learn how to build businesses and create opportunities, become entrepreneurs really. What we do is

we recruit top grads. We bring them to a training camp for five weeks at Brown University, my

alma mater. We bring in entrepreneurs, investors, venture capitalists, McKenzie, IDO to help

train them in what it takes to build a company. And then they work in startup companies in

Detroit, New Orleans, Providence, Cincinnati and eight other U.S. cities for two years.

And at the end of those two years they'll have a sense of how these businesses grow

and develop.

They'll be working with a more experienced entrepreneur during that time. At the end

of the two years they can either stay at that company as a manager and leader or they can

even start their own companies. And we have a set of angel investors and a seed fund to

invest in them. So you can think of it as a two year extended entrepreneur apprenticeship

program that has the immediate effect of helping companies expand and hire more people and

hopefully create more jobs. Our immediate goal as an organization is to help create

100,000 new U.S. jobs by 2025 by helping these companies grow and also training the next

generation of entrepreneurs.

So there are six default paths for young smart people in the U.S. today – financial services,

management/consulting, law school, medical school, graduate school/academia and Teach

for America. So these are six things and these six things will comprise between 50 and 70

percent of university graduates from any national university in the U.S. I mean they really

add up very quickly.

They also tend to concentrate our talent in one of six geographies – New York City,

San Francisco/Silicon Valley, Washington D.C., Boston, Chicago and L.A. So in essence we

have a system that's driving our most talented graduates to one of six activities in one

of six places. And over the long term this is not a great thing for the economy, especially

if you consider that so many of these graduates are heading to professional services contexts

that exist to serve essentially large companies that after they get big enough to a point

where they can hire an investment banker, consulting firm or a law firm. So the metaphor

I use is that it's like we're investing in tons of layers of icing and forgetting

to bake the cake. What we need to do is we need to send more talent to early stage businesses

that can grow and prosper, expand, hire people, maybe even create hundreds of new jobs. And

then if they become mature then they can hire professional services firms to help them expand

in various ways. But the first order of business is helping the firms come into being and to

grow.

36 percent of this year's Venture for America class was comprised of women. And we think

that's a good start but not nearly where it needs to be. We need to get it up to 51

percent to mirror the population and also the college graduate ratio obviously. You

know, I think people respond very powerfully to role models. Like they see examples, they

want to see someone who's like them. And so there are some fellows that are women that

come to us and say hey, I'd prefer a female led company. And so when we go out to the

startup landscape in these cities and you look around, I mean the proportion of companies

that right now – not even in tech but just, you know, in startups and growth companies

in these cities – unfortunately it's certainly well below 51 percent at least of the companies

that we see and interact with.

And so, you know, we see there's a lot of work to do at every level. But we think a

lot of it does begin as women looking up and saying like hey, who are the people that are

doing this that are like me. And I think that's one reason why someone like Sheryl Sandberg

has set such a huge powerful example because now, you know, women look up and see that

there are leaders in these industries that are women that are doing amazing things.

I think there's certainly a desire among this generation to have a positive impact

to build something new. And I see this when I interact with college students around the

country that they very badly want that sort of option. But when the rubber hits the road

it's really about who's making them a job offer when. And so if you're a senior

in college and you're looking for a job, it's all about who's extending you a genuine

path and who's recruiting you, who's making you feel wanted, who can you take home to

your parents figuratively speaking and say hey, mom, guess what? I've got an offer

from Deloitte. Then your parents will be very, very happy. So those are the variables that

really matter. Like people talk about the, you know, the wants and needs of the generation

which are obviously very important.

But it's equally important what are the genuine choices they're being presented

with. And those things are a function of resources. So what Venture for America does is we try

and provide a genuine path toward startups and growth companies in Detroit and New Orleans

and other parts of the country that might not be top of mind for a recent college graduate

really by extending some of the same resources. So that if you join VFA you'll end up with

some of the same network and community and training and support that many of these young

people are seeking through other means.