The 2018 Innovation Fund, our annual crowdfunding competition, has officially launched! You can find all of the Innovation Fund participants here. Read on for the story of BOAT Bus, led by 2017 Fellow, Micah Leinbach, who is raising $6,000 for outdoor education.

 
Between the 8th and 11th grade, student engagement in traditional classrooms drops from 82% to 41%. Let that statistic sink in – by the time they are graduating, half of our students are no longer participating.
To face a dynamic economy, we need the kinds of people VFA recruits for, students who – in VFA’s own words – “have a strong, independent work ethic. Find ways to thrive in the face of pressure and ambiguity….[and] always are working towards a greater goal.” Our schools aren’t building that.
I work in Learning & Development at one of VFA’s partner companies. For me, the worst part of that statistic comes from what we know about human beings – we are born learners. Forget opposable thumbs. Insatiable curiosity and a brain built for information management are what make us human.
What kind of education can solve for this – and how do we get it to our kids?
I’m a 2017 Venture for America fellow working at one of America’s fast-growing education technology startups. Prior to VFA, I spent four years starting an “expeditionary learning” company, using the wilderness as a classroom for topics ranging from science to social justice. Our answer to the question above is “BOAT”. The Bus for Outdoor Access & Teaching, and is an outdoor program on wheels. With all the resources to run a camping expedition on a bus, we run educational adventures for kids.   

This is a well-researched, well-supported approach to education – but it’s also costly and expensive. We don’t think it has to be.
BOAT provides logistical and economic solution for educators.

Teacher’s trying to organize field trips are faced with tremendous logistical burdens. They have to find the time to plan the trip, acquire gear, figure out food and logistics, confirm their insurance works, and arrange transportation. We’ve talked to dozens of teachers, all of whom had the same basic perspective: “we love the trips, we hate planning them.” BOAT changes the game, taking care of the boring stuff – and doing it for a fraction of the price. Because teachers should be teaching, not figuring out how to calculate the appropriate rations of oatmeal or digging for extra funds (though we encourage students to do both – it’s a great math lesson).
In a world where education innovation conjures images of coding robots and smart boards, our idea may seem a bit more “Woodstock” than “SXSW” – but our experience (and a lot of research!) suggests that wilderness is a critical piece of the puzzle in any conversation about improving the educational experience for students. Returning to engagement in the classroom: outdoor experiences cause spikes in classroom engagement that last for up to 10 weeks at a time. And that’s just the start.
Humans evolved to learn in wilderness classrooms.
Kids should be learning to code – but they should also be learning to camp, and here is why:
 

• Emotional intelligence and collaborative skills are educational essentials. Expeditions are fundamentally a team sport. While school and work lend themselves to a check in-check out mentality, the constant contact and communication of an expedition fosters emotional maturity and understanding.
• The outcomes are real – and personal. Try to find a school project whose consequences rival that of getting lost in a swamp, or rewards that compare to a view from a summit. Consequences in school are often manufactured. In the wilderness, outcomes come from the intersection of the environment and your decision making.
• Outdoor skills are life skills. Budgeting food, water, energy, and other resources. Learning to cook. Understanding nutrition. Even the little things – hygiene, doing dishes, cleaning up camp. Investing in this learning now sets kids up for successful lives as adults in all the ways “regular school” doesn’t.
• Resilience. The generation about to enter the workforce has experiences staggering rates of anxiety, stress, and mental challenges. Ample research suggests that even here, the outdoors can help. Time outside helps students of all ages learn to manage stress and anxiety, while also conveying a critical message – you can survive when things are tough.

 

We should keep teaching kids to read and write, just like we should be teaching kids to code, build robots, and innovate. We should also be giving them the chance to flex the basic muscles of being human: living in community, taking care of one another, reacting and responding to challenge, and making and setting goals. The best way to do this is to help them experience these things in real time, with real consequences, and wilderness classrooms offer a deeply powerful way to make it happen. Besides, nothing wrong with a chance to revel in a little beauty! Check out our Indiegogo and support our efforts to make an easier, more convenient, and more affordable way to get outside.
 
 
 
The BOAT Bus Board includes Julia Huggins, Eric Protsman, Alex Lyttle, Sarah Clement, Katie Thiry, Sarra Wynn, and Micah Leinbach. All donations to the Bus for Outdoor Access & Teaching are considered charitable contributions and tax-deductible pending the approval of our 501(c)(3) application by the IRS, which we fully expect within the 2018 tax year. We will send you a receipt acknowledging your donation after receiving approval. The last timeline we were given would put that approval in early April.

The 2018 Innovation Fund, our annual crowdfunding competition, has officially launched! You can find all of the Innovation Fund participants here. Read on for the story of Hoodies for Diversity in Tech, led by 2013 Fellow, Kate Catlin, who is raising $2,018 for diversity in tech non-profits.

How not to learn to code

…and thus, why you should buy a hoodie.

Do you remember your first coding class?

Mine was entirely unintentional. I got a free admission to a 3-day Intro to Python. Did I know what Python was? No, but heck, it was free and in your early 20s you don’t pass up free.
The instructor was clearly brilliant. He’d been writing code for 20 years and started around the time the rest of us were working on reading. Unfortunately, he’d been immersed in tech for so long that translating the concepts to mere mortals was no longer his strongest skill.  
“Any questions?” he would pause and ask. “Yes,” I thought to myself. “Many.”
I looked left. I looked right. My peers, mostly men, were not raising their hands. Were they secretly as lost as I was? I didn’t have the confidence to find out. I stayed silent. I left the class defeated on the second day, cried in a bathroom for an hour, and didn’t return.
I thought I was smart– Why couldn’t I understand code?
The ‘Cycle of Underrepresentation’ and the art of rewiring a brain.
Months after my disastrous first coding class, a friend would explain to me that human beings are not naturally wired to think the hyper-literal way a computer does.
To learn to code, you have to let your brain relax enough to reorganize it’s very wiring. No one can learn under stress, and it would be especially difficult for undertaking of this magnitude.
Kids are great at picking up coding because everything is relaxed playtime to a kid. But only some kids are learning computer science topics, which is where the Cycle of Underrepresentation (which I did not invent, but did make this handy infographic for) begins:  

We get more underrepresented folks into tech by tacking each of these systemic parts of the cycle individually, but today we’re going to talk about stage #3 in the cycle: Education.
So how might we replicate that child-like state of learning for adults to broaden our pipeline of tech candidates? For those who have felt alienated, talked-over, or discouraged in the past, it may be best achieved by going the extra mile to create a safe and supportive environment.

What kinds of organizations are working on this?

Girl Develop It is a great example. They’re a nonprofit organization that exists to provide affordable and judgment-free opportunities for women interested in learning to code.
Denver Chapter Leader Cara Jo Miller has seen many success stories, but this one sticks out to me:
“There was a woman who applied for scholarships for every class because she was struggling to pay for things. I would help her out any time I could, because she continually came hungry for information and excited to learn. One day I saw she RSVPed and PAID for a class and I freaked out! I messaged her and told her if she needed a refund I would help her out and then issue her a scholarship. She replied, “Oh no I meant to pay– thanks to GDI I now have a job in tech so I can afford classes!”
The Code 2040 Fellows Program is a higher-touch model aimed at Black and Latinx Computer Science undergrads. They spend a summer in an intensive career accelerator, interning at a top tech company and participating in a series of workshops. Meanwhile, they’re meeting mentors and building a community of other Black and/or Latinx technologists.
This community gave one recent Fellow the backup she needed to persist in a particularly frustrating moment. As an underrepresented CS student, “People suggest I switch out of CS the minute they see me struggling,” she shared. She asked for help on AVL trees for an upcoming exam, and instead heard, “You should go into nursing!”
Facing this discouragement, she reached out to her former Code2040 community, “got a lot of support and advice,” and rallied emotionally for the remainder of the semester.
Blind Institute of Technology offers services and assistance to both candidates with disabilities, and their potential employers. One candidate they placed through their network endorsed them with this excited quote:  
“FREEDOM!!!!! Finally, I am starting a job this October where I am able to utilize my web design skills combined with my unique perspective on web design to make a living wage worthy of my skill set…. [BIT] will come along side and partner with you. Together, that door does not stand a chance. Together, you will kick that door completely off its hinges. That is what BIT has helped me do.”
And lastly, we have Women Who Startup, which provides rapid learning and real-time engagement with a global community of female entrepreneurs, strengthening the pipeline of underrepresented techpreneurs. They offer both online community and in-person events.
Which bring us full-circle back to my story.
I didn’t stop learning to code after my first attempt. I kept taking classes: Online classes, weekend classes, women’s-only classes and full-on bootcamps. These days I’m web developing in Ruby.
And about 15 months ago, I contacted Lizelle van Vuuren, (Founder of WWS) to ask if she would help me promote a launch event for Find My Flock, the company I had just left my job to start. She not only said yes, she went above and beyond with tweeting, posting on LinkedIn, and funneling her network to our event. She’s continued to be a supporter, even sending the occasional business lead.
In an industry where I was repeatedly told that my company would never work, Women Who Startup saw one of their own and did what they could do make it a reality. We’re now revenue profitable with Fortune-500 clients and growing the team.

Why are you selling hoodies?

Find My Flock is focused intently on cracking stage #4 of the Underrepresentation Cycle (unfairness) by only working with companies that provide inclusive environments for all to work in. We post and promote their jobs, and provide extra support to applicants lacking confidence after years of underrepresentation. If they take a job through our network, they gain access to 6 additional months of career coaching.
But we also want contribute what we can to shatter Underrepresentation Cycle stage #3, getting more folks into tech skills in the first place.
So today we are selling hoodies, and you should buy one. All revenue from this campaign will go back to the non-profit of your choice from the options I described above: Girl Develop It, Code2040, Blind Institute of Technology, and Women Who Startup.
Perhaps you remember your first coding class– or perhaps you were always too intimidated to take one. Either way, if that memory or these stories stir your heart, provide the funds to stir someone else’s inspiration on this link.
You’ll get a super-cozy hoodie in exchange, but we’ll both know what your money was really about.

The 2018 Innovation Fund, our annual crowdfunding competition, has officially launched! You can find all of the Innovation Fund participants here. Read on for the story of Gregory, an AI-based SAT/ ACT/ GRE/ GMAT software to help you reach your dream score, created by 2017 Fellow Yuan Liu.

Where did this begin?
It usually doesn’t take long before people figure out I am not Einstein, so when my friends hear about my test scores, they always wonder what my secrets were.

To be honest, it was just tons of practice and learning from mistakes. It may sound simple, but it was an incredibly frustrating process. From SAT to GRE, I did thousands of practice questions. Many times I asked myself, “why do you keep getting this wrong?” After a while, I started to see patterns and gradually synthesized them into techniques and my own personal tips.
I was always happy to share my experience and tips with my friends when it comes to studying for these tests because I wanted them to avoid my frustrations. Later on, I became a tutor. As fulfilling as the experience was, I noticed that a lot of people didn’t have the time and money for tutors or lessons. So I started trying to find easier and more flexible ways to help more people. This is where it all began.

What is the story behind the logo and the name Gregory?
I started by experimenting with sharing free GRE resources and study tips. One thing I learned from my experience as a tutor, however, is that each student has their own needs and challenges. A good tutor sees through the students’ problems and knows exactly how to enable them to make the progress and remove their roadblocks. So eventually, this idea evolved into a more intelligent software that can do exactly that. Like the name Gregory, it all started from GRE.
We want it to be just like a Care Bear that’s always there for you when you battle the challenges studying for the tests. Isn’t that cute?

How does it work？
We created premium content for students, including hundreds of lessons and thousands of practice questions. Based on students’ patterns interacting with our content, it will look deep into their gaps and identify the roadblocks they are not seeing by themselves. Gregory can help them remove these roadblocks by providing actionable tips and creating an overall strategy to make noticeable progress.

How far are you now?
We will be ready to release the full product for GRE early in the summer and it will be soon available for other tests such as SAT and GMAT. As we are still refining the algorithm, we know some people need more immediate help for their upcoming tests. We are ready to release our GRE math practice set. It has ~600 practice questions carefully selected, with video lessons coming and office hours available on weekends for any test-related questions. Helping students unlock a perfect math score at a very low price. It will be available soon. Stay tuned!

I’m not taking these tests (anymore), why should I care?
I’ve always believed in the role of education in people’s lives. Part of the goal of this project is to develop an accessible tool for students who don’t have thousands of dollars to spend on these tests to get the education they dream about. We hope to partner with local schools and deliver this to underserved students in the community once the product is ready. By enabling us, you are making a difference to many people’s lives by helping them access the education they need to unlock their dreams. So check our our campaign here!

Looking for your first internship or job? You probably already got your resume ready and have your best power outfit on hand. But if you haven’t cleaned up your social media profiles it’s time to start making sure your digital footprint matches the professional impression you’re trying to make.

We’ve all heard the stories of high potential leaders or rising political stars whose dreams were dashed by an ill-conceived online post. Don’t make those same mistakes. Follow these easy steps to clean up your social profiles before your big job hunt and make sure that the only thing your future employer sees about you online makes them want to work with you even more.

Step 1: Find out what they can see.

First things first, you have to know what’s already out there online about you. This is what prospective employers are going to see when they go looking and you don’t want to be surprised.

Google yourself and go through the first three pages of results. Most employers won’t look beyond the first page but dig a little deeper just in case someone has time on their hands. If there’s anything that comes up that you’re embarrassed of, reach out to the person who posted it and ask that they take it down. Most people will oblige once you explain that you’re looking for a job. If they won’t or can’t, be prepared to explain if an interviewer or manager asks you about it.

Next, sign out of all of your social media accounts so you can see your profile from a stranger’s perspective. Type your name in and see what comes up. Also search by the email address you listed on your resume. Take note of how easy or hard you are to find and what kind of information the public can see about you. Navigate a bit to see what pictures or statuses are viewable by anyone with an internet connection.

Step 2: Decide whom you want to share with.

If you’re happy with what’s publicly viewable for you, great! Sounds like you’ve been proactive about managing your digital reputation. If not, it’s time to adjust your sharing settings so you can control who can see what.

First things first, start with your profile picture. Make sure that the picture that comes up with your account is one that you’re comfortable with an employer seeing. You may have looked great on the beach last spring break but you don’t necessarily want someone who’s interviewing you to know what you look like in a bathing suit.

Now look at the rest of your page. Is there anything coming up that you wouldn’t want a manager to see? If so, take it down. Better yet, protect all of your accounts so that only those you approve can see what you post. Make sure you also protect what friends of friends can see. It’s not uncommon to have a few contacts in common with a hiring manager, especially in tight knit startup communities.

Step 2A: Go incognito & rebrand.

If you don’t want to take down your posts or protect your content, you can also change your screen name to something non-specific that isn’t linked to your first and last name. If you go this route though, make sure to change the email linked to your account. Again: if you have friends or contacts in common with the person searching, you may also come up as a suggested friend. Only go this route if you’re okay with potentially being found out or if there is very little overlap between your personal and professional networks.

If you do this, go the extra step and create a “professional” social media account. In this day and age, employers expect to be able to find something about you online. Having zero digital footprint will probably cause an eyebrow or two to raise. Instead, create a new account. Use a simple profile picture (your smiling face is a great choice). Use your first and last name.

Step 3: Decide what you want to share.

You want whatever anyone can find out about you to only add to their estimation of you, not detract. In general, keep your posts pretty simple and generic. Give a small glimpse into your life and personality. Shots of a favorite hobby or scenery from your last vacation will both work. Cute small things like pets or babies always work too. Mundane musings and details about your life are fine to share.

Beyond that err on the side of caution any time you are sharing or weighing in on a topic that is in any way controversial. Keep your political views offline. Even topics that you think most reasonable people would agree on can become a lightning rod under the right circumstances. With today’s ever changing and contentious political landscape, best to steer clear completely.

Think twice before you post anything negative about a brand or person. It’s very common to fire off a tweet about your displeasure in an angry moment and forget about it. You don’t want that time you lamented about how much you hate customer service reps are to come back to bite you while interviewing for a customer success position. Same goes for sarcasm. Ask yourself if someone who didn’t know you or your sense of humor would find the post funny too. If not, best to share it on a group text with your friends rather than the whole internet.

Step 4: Create your own social media policy.

It’s common for coworkers at many companies to be friends outside of work. There are plenty of places where the lines between work and personal life are pretty blurry. In fact, at VFA, most of us do follow each other on social media. This approach works for many members of our team, but plenty of people may find this uncomfortable and that is totally fair.

Once you start working, decide for yourself how comfortable you are with your coworkers following you on social media. I have friends who have a hard and fast “no coworkers” policy and others who take an “all are welcome” approach.

Decide for yourself what your personal policy is going to be and be prepared to have to explain yourself if asked. If everyone else follows each other online and you reject their requests, there may be some hurt feelings. Practice saying gently “sorry, I just have a strict no coworkers policy when it comes to social media. It’s not personal.” People can respect that kind of stance if you deliver the message gently.

Remember, when it comes to social media, ask yourself if you’d be okay with what you’re posting to be up in lights in Times Square or on the front page of the New York Times. If not, think twice and share with a trusted friend instead.

I’m writing to share the latest from VFA. We have exciting news (record application numbers! new Fellow ventures!) and some significant strategic shifts as well (revamped training program, reduced number of target cities). 2018 is set to be a year of tremendous growth, major evolution, and increased focus. Thank you for being on this journey with us!

Some headlines

• Application Growth – we received a record 2,417 applications for our Class of 2018! This represents more than 70% growth over 2017, where we received 1,411 applications. We attribute this growth to digital marketing efforts, organic increases in brand awareness, and a robust campus partnerships program. We have two more Selection Days to go, and are on track for a class of about 195 Fellows (vs. 182 in 2017)

• Innovation Fund – Our annual crowdfunding competition launched on March 12th. We have a record 12 teams participating, with projects including a children’s book, a body positive magazine, smartphone gadgets, and an outdoor teaching program. In addition to the funds they raise from supporters, our Fellows are also competing for $20,000 in prizes from VFA. Check them out and show your support! Many of these fledgling projects turn into full-blown companies; so this is a great opportunity to get directly involved in helping the next generation of entrepreneurs.

2018 VFA Cities

In my reflections on 2017, I shared that VFA would not be expanding to any new cities in 2018, and that we intend to grow cohorts in our current cities to 10+. I can now confirm that we are also no longer going to place new Fellows in three cities: Atlanta, Denver, and Nashville. This brings our total number of cities in 2018 to 15.

We made this decision in line with the goals and the framework we established in the VFA Strategic Plan. We want to focus our work on cities with a strong need for talent attraction and job creation, an existing entrepreneurial ecosystem, and a path to fundraising sustainability. Based on our experience over the past six years, we had the sense that some of our cities did not meet these criteria, and that our program was not as successful in those places as a result. We engaged a pro bono team of quants at Barclays to run a detailed analysis of all VFA markets (including comparative data from the top 50 metropolitan areas in the country) and their results confirmed our intuition: these three markets are not struggling to attract talent and create jobs. There was not a clear path to achieving our mission; so we decided to increase focus to places where we can fulfill those objectives.

We see this as the natural outgrowth of being a startup: we tried a lot of things in the early days, we learned, and now we know what the criteria are for us to achieve future success. We can act on that. Having fewer cities going forward means that we can do a better job in the markets where we are now focusing. We will be able to bring larger cohorts, improve the Fellow experience, and build deeper relationships.

Training Camp in the Motor City

In September, we got the hare-brained idea to put out an RFP to raise $1mm over two years to bring VFA’s Training Camp to a new city. This stemmed from a combination of the fact that we had physically outgrown Brown’s facilities and a recognition that we could deliver a great experience in other VFA cities that were eager to host us. Much to our delight, several cities indicated interest, and we ended up receiving two very competitive bids. I am thrilled to announce that after much consideration, the VFA Board of Directors decided to make Detroit the new home of Venture for America’s training program! We are excited to showcase Detroit to the newest Fellowship class. As one of our original VFA cities, the city has shown deep commitment to VFA, it has 60 Fellows and Alumni and a groundswell of supporters, and is experiencing an inspiring rebirth. We will be inviting supporters to join in many capacities, and if you have an interest in being part of the fun this July, please do reach out.

Summer Celebration

After six fun years, we have decided to discontinue our annual summer gala. The reasons for this are many: the event wasn’t the best way to showcase our work, did not meaningfully engage supporters in directly helping our young entrepreneurs, and was not the most effective use of staff time. We will still be fundraising up a storm of course, and we are excited to replicate our highly successful post-accelerator Demo Day that took place in December as a means of engaging our New York-based community going forward. We will also be strengthening our volunteer offerings and mentorship program, as well as hosting smaller, more focused events in order to engage more supporters.

The 2018 Innovation Fund, our annual crowdfunding competition, has officially launched! You can find all of the Innovation Fund participants here. Read on for the story of Lookalu A smartphone gadget that helps parents easily snap insta-worthy baby photos anytime, anywhere, created by 2012 Fellow Mike Mayer.

A Car Ride to Remember: Lookalu’s Story

We rented a car and started the four hour drive upstate to a campground, where our friends were having their wedding. I had been working at a tech company in NYC for almost two years at that point. Although I loved the company and the team, I was not completely happy and felt stuck in my role. I had been seriously considering leaving the business world altogether to pursue a career in medicine. As a doctor, you help people for a living and are assured a good, secure income (best of both worlds!). I was grasping for something with real meaning.
My friends of eight years were skeptical as I pitched the ‘doctor decision’ pretty hard while pulling over to get gas. As most of the car spilled out to raid the rural convenience store of its beef jerky and sunflower seeds, Jaime stayed behind in the car. She leaned forward toward the front seat, where I was sitting, and just said “you know, you should start a kids media company or something that’s a natural extension of your positive, bouncy personality – I don’t really see you being a serious doctor everyday.”
I don’t think Jaime knows this, but what she said in the car that day is a huge reason I am writing this blog post right now (and not studying organic chemistry). So, did I find my calling? I don’t know. But I do know that, for now, this feels authentic, playful, and right up my alley. It’s not quite a kids media company yet, but, Jaime, you got pretty close!
Ladies and gents, I want to introduce you to my first company and passion project, Lookalu, the smartphone gadget that helps parents easily snap the cutest baby (and dog) photos:

 
You may be thinking, “But Mike, you’re not a parent. What do you know about baby products?” This is true – but my friends and cousins are parents, and they’ve shared with me the problem of taking dozens of photos trying to get that perfect shot. I did the research, talked to 40+ moms experiencing the same issue, and developed Lookalu to make things a little easier.
And, easier it is. You just clip Lookalu onto your smartphone, rattle it so your baby looks up, and snap your shot. It’s small and portable, easy to clip on and off, and fits all phones and cases without scratching. Lookalu is also great for family selfies and video chatting. Lookalu works perfectly for babies 3 months to 2 years, but I’ve also found it can be effective in generating smiles for older children as well. It even works great on fur babies too! Don’t have a baby or a dog? No problem; Lookalu makes for a unique, cute gift for your friends and family members who are expecting.

It’s also really important to me that we do more than just produce a cute, fun product for people to buy and use. I’m so inspired by Blake Mycoskie and what he did with Tom’s. In the “Buy one, Get one” spirit, we created our own giving framework, aligned with our mission to spread smiles around the world. With our “Get a smile, Give a smile” business model, each Lookalu purchased helps provide comprehensive cleft care for children in need worldwide through our giving partner, Smile Train. Through training local doctors and empowering partner hospitals around the world, Smile Train advances a sustainable solution and scalable model to treat clefts, drastically improving children’s lives, including their ability to eat, breathe, and speak over time.
 
I am so thankful for everyone who helped us reach our initial funding goal on Indiegogo in less than 12 hours. But we aren’t done. I hope you will take some time to check out our Indiegogo page and support our campaign.
And for the record, not once in the last several months while launching Lookalu did I think, “Man, I wish I were studying to become a doctor.” Thank you, Jaime.

The 2018 Innovation Fund, our annual crowdfunding competition, has officially launched! You can find all of the Innovation Fund participants here. Read on for the story of HiveLend, a digital platform to connect beekeepers and farmers that also encourages entrepreneurship through apiculture, created by 2017 Fellows Dawn Musil and Nick Zajciw.

On the first day of Training Camp each fellow went on stage to say a few words about themselves. When Dawn got on stage, she said, “Hi! My name is Dawn, and I love bees!” At that moment Nick knew he needed to tell Dawn about HiveLend.
I’m Dawn, co-founder of HiveLend. I was thirteen years old when I started saving to get my first beehives. We had a field full of apple trees and I was thrilled about the idea of my very own apple-honey, yum! At 14 years old, I was the youngest person (by 40 years) in my local Bee School (yep, it’s real and it’s where you go to learn beekeeping 101). Ever since, I have been enamored with both the ecological impact of bees and the incredible opportunities that beekeeping can offer.  
Nick started beekeeping in college when he joined UMBees, the University of Michigan beekeeping organization. The group was an eclectic mix of artists, ecologists, and all around interesting people who were excited in helping each other learn and grow as beekeepers. In college Nick kept his own hives, and helped manage the club hives. Without UMBees, Nick would never have gotten the experiences of driving bees across the country in a rented minivan, or hosting a symposium on urban apiculture.
While keeping bees with a friend back home, Nick wanted to make some extra money providing pollination in a local orchard. It was here where the idea for HiveLend was born. Nick saw an opportunity to create an online resource that allowed beekeepers and farmers to connect across the country.

What Do We Do?

We’re Uber for Bees! So, how does it work?

HiveLend is an online platform to connect sideline beekeepers and mid-sized level farmers to offer both of them an opportunity to get the pollination that they need.
We start with sideline beekeepers- beekeepers who aren’t full-time commercial beekeepers and whose hives often are in one location throughout the season, and they input their information about how many hives they have and how far they’re willing to travel.
And farmers put in the crops they need pollinated and how many acres they have, and we then use our system to match them by location and needs.
This allows more beekeepers to have sustainable income which encourages healthy practices as the beekeepers scale.  

Bee the Change in Your Community!

Guided by the opportunity to offer sideline beekeepers additional income, we see application for building a community apiary in Baltimore- to offer educational opportunities to local community members.
This apiary will offer community members a chance to gain supplemental income and entrepreneurial skills through pollination practices and sales of hive by-products. Beekeeping is an incredible opportunity to connect with a community and offer entrepreneurial opportunities and lesson with the valuable education about our need for bees.

Why Is This Important?

That cup of coffee you had this morning or berries in your cereal, that almond milk smoothie or delicious apple tart–bees are responsible for each of those! In fact, bees are responsible for the production of 1 out of every 3 bites of food. And supporting sustainable pollination and a healthy ecosystem of beekeeping- by supporting sideliner and small-scale farmers alike- ensures that we will continue to have healthy food production and crop yields.
And pollination extends beyond just maintaining healthy crop yield. If bees continue to decline at the current rate, we will have an annual 8% drop in food production. If we can flip that statistic and encourage sustainable practices for beekeepers while having healthier hives, we can increase crop yields!
We are participating in the VFA Innovation Fund to ensure sustainable pollination and increase opportunities to educate and connect members of our community through beekeeping. We all can play a part in the future of our food, and bee-lieve that each of us has a part to play in creating change for a sustainable future. Help us Bee that change!

When Carley Roney and David Liu got married, they had a seat-of-the-pants celebration on a sweltering Washington rooftop. They never planned to go into the wedding business, but soon saw an opportunity in the market for a fresh approach to wedding planning. In 1996, they founded The Knot, a website with an irreverent attitude about “the big day.” The Knot weathered the dot.com bust, a stock market meltdown, and eventually grew into the lifestyle brand XO Group, valued at $500 million. PLUS for our postscript “How You Built That,” how Michael Dixon’s business, Mobile Vinyl Recorders, uses portable record lathes to cut vinyl at parties, weddings, and music festivals.
Click here to listen

How to organize your life and block out the noise

Startups are known for many things — disrupting whatever industry they’re in, cool perks, tech-enabled everything. Working at a startup can mean taking on more responsibility than you’d get in a traditional job, managing projects on your own, and a lot of freedom in figuring out how to get things done.

If time management is a challenge for you, this freedom can be a gift and a curse. When you’re starting your career, it can be hard to know what you should be doing when, how best to structure your day, and what productivity hacks actually work for you–especially if you have a hands off manager or a lot of leeway in completing your projects. This is probably the most common things that managers will tell you that their junior team members struggle with, and the one area where even incremental improvement can result in a big payoff.

Try some of these tips, tricks, and apps to help you get there.

Keep track of your calendar.

I’m notorious for living my life guided by my calendar. It’s a habit that started early in my career, when I worked in a company that was extremely meeting focused. And meetings weren’t just meetings. There were pre-meetings to prepare for the meetings, post-meetings to download how the meeting went, and follow up meetings to discuss what was discussed in the meeting. Depending on who was attending the meeting, all of that prep ratcheted up a notch because it was a career sin to waste a more senior leader’s time by being inefficient or unprepared.

To make sure that I kept my stuff together, I started checking my calendar religiously — knowing what meeting was scheduled when, who was attending, and what I needed to do to prepare. Knowing that my boss’ status meeting with her boss was on Thursday meant I had to schedule a pre-meet to prep her for Wednesday morning (enough time to gather materials or pull together any last minute decks), which meant I had to have all my stuff done for the prep by Tuesday afternoon. Knowing what was coming helped me to understand the most important things happening that week, and prioritize what I need to do, create, or request to be ready for it.

Many startups like VFA are thankfully less intense, but I still use my calendar to help prioritize my week and my day. This is a habit that’s bled over into my personal life. I am absolutely not going to remember our plan for brunch if a calendar request didn’t come with it.

Give everything a deadline.

One of the things inherent in my calendar method is that dates automatically create deadlines. If your job is much less meeting focused, or you simply prefer a to-do list method, one thing you absolutely must do to stay on top of work and manage your time is assign deadlines to everything. Everything. No really, everything.

Tasks and goals without deadlines are just wishes and dreams. Don’t believe me? We’re only a few months into 2018, so think back to all the things you resolved to do or do differently this year. I bet the ones that didn’t have specific due dates (like lose ten pounds, finally run a marathon) didn’t get done. Deadlines give goals and wishes an urgency and a sense of realness. “Lose ten pounds” might not get done, but “go to the gym for Thursday 10 am boxing class” probably will.

Take this same approach with your work. Give yourself a deadline for everything and try your best to stick to it. If things come up that force you to miss your deadline, give yourself a new deadline based on when you can know you can get it done. Letting something be overdue for three months is just as bad as not giving it a date in the first place. Your mind will start to ignore it.

At VFA, we use Asana and I’ve come to really love it. The to-do list functionality, reminders, and the ability to assign tasks to people make it really easy to stay on top of what’s happening and what’s coming. I’ve also worked on teams that swore by Basecamp. Lastly, some people just use the reminders app on their phone or schedule to-do’s into their calendars. Whatever system works best for you, just make sure to give everything a deadline.

Block your own time.

If your team has a lot of meetings, you may find yourself spending most of your day reacting to other people’s requests or talking about what needs to be done. In an open plan office, you might be easily distracted by your coworkers’ convo about their latest TV binges. In other words, it’s really easy to end up spending your day at work doing a lot of things besides your work.

It’s important to make sure you carve out time to dig in and focus on your own projects. Treat your work time as you would a meeting and block some time on your calendar to get it done. I have no shame in blocking time on my calendar as “Do Not Disturb” or “Do Not Schedule.” This allows me the time to focus on just the task at hand, lets my coworkers know not to request a meeting, and knowing that I have one hour set aside to complete something helps me use that time more efficiently.

If this isn’t a common practice at your company, make sure you run this by your manager first so they’re aware. You don’t want them hearing from a colleague that you’re suddenly unavailable to meet.

Close all those browser tabs.

Right now, as I write this, I have 10 browser tabs open. I’m actually proud of myself. This is a low number for me.

Like many people, I end up spending a lot of time reading things on the internet, even in the midst of work. A coworker will Slack out an interesting article and I suddenly find myself down a rabbit hole. While trying to figure out a potential solution to a current challenge, somebody emails me a video they swear will have me in tears, and so on and so on. We’ve probably all been there. All those open tabs are distracting and visual clutter.

Force yourself to close tabs for anything you’re not actively working on. I keep open my email and calendar tabs (of course), and then only what I actually need for what I’m currently working on. If I open something and can’t get to it immediately, I add that item to my to do list in Asana, copy the link into the description, and then close the tab. For articles and headlines that caught my eye but I can’t read right away, I use Pocket. If it’s just something I know I’ll want to look into later, I group those tabs together into a new window and then minimize it. Out of sight and out of mind.

These are just a few of the time management tips that work for me. If you’re always overwhelmed, running behind, or can’t keep track of your projects, maybe they will help you too!. If you have some tips that we missed, share them in the comments below.

This article originally appeared on Quartz.

By: Amy Nelson, CEO at Venture for America
 
I have a lot of student debt. More than $250,000 worth, in fact, even though I graduated more than four years ago. I have so much student debt that until recently my monthly payment didn’t even cover the interest.
 
How did I get here? In 2011, I entered NYU’s Stern School of Business with a significant scholarship, but also as a single mother of two, a first-generation college student, a former Pell Grant recipient, and the kind of striver that our national parlance loves to embrace, but our systems fail to actually support. So I piled on the debt because it was easy to access and I had mouths to feed. I told myself it would all be worth it in the end.
 
Now, I’m not so sure it was.
 
These days, I’m the CEO of a national nonprofit and make way more money than my parents ever did— but not nearly as much as many of my MBA classmates. I fork over a ton of cash every month—far more than my mother’s mortgage payment—toward this heap of student debt, and yet the balance grows. My anxiety about this is lower than a few years ago, mostly because I’ve gotten used to it, but my credit score is so low that I may never be able to buy a home even though I’ve never missed a payment on anything in my life.
 
Business school is a great idea if you think that you want to work in one of three fields: investment banking, consulting, and brand management. These are fields that are otherwise nearly impossible to break into, and they will likely pay sufficiently well that the investment in an MBA will be net cash positive in the long-run. Business schools know this and tailor their calendars, processes, and sales pitches to these industries. If that’s you, go sign up for an MBA today.
 
But more and more schools are pitching themselves on entrepreneurship and social innovation, and pursuing those careers by entering business school is not only a bad deal for students, but a dangerous one.
 
These are fields that require a high-degree of risk tolerance and frankly are very difficult to teach well in a classroom environment. When business schools suggest they prepare students for these careers, it is purely a marketing play: there are no real incentives for MBA programs to change when Sallie Mae, Morgan Stanley, and BCG are their biggest underwriters. There is nothing about credential-seeking that strikes me as entrepreneurial.
 
Unless students are already wealthy, the resulting debt of business school may actually kill their chances of becoming an entrepreneur.
 
Debt constrains choices. When the average Wharton or Sloan graduate is saddled with six-figures of debt, it’s no wonder that new business formation is at 40-year lows, What’s worse, fewer and fewer people under age 35 aspire to ever own a business, and many of them directly cite debt as the reason.
 
Student debt is one of the biggest barriers to entrepreneurship and innovation in the United States, and instead of finding solutions to this problem, we are doubling down on a broken system. We have more than 1.3 trillion in student loans as a nation, and most graduate school loans have interest rates north of 7%—nearly twice the prevailing mortgage rates, despite the fact that student loan debt cannot be discharged in bankruptcy but a mortgage can. Tuition only continues to climb, and more and more of our national budget is dependent on student loan revenue.
 
Now, I am really, really lucky. If I stay the course, the federal government is set to wipe away my loan balance six years from now. But there’s some uncertainty on this front. It seems that this program is going away—which is going to push the best doctors into for-profit hospitals, lawyers out of public interest law, and folks like me into management consulting. The opportunity cost in public service is huge, but in many ways I’m more worried about for-profit entrepreneurship.
 
Entrepreneurs are our job creators, and our national myth-makers. Our baby-boomer parents took the leap, but we millennials are shying away. They didn’t face the massive costs of education we do, and they had major supportive institutions to help them get there. The United States need a large-scale national investment in new business creation, or it will cede major ground to China and even Sweden.