Venture For America

I've been lucky to be involved with Venture for America since just after its establishment in 2011. I was connected to Andrew Yang and Eileen Lee via the work that I did co-founding Columbia Venture Community and then was instrumental in helping them get their first corporate funding from Amex OPEN and national press in the WSJ. After these unsolicited overtures Andrew suggested we formalize my role, an opportunity I only accepted if he agreed to come up to Vassar and personally recruit up on campus with me himself, which he did. So in March of 2012 while very pregnant with my first daughter, Andrew Yang and I handed out fliers in the Vassar College Campus Center and then presented about Venture for America to a half filled Rose Parlor. Happily one of the students from this class ended up getting heckled by Andrew during the presentation and made the very competitive cut into the first class of Fellows. The discussion I had with Andrew on the train ride back led to me starting Vassar in Tech that very night.Venture for America will recruit the best and brightest college grads to work for two years at emerging start-ups and early-stage companies in lower-cost cities (e.g., Detroit, Providence, New Orleans). Modeled after Teach for America, Venture for America will provide a path for entrepreneurship to college grads who want to learn how to build companies and create jobs.