My co-founder and I recently won a White House award (see http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/08/02/harnessing-open-government-data-wellness-intiative for more info), and we had the opportunity to participate a roundtable discussion that highlighted an important challenge:
How do we (as entrepreneurs, professors, policymakers, and people in the private sector) encourage entrepreneurship in America? More specifically, how do we get America's top young minds to choose the career of a startup instead of the other prestigious options like working for Google, Facebook, McKinsey, Goldman Sachs, etc.? This question is important because nearly all jobs in the last 20 years have been created by startups, so for us to get out of this recession, we need to change some things to make sure the next 20 years we have even more top talent joining smaller companies (or starting their own).
It's hard to answer this question without looking at why top talent currently does NOT go join a startup...to me there are two main reasons:
1. Graduating students have loans and working for a startup, which not only pays a lower salary but also involves the risk of failure & therefore defaulting on student loans is very unappealing.
2. It is not as "prestigious" to work for a startup compared to working for the McKinseys, Googles, Facebooks, and Goldmans of the world.
One creative solution to this problem is a new initiative called Venture for America. Like Teach for America, VFA aims to forgive student loans for the 2 years a student works for a startup, and attach "prestige" to the students in its program.
Pretty cool, you can read more about Venture for America here:
http://www.fastcompany.com/1768081/venture-for-america-will-do-for-entrepreneurship-what-teach-for-america-does-for-education
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