WEBVTT

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I try and make anything I do as relevant

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to the people who are listening
to me at that moment,

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so where are you guys?

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How many of you are undergrads?

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Show of hands.

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Virtually everyone, oh my God.

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Let's do that again.

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How many of you are seniors?

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Juniors?

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(Cheering)

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Sophomores?

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(Cheering)

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And freshmen?

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All right. Good stuff.

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I'm going to talk to you
as if you're juniors.

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I'm just going to land
in the middle somewhere.

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It's all good.

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So, the theme is going to be
the flow of talent.

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The graphic that kicks us off,
if I can get this thing to go -

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Hey, Mike, where do I point this thing?

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Sorry.

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Thank you.

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Or should I click this thing?

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This is the graphic we're going to use
to kick off the discussion.

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For those of you who are seniors,

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this might be more familiar
than if you're a freshmen.

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So what this graphic represents

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is that it's a lot easier
for a young, smart person right now

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to become a banker, consultant, or lawyer

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than it is to do just about anything else.

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I resemble this.

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I graduated from Brown in '96,
and did not know what I wanted to do.

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So I went to law school,
which clarifies absolutely nothing.

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(Laughter)

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For those of you who are thinking
about law school,

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you should know that awaits
if you do that.

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(Laughter)

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I graduated from law school and,
not knowing what I wanted to do still,

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I became an M&A and banking
attorney in New York,

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because that's what you did
out of Columbia

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if you didn't know what to do.

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I was there for about five months.

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I went home dispirited
that Thanksgiving, to my parents.

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I said, "You know, Mom and Dad,

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when I was young, I didn't dream
about being the scribe.

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I dreamt about going in the woods
and killing something."

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They, of course, didn't know
what I was talking about.

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I then went back to my job and said,

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"You know what, I feel like I'd like
to try and build something,

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but I don't know if I have wherewithal."

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So I took a week off from work,
and then tried to start this company.

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Made enough of what felt like progress
so that I then went and quit my job,

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and then started a dot-com.

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This was around 2000.

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Had its mini rise and maximum fall.

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We raised about a quarter
of a million, got some press,

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but then the bubble burst.

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How old were you guys
when the bubble burst in 2001?

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(Audience) Eight.

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Eight, nine.

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(Laughter)

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So, do you guys have
any recollection of that time?

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Maybe your parents watching CNBC,
very sad for a little while,

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or something like that.

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Anything like that?

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There are adults among you
who remember this stuff.

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When it burst,

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it was like a giant hand
went through the streets of New York

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and swept away any company
that was not nailed down,

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including my little outfit.

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At this point, I'm 25.

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I've just lost investors about $0.25M.

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I still own $100,000 in law school debt.

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My parents are like, "What happened?
You used to be smart."

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(Laughter)

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At this point,
I had been bitten by the bug

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and said, "You know what,
I think I really want to do this.

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I want to learn how to build
a business, a company."

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I'm going to submit this you.

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What should young Andrew do now, 25,

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lying on his floor,
looking up at the ceiling?

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What's the next step?

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(Audience) Try again?

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Try again, but how to try again,
given that I just raised money and lost,

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and it's like 2001, 2002
when no one wants to invest in anything?

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(Audience) Getting them to believe in you.

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Wow, I don't know what that means.

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(Laughter)

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Okay, so I'm going to submit
something else to you.

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Let's say you wanted
to become a chef, really bad.

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What might you do?

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(Audience) Chef school.

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Chef school. Another possibility?

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(Audience) Get a job.

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Get a job where?

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(Audience) As a chef at a cafe.

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Right, you would take your chef knife out,

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and you would go down on one knee.

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You would go to someone
and say, "Be my master." Right?

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You'd find someone who's a better chef.

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So that's what I did:
I found an experienced entrepreneur.

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And I became his lieutenant,
his VP of something or other.

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And so for four years, I supported him

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as that company raised
about seven million dollars

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and three million in revenue.

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Then I became the CEO
of a company called Manhattan GMAT.

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Has anyone heard of it?

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Juniors, seniors, maybe?

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Manhattan GMAT grew from being
a relatively small GMAT boutique

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to number one in the US
over the next five or six years,

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to the point where we were acquired
by The Washington Post in 2009

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because we were number one in the US.

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Washington Post owns Kaplan.

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We were beating the tar out of Kaplan.

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Kaplan got tired of it,
so the CEO calls me and says,

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"Hey, let's talk."

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We have a little bidding process,
and the company gets acquired.

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It's one of the reasons I'm very familiar
with this particular picture;

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many of the people my company started
in Manhattan GMAT

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were bankers and consultants

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who weren't really finding
what they were looking for

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as 20-something year olds,

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so they would take the GMAT,
apply to business school,

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and then go to business school.

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So, I'm going to continue with this.

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Let's take a look
at what the actual numbers are.

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Let's take Harvard's class of 2011.

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What were the most common things
to do out of Harvard a year ago?

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Shout them out.

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(Crosstalk)

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Yes, finance.

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(Audience) Doctor.
A.Y.: Consulting.

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Law. Not accounting.

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(Laughter)

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And the fourth is med school.

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The question is,

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what proportion of Harvard students
did one of those four things?

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(Audience responses)

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All right, so I've got
between 40 and 90 percent.

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And as usual, the wisdom of crowds,
the truth is exactly in the middle.

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It's 65 percent.

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Then you have the potpourri category,
which is a little bit of everything.

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It's grad school, nonprofits,
industry, government, IT, military.

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Then you have its own line item,
Teach for America.

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18 percent apply.

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Four percent actually become
Teach for America corps members.

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Then, undecided;

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10 percent went to Europe,
and then became consultants.

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(Laughter)

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So this is the picture
from Harvard, a year ago.

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Let me get some feedback.

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It this surprising, unsurprising?

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Not surprising.

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Now, I throw the normative question.

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Is this a good thing,
a bad thing, or neutral?

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(Audience) Bad. Neutral.

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Wow, that one's fraught, right?

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Let's keep on going.

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If you take a look at other top schools,
the picture's the same.

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The picture is the same
here at Georgetown.

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I didn't pull the Georgetown stats,
but they're quite similar.

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You can see that it's not
just a Harvard thing.

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It's really a "any top school" thing.

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I've spoken at 40 universities
around the country,

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and they all say the same thing.

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So what does that mean
in terms of our country,

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let's say, "regionally"?

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If you have half your smart kids

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becoming bankers,
consultants, and lawyers,

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where are they going to live?

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(Audience responds)

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New York, DC, maybe Chicago.

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(Audience) Boston.
A.Y.: Boston.

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San Francisco, LA, those are the top six.

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We just listed the top four.

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So then you have the rest of the country,

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much of which is struggling
with job growth and economic development.

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One of the things we think
this graphic represents

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is that if you're a smart kid
from, let's say, Florida,

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who comes to Georgetown,

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the odds of you becoming
a banker, consultant, or lawyer

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and living in New York,
Boston, DC are very high.

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Odds of you going back to Florida,

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starting a business,
creating jobs: very low.

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You end up with a systematic talent drain
on most of the country

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if they happen to get identified
by a national university.

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This is the picture you end up with.

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What do you guys think, empirically true?

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(Audience) Yeah.

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Absolutely. Wow, all right.
We're starting to get something.

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Good stuff. Why is this the case?

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Those of you who are freshmen,
raise your hands again.

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How many of you who have
your hands up, keep them up,

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know what management consulting is?

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(Laughter)

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So how is it that that world
goes from that

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to, let's say, 20 percent of the class
at least applying for consulting jobs

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and maybe even converting?

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How does that happen?

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Seniors, chime in, please?

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(Audience) Salary.

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Money's there. What else? Keep going.

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(Audience) Creating new jobs.

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Sorry?

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(Audience) Security.

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Security, fear.

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(Laughter)

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Keep going. Keep going.

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(Audience) Diligent recruitment.

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Yes, resources. This is not an accident.

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People spend money and time

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educating the market, that is all of you,
over your four years.

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By the time you're a senior,
you'll know the names;

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McKinsey, Bain, BCG, Deloitte, etc.

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Let's take a look at how this list looks.

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Prestige, easy to find, progress,
seek the next level, opens doors.

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Money's on the list,
gain skills, community;

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and then there's this last one,

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which is something pro-social,
like change the world.

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This even applies if you become
a banker or consultant,

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because the theory is,
you must become a baller

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before you can come back
and change the world. Right?

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Then you can come back to the people
with loaves of bread.

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(Laughter)

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Those of you who are seniors,
can I get a - yes, this is accurate?

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(Audience) Yes.

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All right, thank you.

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Now, I usually talk to people
who are interested in startups,

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so this is a little bit overly broad.

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But let's say you
were interested in startups.

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Show of hands: how many of you
are interested in startups?

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A significant subset.

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The seniors among you,
why is it that it's unlikely

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you're actually going to go
work for a startup when you graduate?

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Risky.

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Money.

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(Audience) Loans.

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Loans.

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(Audience) It's scary.

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It's pretty much the opposite
of the last slide. Right?

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It's like you're not recruited.

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It's hard to find.
There's no structured path.

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There's no community or peer group.

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Unclear prospects for training,
advancement, or success.

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No network, idea,
money, tech proficiency.

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But a lot of you really want to,
and then you talk about doing it,

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but first, you want to
"learn about business "and then come back.

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Is this accurate?

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Am I - ?

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(Audience responds)

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It's like I was one of you.

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(Laughter)

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So here's the big question
that Venture for America seeks to answer:

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What would happen
if the same proportion of talent

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that is currently flowing
to banking, consulting, and law school

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were instead going to startups
around the country?

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How long would that take

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to impact job growth
and innovation nationwide?

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How many years?
Can I get an over/under on this?

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(Audience) Five.

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Five.

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(Audience) One.

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One, wow.

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(Laughter)

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That's belief. That's self-belief.
You should become an entrepreneur.

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So between one and five years.

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And so we see - "we,"
as in certain people -

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(Laughter)

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we see that there are structural forces

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that make this reality
very difficult to achieve

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because, if you think about
who can come get you

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here in this collection
of intellectual capital,

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it's high-resource organizations
from high-resource industries.

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And so startups are actually
neither of those things.

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Startups are generally low-resource.

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And they also don't have the time horizon.

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They can't recruit you
eight months in advance.

00:11:12.121 --> 00:11:14.500
They don't need 20 of you.
It's all real-time.

00:11:14.500 --> 00:11:17.124
And if they came, they would have
a hard time competing.

00:11:17.124 --> 00:11:19.680
So how would you go about
trying to fix this problem,

00:11:19.680 --> 00:11:22.720
if you decided that this
is a vision worth achieving?

00:11:22.720 --> 00:11:24.320
If you said, "You know what,

00:11:24.320 --> 00:11:28.880
this is actually potentially
a rosier picture"?

00:11:28.880 --> 00:11:30.460
And speaking personally,

00:11:30.460 --> 00:11:33.040
I believe it's even a rosier picture
for the individual

00:11:33.040 --> 00:11:36.080
because there's something
about what you do

00:11:36.080 --> 00:11:38.960
that comes to define you
over a period of years.

00:11:38.960 --> 00:11:41.240
You will actually become
a different person.

00:11:42.260 --> 00:11:45.280
If there's one thing
you remember from this,

00:11:45.280 --> 00:11:48.160
as a young person, you imagine
that you are a static self.

00:11:48.160 --> 00:11:50.072
Like, I'm young Andrew, and I say,

00:11:50.072 --> 00:11:53.040
"Hey, I'm going to do X,
and then I'm still going to be Andrew,

00:11:53.040 --> 00:11:54.284
I just will have done X."

00:11:54.284 --> 00:11:56.560
The truth is, Andrew changes

00:11:56.560 --> 00:11:59.880
if you have him go to law school
or be in a law firm,

00:11:59.880 --> 00:12:02.060
look at contracts all day, or whatnot.

00:12:02.060 --> 00:12:04.070
We're all very adaptable.

00:12:04.070 --> 00:12:05.435
And so,

00:12:06.000 --> 00:12:11.480
in my view, the activities
that lead you down the startup road,

00:12:11.480 --> 00:12:13.880
actually end up forming a different self

00:12:13.880 --> 00:12:15.310
that I'm going to go on a limb

00:12:15.310 --> 00:12:18.744
and say, for some of you,
would be more appealing.

00:12:19.454 --> 00:12:22.100
If you were to want
to try and affect this change,

00:12:22.100 --> 00:12:23.690
what would you do?

00:12:26.370 --> 00:12:29.360
(Audience) Think of it
as primary school for startups.

00:12:29.360 --> 00:12:32.880
Maybe you'd tinker
with the educational system.

00:12:34.900 --> 00:12:37.352
(Audience) [Inaudible]
just like what they do

00:12:37.352 --> 00:12:40.470
to get psychologists to go
and practice in rural areas,

00:12:40.470 --> 00:12:41.629
Yes.

00:12:41.629 --> 00:12:45.960
If you were me, what you would do is
you would go raise a million dollars,

00:12:45.960 --> 00:12:48.633
and then start an organization
that does this.

00:12:48.760 --> 00:12:51.730
(Laughter)

00:12:54.620 --> 00:12:57.333
So I started an organization
called "Venture for America."

00:12:57.333 --> 00:13:00.348
And this is particularly relevant
for the seniors among you.

00:13:00.599 --> 00:13:03.280
We recruit top college graduates
from around the country.

00:13:03.280 --> 00:13:06.089
If you get into the program,
we bring you to a training camp

00:13:06.089 --> 00:13:10.180
with, let's say, 80 other ass-kickers
who all want to be entrepreneurs.

00:13:10.450 --> 00:13:15.320
We train you. McKinsey comes. IDEO comes.
Cambridge Leadership Academy comes.

00:13:15.320 --> 00:13:17.640
David Tisch comes from Techstars.

00:13:17.640 --> 00:13:19.600
Everyone comes, trains you,

00:13:19.600 --> 00:13:24.480
and then you go in groups of 10 or so
to a city that needs talent,

00:13:24.480 --> 00:13:27.399
and you work at a startup there
with an existing entrepreneur.

00:13:27.399 --> 00:13:28.560
What we're doing here -

00:13:28.560 --> 00:13:31.200
and I'm going to do
something I shouldn't do;

00:13:31.200 --> 00:13:33.280
but whatever, I'm going to do it.

00:13:33.280 --> 00:13:34.720
So what we're going to do is,

00:13:34.720 --> 00:13:37.656
we're going to give you
all of these things that you want,

00:13:37.656 --> 00:13:40.090
because it's prestigious,
it's ultraselective.

00:13:40.150 --> 00:13:42.358
All of these things, progress,
open the doors -

00:13:42.358 --> 00:13:44.470
you get a community,
you get the whole thing.

00:13:44.470 --> 00:13:46.436
Because we are adults.

00:13:46.436 --> 00:13:47.920
If we want you to do something,

00:13:47.920 --> 00:13:49.920
we shouldn't expect you
to have to somehow

00:13:49.920 --> 00:13:52.248
swim against some
violent current to do it.

00:13:52.370 --> 00:13:54.890
We should actually pave the path.

00:13:55.165 --> 00:13:57.080
That's what Venture for America's about.

00:13:57.080 --> 00:13:58.085
It's about giving you

00:13:58.085 --> 00:14:00.767
all of these things that you want,
that we know you want,

00:14:00.767 --> 00:14:04.164
in order to do what you want to do
and what the country wants you to do.

00:14:04.164 --> 00:14:08.041
That's build a business in Detroit,
New Orleans, New Haven, Baltimore,

00:14:08.041 --> 00:14:11.520
Cleveland, Providence, etc., etc.

00:14:12.700 --> 00:14:15.600
Venture for America
is in the process of doing this.

00:14:16.770 --> 00:14:18.189
If you come into the program,

00:14:18.189 --> 00:14:20.723
you agree to work for a startup
company for two years

00:14:20.723 --> 00:14:22.364
with an existing entrepreneur

00:14:22.364 --> 00:14:25.070
at around, let's say,
$36 to a $38K a year,

00:14:25.070 --> 00:14:27.031
which doesn't sound like a lot of money,

00:14:27.031 --> 00:14:29.520
but the guys in Detroit,
whom I'm visiting next week,

00:14:29.520 --> 00:14:32.380
they're living in a fancy building
with a pool and a gym,

00:14:32.380 --> 00:14:34.452
for 400 bucks a month.

00:14:34.922 --> 00:14:36.736
So you actually can live pretty well.

00:14:36.736 --> 00:14:39.790
Plus, they've got 11 buddies around,
they have little road trips,

00:14:39.790 --> 00:14:41.684
and they have a good time.

00:14:41.684 --> 00:14:43.120
Then throughout the two years,

00:14:43.120 --> 00:14:45.202
we supply you with
programming and support.

00:14:45.202 --> 00:14:47.930
At the end of the two years,
we give $100K in seed funding

00:14:47.930 --> 00:14:51.080
to whoever's made it through the two years
and has done a good job.

00:14:51.080 --> 00:14:54.085
It's like a combination of everything
you guys grew up watching,

00:14:54.085 --> 00:14:56.560
"Real World," "Survivor," "Road Rules."

00:14:56.560 --> 00:14:59.224
(Laughter)

00:14:59.834 --> 00:15:00.950
So this is the plan.

00:15:00.950 --> 00:15:03.610
We're going to create
100,000 new US jobs by 2025.

00:15:03.610 --> 00:15:06.870
I just want to bring it back to the theme.

00:15:07.142 --> 00:15:09.120
What you guys do is all important.

00:15:09.120 --> 00:15:11.560
Intellectual capital
attracts financial capital,

00:15:11.560 --> 00:15:12.782
as well as the reverse.

00:15:12.782 --> 00:15:15.595
If you had enough talented people
heading in this direction,

00:15:15.595 --> 00:15:18.190
then you would see the impact
that we're talking about,

00:15:18.190 --> 00:15:20.152
in terms of job creation and innovation.

00:15:20.152 --> 00:15:22.111
So this is our goal as an organization,

00:15:22.111 --> 00:15:25.501
to revitalize American cities
and communities through entrepreneurship,

00:15:25.501 --> 00:15:27.938
to enable our best and brightest,
that's all of you,

00:15:27.938 --> 00:15:30.530
to create new opportunities
for themselves and others,

00:15:30.530 --> 00:15:32.443
and restore the culture of achievement

00:15:32.443 --> 00:15:35.495
to include value-creation, risk,
and reward, and the common good.

00:15:35.495 --> 00:15:38.995
I think I'm before my time,
but that's cool. That's all I had to say.

00:15:38.995 --> 00:15:40.000
(Laughter)

00:15:40.000 --> 00:15:41.500
Thank you all.

00:15:41.500 --> 00:15:42.990
(Applause)