ventureforamerica.com
August, 2014 - August, 2016
After my second summer at Boeing and wrapping up my work at A2B Bikeshare, I began my Master's in Industrial and Operations Engineering at the University of Michigan. During that year I had the pleasure and privilege of exploring a variety of potential career paths. This included interviews at big tech firms (Google, LinkedIn, and Yelp), management consulting (Bain, PWC), and an array of significantly smaller companies, including more than a few discussions on founding totally new businesses. However the one that stuck was an entrepreneurial leadership development fellowship called Venture for America (VFA).
Me, cheesin'
I joined the fellowship for three main reasons:
1. Through all those interviews I settled my doubts - I absolutely love startups. I knew I had to give them a fair shot and VFA provided a way to explore hundreds of pre-vetted opportunities with relative ease.
2. I felt like I'd been exposed deeply to the startup community in southeast Michigan but was eager to get out and expand my boundaries. VFA's nationwide network provided just that.
3. I needed some sort of safety net and guarantee that I'd be financially stable post graduation - this effectively ruling out launching my own business right away. The VFA financial support structure, although eventually unneeded by me, provided that assurance.
Once I'd decided on joining the fellowship, a second equally challenging decision faced me: which company do I work for?
I ended up interviewing with a variety of tech companies for radically different roles in Detroit, Providence, and Cincinnati before signing on as employee #1 at Kapture in Cincinnati. With that settled, I booked a celebratory trip to New Zealand, Australia, and Fiji full of scuba diving, bungee jumping, skydiving and every other adventure you can imagine before I hunkered down for the Venture for America training camp (a wild adventure in and of itself).
Continue to read more about helping bring Kapture to market.