — more tenured workers have the right experiences to inform their decisions.

Test your own process improvements before sharing with your manager.

Big, meaningful changes often start out with lean tests. When you do think of an idea to make something better, come up with the simplest possible test you can use to see if you might be right.

Once you have proof that your idea is actually useful, now’s the time share with your manager. And if it’s not? Run more tests.

Finally: don’t rush it.

Be patient. You might notice a multitude of things that were “wrong” within the first week of working at my company. While this perspective is valuable, it’s probably not relevant yet. Your manager likely won’t care until he or she is convinced of your abilities and your knowledge of the company. Focus on doing good work and earning your manager’s trust—you’ll end up with plenty of room to make the changes you want to see.