Venture for America Recruitment from Zoom Detroit Studios on Vimeo.

Andrew Yang is CEO and founder of Venture for America, a fellowship program that helps recent college graduates become entrepreneurs. The effort is expanding to Miami with the support of Knight Foundation. 

Ask a startup CEO what she needs most, and – after the knee-jerk reaction, “Money!” – she is likely to tell you that her biggest challenge is finding great talent. Next, ask a smart and enterprising young person what he wants most out of an entry-level job, and he will likely say he wants to gain skills, make career progress and do something meaningful – exactly the opportunities a startup can provide.

Why can’t these two people meet one another? Because armies of suits show up on college campuses each year, and funnel our best and brightest off to financial services and consulting firms in a handful of cities. Startups in Miami have no coordinated way to access these channels, and young people have no systematized means for finding or vetting startup opportunities. That’s where Venture for America comes in: We level the playing field so that the startup CEO can find highly vetted talent that is eager to go to work for her and make an impact. Essentially, Venture for America is a two-year fellowship program that places recent college graduates with promising startup companies in U.S. cities with significant human capital needs. We currently operate in eight cities, and Miami is our next destination.

We all know that entrepreneurship is the engine of job growth in America, and that many of our historically great cities are in serious need of job creation. What you may not know is that for every one person an innovation-oriented firm hires, five new jobs quickly follow in the wider community. Imagine if the same proportion of talent that currently flows to professional services went instead to startups and early-stage growth companies in Miami. How long would that take to meaningfully impact job growth and innovation?

Venture for America has found all the right ingredients in Miami: a bevy of entrepreneurs, such as Brian Brackeen of Kairos and Andres Moreno of Open English, who have staked out this incredible community to grow their companies; a contingent of ecosystem-supporting organizations, such as The LAB Miami, Endeavor, Refresh Miami and Rokk3r Labs, which are working overtime to build a thriving entrepreneurial community; and community leaders and investors – including Knight Foundation – that are providing the capital necessary to see it all through. We want to add another key piece to this puzzle by helping draw young talent to Miami’s urban core.

Venture for America’s mission is to revitalize American cities and communities through entrepreneurship. In the coming years, we plan to help dozens of talented recent college graduates get to work at exciting startups in Miami. Ultimately, we hope they will put down roots and set up shop as entrepreneurs in their own right, creating a virtuous cycle of job growth and economic development.

How do we know this will work? Because we are watching it happen in other communities. Venture for America launched in Detroit (as well as Las Vegas, New Orleans, Providence, R.I., and Cincinnati). Since arriving in Detroit, our class of 12 VFA Fellows has bought a foreclosed mansion at auction and are rehabbing it on weekends, started a nonprofit organization that teaches entrepreneurship skills to underserved middle school students, and started companies such as Banza! – which makes a high-protein chickpea-based pasta – with manufacturing in Michigan. This is in addition to playing vital roles at companies that are growing rapidly. We are excited to see what our VFA Fellows will do in Miami – with the support of Knight Foundation and all of our friends in its incredibly welcoming entrepreneurial community.