About Venture for America

THE CHALLENGE

Enterprising college graduates crave hands-on business experience to learn how to develop a business and create value. At the same time, many promising businesses struggle to identify, recruit, and enlist talented college graduates, in large part because they lack the resources and scale to engage in on-campus recruiting.

OUR MISSION

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.

Goals:

• Drive talent to create jobs and spur enterprise in lower-cost cities.
• Provide a path for entrepreneurship for young, talented college graduates.
• Encourage entrepreneurship in parts of the United States that struggle to attract young college graduates.

The goal is that a substantial proportion of the VFA Fellows will become successful entrepreneurs, preferably rooted in the communities to which they’re assigned.  Venture for America's purpose is job generation - our goal is to generate 100,000 U.S. jobs by 2025. 

OUR STRATEGY & IMPACT

• Funnel a generation of young people toward American start-ups in areas of need
• Socialize college grads and train them to become action-oriented, enterprising and innovative
• Provide structure and a community to cohorts of future entrepreneurs
• Redirect talent and help renew our economy and our culture
• Firmly establish entrepreneurship as a professional aspiration for our best and brightest
• Create Venture Fellows, past and present, to become job creators and entrepreneurs in communities throughout the country
• Over time, present a new set of role models for students to emulate