Venture for America

Prior to this, the brothers served as professors and investors at New York University and its Entrepreneurial Institute.

They ran entrepreneurship programs at organizations like Venture for America and were operators at several high-growth technology startups in Boston, New York City, and now Mexico City.

Sergey and Vadim are also writers on Forbes and Harvard Business Review, where they write about topics like entrepreneurship, venture capital, and the future of adult education.

Sergey and Vadim are here to share their knowledge of creating a powerful elevator pitch to answer interview questions, why you should spend 80% of your job search on one important aspect, and how to break into technical roles without knowing how to code.

Oh, yeah.

He started a little known organization called Venture for America, which was essentially Teach for America, but for tech startups, or as our friend Joni's grandmother liked to say, the Republican Peace Corps.

We were sent far and wide.

We are not Republican.

Enterprises.

And, uh, then he founded, uh, Venture for America, which is that, you know, bullshit thing.

Um-

I'll tell you what, he, uh, he could, he could use some help with his hairline.

Their mom was an audiologist, and their dad was an orthodontist.

And after Brian graduated from college in 2012, he moved to Detroit to join Venture for America.

It was a fellowship started by Andrew Yang to bring young entrepreneurs to cities that were trying to rebuild their economies.

Uh, a lot of people now know it as the thing that Andrew Yang did, uh, before running for president.

So you have a name and you're gonna...

Your, your brother's on board, and you need to raise money.

And so for the money side of this you went on a crowdfunding platform, uh, called RocketHub, and I think the, the, the way that this worked was if you did well there, then you could get some additional cash from Venture for America, right? Like, the, the, who you were still working with at the time.

Yep.

Um, and so then when I left to try and start a business, it was much easier for them just to pretend that I was still there.

You left Davis Polk for Venture for America or something? Oh, no, for the math...

the, the-

Oh, no, I left to start a dot-com that had a mini rise and maximum fall-

So you think it's gotten harder to be a scrappy entrepreneur in today's-

Unfortunately, I really do, and it breaks my heart.

It's one reason I love what you're doing with Builders so much, and obviously you and I connected on, um, Venture for America.

Um, I love entrepreneurship.

So it's not like you can't, you can't, like, have a learning trajectory in this type of environment.

I think the question's gonna become who is gonna take that initial first gri- risk, and I'm excited to see programs like, uh, Venture for America is now, uh, they shut down shop.

There's now Ember Fellows.

Which you came through.

Yes.

Yes.

I came through Venture for America.

They no longer exist, but a lot of the early folks involved with VFA have now created Ember Fellows under a, a similar idea.