Startups used to train for success

BRIDGING THE GAP: Andrew Yang, center, speaks with Melanie Friedrichs and Sean Lane during a Venture for America meeting at Brown University. The career-training program looks to eliminate the so-called skills gap some graduates and firms wrestle with. / PBN PHOTO/FRANK MULLIN
BRIDGING THE GAP: Andrew Yang, center, speaks with Melanie Friedrichs and Sean Lane during a Venture for America meeting at Brown University. The career-training program looks to eliminate the so-called skills gap some graduates and firms wrestle with. / PBN PHOTO/FRANK MULLIN

It took Andrew Yang, a Brown University alumnus and self-starter, a while to get where he wanted.
Now he’s hoping to make the path to entrepreneurship a little smoother – and perhaps a little shorter – for the next generation of would-be business owners with Venture for America (VFA), a career-training program that he believes can help solve a so-called skills gap plaguing college graduates and would-be employers.
“Our long-term goal is to fix the economy,” Yang said. “We think our country has the talent and resources it needs. They’re just being very poorly allocated.”
Modeled after the Teach for America program, a national coalition of recent college graduates who commit two years to teach in struggling urban and rural public school systems, VFA awards fellowships, then trains and places young professionals in two-year positions with startups in economically struggling cities.
Its inaugural class of fellows, numbering 40, just finished a five-week business “boot camp” held on Brown’s campus.
The new professionals begin their positions this summer in Providence, Detroit, New Orleans, Cincinnati, Ohio, and Las Vegas.
“Right now, it’s much easier [for a college graduate] to apply to law school or work on Wall Street,” Yang said.
The idea could be classified as one of those “Why didn’t I think of that?” ventures and is one Yang, 37, wishes had been around when he graduated Brown in 1996 with a bachelor’s degree in economics and political science.
He went on to graduate from Columbia Law School in 1999 and to practice corporate law in banking mergers and acquisitions.
“As boring as it sounds it was even more boring [in practice]. The nature of [startups] was much more appealing to me. [There] you’re building and creating,” Yang said. He was CEO of Manhattan GMAT, a prep course for the graduate-school admissions test and one of several startups he worked for after quitting law, a couple years ago when he got the VFA idea.
“Working in New York, I met a large number of recent college grads who wanted to learn about entrepreneurship [but] who weren’t sure how to go about doing so,” he said. “I was also exposed to dozens of companies that craved talent. Somehow, these two sides were not connecting.”
On one side of that gap is Charlie Kroll, a Brown University class of 2001 graduate who, after abandoning his own Wall Street dreams, founded Andera, which develops online customer- service software for financial institutions, in his dorm room and has been at it ever since.
Though he’s grown the company considerably to 90 employees he still sees a problem in the area’s employee pool.
“Kids who have top educations don’t tend to stay in smaller markets,” said Kroll, who also sits on VFA’s board of directors.
After submitting transcripts, resumes, recommendations and essays, would-be fellows had a video interview and then, last spring, an in-person selection day where they performed timed, business-related exercises. After the fellows were chosen, participating companies then interviewed and selected fellows for employment.
Melanie Friedrichs, a 21-year-old Brown grad from Bethesda, Md., decided to apply after growing disenchanted with recruitment season on campus last fall. She’ll spend the next two years working at Andera.
“It was a little bit of a risk. There’s a kind of culture [during recruitment] where students are worried about finding jobs so it gets into this incredibly competitive environment,” said Friedrichs. Training college students to become more immediately work-ready upon graduation also has been promoted as a way to help companies prosper.
“Once we hire somebody, there’s a huge cost in getting them trained and involved,” said Annette Tonti, CEO of MoFuse, a Providence mobile Web-content management firm. “What [VFA] brings to the table is surrounding an individual with a program.”
Sean Lane graduated from Boston College with a bachelor’s degree in communications this year. He’ll be a fellow in Providence.
“Really, I think the thing you come out of [training] with is as close to a comprehensive understanding as you can get on how to grow a company,” Lane said.
VFA’s immediate goal is to create 100,000 jobs by 2025.
Yang invested some of his own money into the company and raised additional capital through private and philanthropic donations, including a $25,000 grant from The Rhode Island Foundation’s general fund.
“We think it’s an interesting model,” said Neil Steinberg, president and CEO of the foundation. “These are real jobs. There’s also the possibility that some of these people will go out and start their own companies.”
VFA suggested salaries based on the cost of living in each city. For Providence, that was $38,000. Lane and Friedrichs will be two members of a shared house on the city’s East Side. Co-habitating was a VFA suggestion meant to help the fellows form a sense of community.
“If I come out of these two years with an idea, and an idea of how to make it happen, that will be ideal,” Friedrichs said. •

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