On June 2 Venture for America (VFA), an organization which seeks to channel talented young people toward successful careers in entrepreneurship, hosted its 5th Annual Summer Celebration in New York City to recognize its 2015 class of graduating fellows.
The event included a panel discussion with Katia Beauchamp, co-founder of Birchbox and Tom Kartsotis, co-founder of FOSSIL and founder of Shinola, as well as a preview of the documentary “Generation Startup” about VFA’s fellows program.
“It’s been an incredible 5 years,” asserted VFA President Andrew Yang. “Our mission is to revitalize American cities and communities through entrepreneurship and to enable our best and brightest…to create new opportunities for themselves and others…”
VFA recruits talented college graduates who want to learn how to build businesses. The fellows are trained by a collection of industry experts during a 5-week intensive program at Brown University. The fellows “form incredible bonds, a culture and identity” and they are then placed in 2 year assignments at early-stage growth companies.
“We launched in Detroit in 2012, which is still our biggest city. It has 15 fellows and alums working hard,” Yang said, adding that Providence, Cincinnati and New Orleans were also big cities where VFA launched in 2012. “We expanded to Baltimore, Cleveland and Philadelphia in 2013, and then expanded to nine other cities in the last three years.”
Yang then rhetorically challenged VFA’s efforts, “Has it worked?”
“I’m glad to say that it’s worked beyond any of our wildest expectations,” Yang said. “Our partner companies have grown by more than 2,000 jobs.”
At the end of 2-years, some of the fellows want to start their own venture. VFA offers an accelerator to help them, as well as financial support.
“Over a quarter of our loans have started new companies,” Yang said, adding that 80 percent of those companies are in VFA cities.
VFA also strives to include underrepresented groups in their entrepreneurship program; 47 percent of the incoming VFA fellows are women and 20 percent Hispanic or African-American.
The success that Yang was so excited to share that evening was brought to another level when he announced the preview of a documentary about VFA’s fellows program, entitled “Generation Startup.” The documentary is directed by Academy Award winner Cynthia Wade and award-winning filmmaker Cheryl Miller Houser and will premiere later this year.
“There’s something very powerful going on at Venture for America,” Yang said. “They spent the last 15 months following six of our fellows around Detroit, capturing their lives.”
The celebration concluded with the announcement that over $400,000 had been raised over the course of the evening via a silent auction. The funds will be used to support the fellows program and build on its success in the coming year.
