16th June, 2014

Do It for the Love of the Game

“When you want to succeed as bad as you want to breathe, then you’ll be successful.”

― Eric Thomas, The Secret To Success

This is a poetic quote. It provides great imagery that shows the hard work and dedication required to achieve success, however you define it. I remember hearing this quote years ago, and heeded its advice. I learned how wrong it can be.

It implies that whether you define success as making a team, winning a championship, or building a thriving company, wanting it bad enough will bring it to fruition

It makes a huge leap from wanting to succeed to succeeding. Simply saying “then you’ll be successful” neglects a long, arduous process of dedication that can sometimes take years. It implies that if you want it hard enough, it will happen.

When you’re focused on a that finish line in the distance, you’ll often be blind to what is right in front of you. Everything is put in the context of long-term success, and the present is overlooked. If you do this long enough, you can forget why you set the goal in the first place.

If you want success more than you want to breath, well, you may forget to breath. And when this happens, the pursuit starts to chip away at you and wear you down. As a result, you’ll ironically be less successful.

Here’s my story of wanting something more than I wanted to breathe, and how that played out.

I loved basketball growing up. I would play all the time, and I even went through a phase where I would sleep with a basketball in my arms. When I was in middle school, I determined that I wanted to be a college basketball player. I wanted to achieve that goal more than I wanted to breathe. From that point forward, every shot I took, game I played, or workout I suffered through was for one purpose: to become a college basketball player. I measured everything I did on a binary scale of making that goal more or less attainable.

As time went on, my relationship with basketball became more and more transactional, and as a result, I became less in touch with the game I loved. My mindset changed. By the time I was a junior in Highschool, if you were to ask my why I was working out or playing pick-up, I would have answered, “Because I want to be a college basketball player.” I was completely out of touch with why I had set that goal in the first place, and I had forgotten how to play for the love of the game. I was playing to achieve a goal I had lost touch with.

As a result, the love/hate relationship that many have with their sport no longer had love, and the balance shifted to a resentment of the game.

Fortunately, I did end up achieving my goal and made a college roster at Washington and Lee University. As I got to know my teammates, I was blown away by how much they loved playing basketball.

It came down to this— while all of them had reached the same exact goal that I did, they did it without being obsessed with the end goal. Instead, they enjoyed competing and playing the game they loved throughout their careers. They may have had an end goal in mind, but their attention was generally focused on the present. For them, making a college roster was a by-product of their love and hard work they gave to the game, not necessarily the end goal.

Because of the different routes we took to get to the same point, I felt like my teammates still loved to play, but I no longer knew how to love the game. For the next two years, playing basketball was a constant struggle to enjoy it like I used to, but I was never able to do it. While I loved my teammates, doing something you don’t love everyday for 2 years takes its toll on you. After 2 seasons, I made the difficult decision to leave the game. Words cannot express the sense of relief I had after “retiring”. For the first time in years, I felt like I could breath.

Months later, I had an unfamiliar experience on the basketball court. I decided to play in a pickup game, which was my first time playing basketball in months.

Despite my rust, I played the best basketball I played in a very long time—I was doing moves I’d never done before, hitting shots that I’d never hit, and most importantly, I loved every second of it.

This was my first time in over 6 years playing basketball without holding my breath. I was playing basketball because I wanted to, not because I was chasing success. And I was better.

I can look back at my entire basketball career and confidently say that if I would have kept my eye off of the finish line, loved every day, and enjoyed the ride, I would have been a much better and more successful player.

Instead, I approached each day with my end goal in mind and forgot to enjoy the ride. This approach of daily obsession with success fails, because success is not a choice that you can make each day when you wake up. In fact, success is not a choice at all.

Success is a by-product of the day-to-day process, and choosing to love the process is a choice.  If you choose to do what you love, and love what you do, then success is more likely to come.

We all have ambitions and things we want to accomplish in our lives. It can be extremely tempting to try to want your way to success—I still fall into that trap from time to time. That’s why, whether it’s playing basketball, working at a startup, or trying to start my own company, I constantly remind myself to “Do it for the Love of the Game.”

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22nd January, 2014

I’ll Just Do it for Two Years…

I once started going down the Investment Banking route. The summer before my senior year of college, I worked on Wall Street. Despite proudly proclaiming that I’d never work at an Investment Bank, the forces pushing me in that direction were too strong for a directionless college student to resist. 

When I accepted the offer for the internship, I remember telling myself, “I’ll just do it for two years, and then I can go and do whatever I want.“

I’m very open about the reasons I didn’t like working at an investment bank. Most reasons are to be expected—I didn’t like formatting excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint slides for 14 hours a day, I didn’t like being a small cog in a big machine, and I wanted to build things—not just facilitate things.

However, there’s one thing I rarely mention to people when I explain my past—fear I had forgotten about it until reading Andrew Yang’s new book, “Smart People Should Build Things”.

Andrew writes:

“Spending your twenties traveling four days a week, interviewing employees, and writing detailed reports on how to cut costs will change you, as will spending years editing contracts and arguing about events that will never come to pass, or years producing Excel spreadsheets and moving deals along. After a while, regardless of your initial motivations, your lifestyle and personality will change to fit your role. You will become a better dispenser of well-presented recommendations, or editor of contracts, or generator of financial projections. And you will in all likelihood become less good at other things. You will not be the same person you were when you started.”

This was my biggest fear. Throughout the internship, managing directors would come and talk to the interns in my group. They’d share what their current responsibilities were, and talk about their long tenures within the bank and how they climbed their way to their high-ranking positions.

The scary part? Each person that spoke to us echoed the same phrase—“I thought I was only going to do this for two years, but here I am.” Hearing this very familiar phrase that I’d said myself to rationalize my future career path shook me. While I didn’t enjoy working at an investment bank at the time, I feared that maybe I would start to like it. Maybe I would get used to the money. Maybe I would get really good at pricing deals. Maybe, after working for two years, my values would change and I would stay. And maybe, 20 years later, I’d be back in that same room, giving that same speech about how I thought I was just going to be there for 2 years.

When I tell people about my path that included a brief stint as an investment banker, I conveniently forget to mention one detail, which I’m now realizing is the most important part of the story—I was not extended an offer to come back.

With about two weeks left in the internship, I had a meeting with one of my supervisors, discussing my performance thus far and the possibility of receiving and offer.. I went into the meeting thinking it would be a normal meeting about my performance, and afterward I would just go back to work, and everything would just continue as usual. That was not the case.

During the meeting, my supervisor started explaining that he wasn’t seeing the same level of commitment and passion about investment banking from me that he was seeing from my peers. As he was saying this, all at once I realized that I was not faking it good enough, and that I didn’t wanted to fake it anymore—I blurted out, “Have you heard of Venture for America?”

There was no turning back. As the conversation continued, I explained to my supervisor what Venture for America was, and I thought it was really cool. I told him about my aspirations as an entrepreneur, and that I wanted to either start my own business or join VFA.

That was it. I had taken off my mask that I’d been wearing for 6 weeks and pushed the big red button. No chance receiving an offer. No future as an investment banker. The previous 6 90-hour workweeks down the drain.

Two weeks later, I had my final exit interview. This is where full-time offers were extended, and most interns anxiously wondered how it would go. Here is how my predictable exit interview began.

Supervisor: “So, Venture for America?”

Me: “Yep.”

When I walked out of the building, I was both relieved and scared.I was relieved that it was the last time that I’d ever be called an “investment banker.” I was scared because it hit me that I’d just taken a huge leap of faith.

For the next two weeks, there was no offer letter to mull over. Despite being so sure that I didn’t want to work at an investment bank, if I had an offer letter with big numbers and amazing benefits sitting there on the kitchen table every time I sat down to eat, I’m not sure I would have been able to resist.

Fortunately, I’d already pressed the big red button, and I had limited my post-graduate options to paths that were much more consistent with my values and aspirations.

Now it’s been over a year since I accepted an offer to become a Venture for America Fellow. The funny thing is, Andrew’s point still holds. I am not the same person I was over a year ago, and that’s a good thing. 

By joining VFA, I surrounded myself with people who inspire me, and I began pursing a mission that speaks to me. As a result, certain characteristics about myself have risen to the surface. These characteristics are some of the most fundamental elements of who I am, but they had been buried by the same forces that had pushed me into investment banking.

Thinking about my path over the course of the past few years has taught me an extremely valuable lesson: When you align yourself with an organization whose core values are the same as yours, each sip of kool-aid makes the person in the mirror look more and more familiar.

I now have a better understanding of who I am, and I like myself a lot more now. I don’t have to filter my thoughts or hide my values. I know that in a year, in 5 years, and even in 10 years, I will continue to change, and I will be an even more different person than I am today. But now, instead of being scared of who that person becomes, I’m excited. 

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23rd December, 2013

Basketball Life Lessons Part 3: Treat Every Play like a Coach is Watching

Around sophomore year of high school, most aspiring college basketball players start their roadshows, attending AAU tournaments, recruiting showcases, and the lucky ones have coaches come to their high school games.

I was no exception—in fact, I probably had to go to more showcases and tournaments than most, as I was no Lebron James. I even had one college coach tell me that if he had a JV squad, he would definitely put me on the roster (he thought that was a compliment).

As I traveled all over the country to AAU tournaments and showcases, trying to get recruited, I heard the same nugget of advice over and over: “you never know when a coach is watching, so play as if they are.” It meant that every second of every game you play, you should do every single thing as well as you can—set good screens, play good defense, dive for every loose ball, and be a good teammate, because you never know when your future coach is watching.

Understanding that I was no blue chip recruit, I took this advice to heart. Every play of every game at every showcase, I played as if my future coach was watching. I had no way of knowing if this was true, but I trusted the process.

Then, a week after I attended a showcase in Boston, I got an email from the head coach at Washington and Lee University. He told me he had seen me play in Boston, and he wanted me to come play for him.

If I hadn’t been recruited, I would have never heard of Washington and Lee. Today, I can confidently say that there was no school in the country more perfect for me than W&L, and I would not be where I am today without the 4 years I spent at that small school in Lexington, VA. It was one of the best things that ever happened to me.

My coach would later explain to me why he liked me. It turns out, he made the decision to recruit me after watching me play for 90 seconds. When he explained to me the series of plays that led him to this decision, I instantly remembered it. In 90 seconds, I took a charge, boxed out a center and got a rebound, and nailed a corner 3-pointer with a grimace on my face. I played each of those 90 seconds like a coach was watching, and it turns out, one was.

I realized that in the week between the showcase in boston and hearing from my future coach, I was in limbo. I had just played the 90 seconds of basketball that would drastically change the course of my life, and I had no idea. In fact, it would take 4 years for me to realize how life-changing those 90 seconds were.

In this case, I didn’t know that something was a life-changing opportunity until it was in the rear view mirror. Treating every play as if a coach were watching changed everything for me.

I realized that this mindset wasn’t only applicable to recruiting when I witnessed one of my peers apply the same principle outside of athletics.

During my senior year, I participated in Washington and Lee Student Consulting, and through some twitter hustle, I brought the group a “consulting” project for a web-payment startup, Dwolla. I was the project leader, working with 4 other students to figure out how to grow Dwolla adoption on our campus. One of the students working on the project, Dillon Myers, was a junior, still looking for a banking internship for the summer.

Dillon was pretty set on working at a bank during the summer, but he wasn’t finding the right fit. I watched him treat everything like a coach was watching, applying to all of the internships he could and preparing rigorously for interviews, while also performing extremely well on the Dwolla project.

He assumed that an interview with one of the investment banks would be the big opportunity that would be his big inflection point. As the Dwolla project came to a close and Dillon still had not found the right fit for a summer internship at an investment bank, he was in limbo just like I was. He did not realize that he had already played his 90 seconds that would change everything.

It turns out, a coach was watching. Dwolla reached out to Dillon and offered him a summer internship. That summer, while many of Dillon’s classmates were slaving away at investment banks in New York City, Dillon was working closely with members of Dwolla’s management team, including Ben Milne (Founder & CEO), in their new SF office. I can’t think of a more incredible internship experience for a Washington and Lee student.

During that summer, Dillon fell in love with startups. As a result I’m ecstatic to say that he recently accepted an offer to become a 2014 Venture for America Fellow. None of these things would have happened if Dillon had not treated every play like a coach was watching. He could not have seen the future playing out this way, but now, when he takes a look in the rear view mirror, he sees those weeks where he worked hard on the Dwolla consulting project as a major inflection point. The Dwolla consulting project was Dillon’s 90 seconds. 

The big lesson here: You don’t always know when a life-changing opportunity is a head of you until it’s behind you, so play every play like a coach is watching.

25th November, 2013

Basketball Life Lessons Part 2: The Meaning of Toughness

I was never the most skilled or athletic basketball player, so growing up, I decided that there was one thing I could always hang my hat on: being tough.

Here are some facts about my high school career that made myself and others around me think I was tough:

  1. I was physical. I inflicted pain—if I fouled someone, I made it count. Even when I wasn’t getting called for fouls, I was pushing the envelope every play
  2. I often had a black eye. During my last two years of high school, I was intentionally hit in the face by an opponent 15 times, drawing many technical fouls and ejections.
  3. I took a lot of charges. In that same span of time, I also took over 50 charges,
  4. I made physical sacrifices. I threw my body around recklessly, resulting in hard falls and injuries, which I would eventually play through

In both my junior and senior seasons, we had losing records. I rationalized that despite my toughness, we just didn’t have what it took to win enough.

I went into college wearing these badges of honor proudly. I knew that no matter how good everyone else was, I had my toughness. and I could always count on being one of the toughest guys on the court.

A few weeks into my freshman season, one of my teammates said something so simple that still resonates with me to this day. After someone turned the ball over and got frustrated, he said, “Just do the next thing.” It was such a simple yet powerful phrase that our coach stopped practice, and made him say it again so that everyone could hear him.

Over the next two years, we were at our best when we did just that—focused on the next play. No matter if we were down 10 or up 20, when we were able to put together days and weeks at a time where we constantly focused on the next play, we were a great, tough, winning team. 

During these spans, for the first time I felt what it was like to be on a winning team. It felt a lot different, and it forced me to look in the mirror and evaluate the “toughness” badges of honor I was wearing.

When I looked at these badges with this new perspective, I came to the hard realization that I wasn’t tough; I was selfish

  1. I was physical. There were few games in my career where I wasn’t in foul trouble. When I was on the bench with 4 fouls, I couldn’t help my team win. I also would frequently make the physical play, instead of the right play.
  2. I often had a black eye. The many altercations I instigated often distracted me from more important parts of the game. I probably could have traded these 15 black eyes for 50 points and 5 more wins over the course of my career.
  3. I took a lot of charges. If I took 50 charges, then how many do you think I attempted to take? More than half the time, these attempts resulted in blocking fouls, putting myself in foul trouble and the other team on the free throw line.
  4. I made physical sacrifices. When you’re injured, it’s hard to help your team. When you’re on the ground while the other team is on a fast break, you hurt your team.

I realized that we didn’t lose despite my toughness, but we may have lost due to my pursuit of “fake toughness.” Realizing that really sucks. A lot. So now, I’m striving to be truly tough in everything that I do, but first, I needed to define it. So, one day I wrote down on a post-it:

“Toughness is the ability to ignore your pride, self-interests, fears, and comfort to do the next thing that gets a team closer to achieving a common goal.”

Now, that’s my definition. I aspire to be tough on any team that I’m on, and I hope to surround myself with tough teammates. A team that is collectively tough enough to perpetually do the next thing, while also having the long-term vision to see the end goal, will almost always win.

24th September, 2013

Basketball Life Lessons Part 1: Setting a Screen is the Best Way to Get Open

The definition of a screen in basketball is “When an offensive player legally blocks the path of a defender to open up another offensive player for a shot or to receive a pass.” 

One of the first things you learn to do when playing organized basketball is how to set a screen.  Now, you may think that as a crucial part of the game, most teenage basketball players would be properly motivated to do so.

Let me tell you young basketball players’ definition of a screen:

“When I waste my time without the ball in my hand to help my teammate so he can score and I get nothing”

So one day all of the basketball coaches got together and came up with a brilliant solution to this misalignment of interests: they decided they’d tell players that “the best way to get open is to set a screen”

I thought it was a conspiracy made up by coaches to get me to set screens. Throughout my high school playing days, I asked for screens more than I set them for others. It wasn’t until my college playing days that I fully understood that it wasn’t a lie. In college, I wasn’t athletic enough to get open whenever I wanted—even when receiving a screen. As soon as I started setting better screens, I began getting open more. 

This stretches beyond the realm of basketball.

In college, I thought the best way to achieve lofty goals was by self-improvement, hitting up alumni for favors, and asking professors and advisors to help connect me with people. Essentially, I thought that doing things that only benefit myself would help me “score”, much like I thought using others’ screens to get open in basketball would do the same.

It wasn’t until senior year that I started offering myself up to other people. Once I adopted the mindset of helping others first, things started happening for me. Here are three kinds of “screens” I started setting:

1. Working for free

During winter break of my senior year, I randomly wrote an email to Max Farrell, a employee at one of my favorite startups, Dwolla. Part of the email read,  

“On a side note, though I’m going to be a VFA fellow and will be employed by another startup, I would love to help Dwolla in any way that I can.” 

I offered to work as a Dwolla intern for free, and dedicated hours every week in doing so. I remember my friends constantly asking me, “what are they paying you?” Slightly embarrassed by the fact that I was doing it for free, I would respond, “it’s complicated.” During my time working free of charge, I interacted with people throughout the company.

Many of the great people I worked with at Dwolla have connected me with other influential people in the startup world, helping me quickly grow my network.

Now, I’m a VFA Fellow, working at a startup where I am constantly seeking advice. Who’s helping me learn how to perform my various roles? People that I worked with at Dwolla and their friends—and it’s paying dividends. That was one hell of a screen.

2. Showing love

I hate to admit it, but I’m just another 22 year old with a blog. And few people give a shit. When I started blogging, no one read, engaged, or shared anything that I wrote. I was just running around hoping that people would care. When you haven’t accomplished much, no one is going to care much about what you’re doing. 

So what do you do when you can’t get open? You set a screen. I started reading, engaging with, and sharing others’ content. First of all, I learned more when I took my head out of my ass and read what other people had to say. Consequently, my own writing became more thoughtful and relevant. Finally, people began reciprocating. The same people whose content I shared began spreading the word about my posts. 

3. Being a soundboard 

When you help someone solve a problem, brainstorm with them on their business model, or make a connection, you develop a reputation for helping people.  At first, you need to go out of your way to do this. After a while, people begin seeking you out for help. While this may result in an extra hour of work here and there, it’s worth it.

I started doing this toward the end of senior year, and now I get emails every now and then from people seeking advice or looking for a connection. First of all, it’s an amazing and humbling experience to help someone out and pay things forward.  Hearing other people’s problems, ideas, and thoughts expands your horizons and maximizes your own creativity. Before long, you find yourself surrounded by great people and great ideas. And that’s a great place to be.

I’m twenty-two, I just began my professional career, and I’m not exactly sure what I’m doing. So, I’m going to keep setting screens and hope I get open.

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26th August, 2013

An Ode to Allen Iverson

I’m employed because I got into Venture for America, which found me a job at a startup in Detroit.

I got into Venture for America because I had a good resume and wanted to be an entrepreneur.

I decided I wanted to be an entrepreneur because of my experience working at an investment bank.

I was able to experience working at an investment bank because I went to Washington and Lee.

I got into Washington and Lee because I discovered the school and applied.

I discovered the school because the basketball coach recruited me.

The basketball coach recruited me because I played well at a showcase in Boston. 

I played well at the showcase in Boston because I’d dedicated the previous 6 years to basketball.

I dedicated the previous 6 years to basketball because I fell in love with the game. 

I fell in love with the game because one night in 2001, I turned on the TV and saw Allen Iverson play for the first time.

__

I can and will continue to be able to trace every accomplishment in my life back to the first time I saw Allen Iverson play. I’m sad to see him officially retire, but it took his retirement for me to realize the immense impact he had on my life, and I will always be grateful for A.I., his sleeve, and his cornrows.

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4th August, 2013

Boxing Above Your Weight Class

I have a confession: In high school, I wasn’t a very high achiever. Most of my days consisted of playing basketball or watching television, and I put forth as little effort in academics as possible without tremendously disappointing my parents. 

Everything changed when I got to college. I found myself at Washington and Lee University (W&L), immediately surrounded by very intelligent over-achievers; I was intimidated. 

It wasn’t the first time I was in a situation like this. I just didn’t know how to put it into words until a few weeks ago. At Venture For America (VFA) Training camp, Aaron O’Hearn, Co-founder and CEO of Startup Institute, offered very valuable advice—“box above your weight class”. 

I realized this was what I was doing when I first arrived at W&L. While I was intimidated on my first day, I eventually proved to myself and others that I could compete academically with my peers. I also boxed above my weight class for much of my athletic career.  Any athlete knows that the only way to get better is to play against better competition—you box above your weight class by playing against people older and better that you. And once you can hold your own, it’s not about being content, but about moving to the next challenge, the next weight class. 

How does this apply once you are done with athletics? It doesn’t mean you should ask for a promotion or act like an executive on your first day. Instead, “boxing above your weight class” means taking on new challenges that are outside your comfort zone or outside your area of explicit responsibility. By doing this, you can improve your skill set, experience, and network. 

Here are some examples of ways I’ve boxed above my weight class recently:

  • My friend told someone I was a bad writer, so I started blogging. Now, I love writing.
  • I felt I was lacking hands-on startup experience, so I interned at Dwolla during my senior year. Now, I love Dwolla and everything about startups.
  • I was not confident in my public speaking ability, so I presented as much as I could during senior year. Now, I love getting in front of a crowd.

I’ll admit that I’ve become addicted to boxing above my weight class. It’s a rush to take on something extremely challenging, push yourself beyond your boundaries, and succeed. Another reason for my addiction is that by using this method of self-improvement, I am able to acquire new skills and competencies that will help me in my future career endeavors. Success is never guaranteed, but this way, I can improve my chances. 

Boxing above your weight class is not easy. There’s usually an increased chance of failure involved with trying new things, so it can be both intimidating and scary.  

And I’ve seen what fear of failure can do: it can be debilitating. During my senior year basketball season, I feared failing so much that I cracked under my own pressure and went through a terrible slump that endured the second half of the season. So, what’s the missing element that can enable you to succeed when boxing above your weight class rather than letting the fear of failure deter you?

Confidence.

The mixture of fear and confidence may seem contrarian, but the power of this mixture is captured in my favorite quote of all time, from Mike Tyson (that’s right—Mike Tyson).

“When I come out I have supreme confidence. I m scared to death. I’m afraid. I’m afraid of everything. I’m afraid of losing. I’m afraid of being humiliated. But I’m confident. The closer I get to the ring the more confident I get. The closer, the more confident. The closer the more confident I get. All during training I’ve been afraid of this man. I think this man might be capable of beating me. I’ve dreamed of him beating me. For that I’ve always stayed afraid of him. The closer I get to the ring the more confident I get.”

The man in the ring is the challenge we face when boxing above our weight class, and Mike was able to combine his humble fear of losing with supreme confidence to gain a mental edge over his opponents. 

Why am I obsessed with this quote? 

Time for another confession: I’m scared to death of failing. 

However, today, instead of letting this fear consume me like it did during my senior basketball season, the confidence, which I’ve grown by the times I’ve successfully boxed above my weight class, allows me to harness fear as motivation.  

It’s a great cycle: Every time you box above your weight class, the stakes get higher and the fear increases, but so does your confidence. It accumulates from the last time you boxed above your weight class and won. This way, your confidence keeps up with the increased stakes and fear. 

So, box above your weight class. Compliment fear with confidence. And maximize the control over your success. 

Here’s to not getting knocked out.

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23rd July, 2013

6 Things I learned from VFA Bootcamp

1. There are no original ideas—embrace the competition. 

Most people who want to be entrepreneurs can relate to the experience I’m about to describe. You think of a great business idea, and you think it’s the one. It’s the most brilliant thing you’ve come up with yet. You get out a piece of paper and start writing all of your thoughts down, and the idea keeps getting better and better. You start daydreaming about the possibilities, and your excitement continues to grow. Then, you open up google and start doing some searches. Shit. You get a sudden sinking feeling after finding out that there’s already someone doing this. 

I know I’ve experienced this at least ten times. The truth is, no matter what you come up with, there is probably someone out there trying to solve the same problem. At VFA bootcamp, I finally realized how to apply one of the most prominent anecdotes in entrepreneurship—”It’s better to have a B idea and an A team than an A idea and a B team.” While many people can have an idea, at the end of the day, the spoils will go to the team that executes it the best. 

Now, when I see someone else trying an idea that I came up with, I see it as both validation and an opportunity. Jason Tarre, a member of the VFA team, helped me realize this during a challenge. My team came up with an idea, and when I explained to him that there was a company out there already doing it, he responded, “well, just means it’s a good idea.” If someone out there is doing it and being quasi-successful, that means it’s a viable business. It also provides you with an opportunity—you can look at the existing players, see what they’re doing wrong, and figure out how you will do it better and out-execute the competition.

2. You need to be willing to take on many roles

We always hear about how entrepreneurs and employees at startups do a little bit of everything. I had no idea how true that actually is. In my five weeks at Bootcamp, I had the following job descriptions: cartoon animator, web designer, public speaker, art curator, script writer, salesman, teacher, and the list goes on and on.  

It’s important that you’re willing to do jobs that you’ve never done before and that make you uncomfortable. If there’s some task you’re afraid of, take a “journey into your incompetency”. One of my most rewarding experiences at Bootcamp was when I was testing an alpha version of an idea that enabled VFA fellows to teach and learn from each other. At first, I was looking to my peers to teach other fellows about certain topics, as I didn’t feel like I could teach anything. Then, I just said “fuck it”, decided to do it myself, and taught 8 other fellows how to use Twitter for networking purposes. This enabled me to gain a deeper understanding of how this idea would work from both a teaching and learning perspective, and if I had not done this myself, the idea would be dead in the water. 

3. The Animal Spirits are back

People always told me I should get into the stock market. I would try, but it never really clicked. I would always say, “it’s not real business—it’s based on human emotions.” Well, I came to the harsh realization that I better find a way around my emotional ineptitude, because emotions are the key to good design.

Quick side note: for all of you logical thinkers out there who think functionality matters and design doesn’t—you’re wrong. That’s how I thought 6 weeks ago

We heard from a few design experts, including Gary Chou (Union Square Ventures) and IDEO. One of the most fascinating things Gary told us was “think about how you want people to feel; let that lead the design.” In addition, Fred Dust, partner at IDEO, told us to focus design on “that moment” when the user experiences the most emotion—giving the example of Apple’s patent on iPhone packaging. Have you ever opened up the iPhone packaging? You feel like weeping tears of joy. 

There are books that elaborate on the importance of design, so I won’t do that here, but the key takeaway here is DO NOT underestimate the value of good design. 

4. You need a mission and a singular voice

If you were to boil down any company to two questions, they would be “what do they do?” and “how do they do it?”. In my opinion, the answer to the first question is the mission of the company, and you need that to be one unequivocal voice. “How do they do it?” refers to every other part of a business—the business model, team, product, marketing, etc. The “how” gets messy, but a mission can be a compass for all of the questions surrounding that mess. 

The VFA Mission is:

  • To revitalize American cities and communities through entrepreneurship.
  • To enable our best and brightest to create new opportunities for themselves and others.
  • To restore the culture of achievement to include value-creation, risk and reward, and the common good.

Any decision that VFA makes in regards to recruitment, expansion, or any other key activity will get made with that mission in mind. This way, all decisions are in alignment. 

A good example of having a mission came when my team was building a website. Early on, we decided that the “mission” of the website is to tell the organization’s stories. This influenced every element of the design, and as a result, anyone viewing the site could tell that this was the theme. 

Marian Salzman, from Havas PR, explained that this is prominent in Social Media. She let’s any of her employees handle the twitter account, because there is one singular mission/culture, and she knows regardless of who tweets, it will be consistent with the personality of Havas PR.

David Tisch also alluded to the importance of a mission, when he told us “you’re not going to do a job, you’re joining someone’s mission.”

If you don’t have a mission, you don’t have much at all.

5. You need to come up with your own beliefs

There. Is. So. Much. Noise. This is particularly true in the startup world. So many people blog, tweet, and speak about best practices and how-to’s (yes, I appreciate the irony here). The truth is, not everyone can be right. We had a few speakers at Bootcamp that directly contradicted each other. While it’s important to listen and learn, at the end of the day, there’s some advice worth heeding and some that is not. I’ve gotten more startup advice in the past 5 weeks than most people get in a lifetime, but I can’t do everything that everyone says. This is one of the reasons I enjoy blogging; it helps me think critically about the things I hear and filter it all down into my own beliefs. 

6. Most importantly, allow yourself to be inspired.

In my 5 weeks at bootcamp, I met some of the most interesting, weird, and brilliant people. So many of these people challenged my perceptions of what an entrepreneur looks like, and when you face these challenges, it’s easy to shut down and close yourself off to new interpretations and experiences. However, if you remain open-minded, you enable yourself to be inspired by others, become more creative, and do things you otherwise wouldn’t be capable of doing.

We were split up into teams at the very beginning of bootcamp. My group later became known as the “hipster” group. If you know me at all, you’d know I’m the antithesis of a hipster. Needless to say, my teammates had very different interests, personalities, and attitudes than myself. While I’m more of a “get shit done” pragmatists, the rest of my group was more interested in creating something cool and exciting. There was a point where I felt tension from this difference, but once I opened myself up to the team, I was inspired to come up with much more artistic ideas than I’d ever generated. This list includes an art collective that curated and sold art created by RISD students, as well as design oriented iPhone charges that could be placed on bar-tops. 

This is just one example, but here’s the key takeaway: if you’re surrounded with incredible people, let yourself be inspired, and you’ll be better for it. 

While these are few of the many lessons I learned from VFA bootcamp, I’m sure I’ll be inspired to write about some others as I use them. 

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