❓ Guiding Questions

• What does the high-level program structure look look like?
  • Stuff like: Duration? Educational/bootcamp? Community? Internships? Business Model/Costs?
• Who is the target demographic?
  • Recent high school grads? College Freshmen/sophomores? New grads? Do we market to parents?
• How to curate a candidate pipeline of the most ambitious and talented young people in the world?
  • Distribution channels to tap? Collateral to prep? etc
• Why are you passionate about this? What unique skills/experiences do you have that would equip you to crush this?

Contents

📦 Program Structure

<aside> 🎙️ Most important thing to port from ODF is sense of commitment/community. If this becomes 'just another slack group', that's by far the worst possible outcome.

</aside>

• Ideal duration- probably something like 8-10 weeks of programming
  • I like David's idea of 4-6 wks intensive training/exposure → 8-10 wk internship. Onboarding for internship should be combined with last week of training.
  • Thoughts: Is there a way to accommodate/let people still do part-time programming if they aren't able to commit to a FT internship? Maybe work on a side project with other participants with guidance from ODF members? Lots of people take time off to travel/do something else during post grad summer, and even really ambitious people need a break after 16 years of schools 😅.
  • Target time: Summer after graduation for new grads, can run an off-cycle program with focus on people who aren't in school (either nontraditional paths/people who are looking for something new)
  • 🔑 Key opportunity: If we can get a launch to happen by the fall, lots of current undergrads would likely do it in addition to/replacing Zoom University.
• Community
  • Finding ambitious people from other schools → Reducing the feeling of isolation that 'nerds' sometimes feel (even at top schools)
  • Figuring out what it actually means to be a founder.
  • Programming can be well modeled after the 'explore' part of ODF.
• Business model
  • Can be similar to ODF (paying), but DEFERRING PAYMENT until ODUG participants have made some money in a FT role (or the program internship) can be valuable. Maybe cut costs if they join an ODF company?
  • This can also serve as a pipeline into ODF later. Key consideration: Will the programming be different enough for it to be valuable for folks to do both?
• Costs
  • Making sure ODF/other sponsor companies can support some level of (probably remote) entry-ish level interns
  • Programming costs are minimal/marginal relative to ODF
  • Curriculum development and talent matching infrastructure (?) not sure how this currently works for ODF

👯 Demographics

• Target demo should be around college seniors/new grads through ~1.5 years out of college
  • Fills a gap that isn't filled by Thiel (22+) or KPCB (Except for their product group)
• Don't think marketing to parents is necessary unless main demo is high schoolers. The right people will be able to convince their parents.
  • Having some material that students can use to back their decisions up to their parents might be useful. Maybe a stats page or a short deck, nothing too fancy.

🎯 Candidate Pipeline

Q: What do you mean by collateral?

• College Students
  • University leadership would love this for new grads
  • Need to find the right folks on different campuses. Maybe it makes sense to do a series of open houses like ODF does for company alums.
  • I know bright people at many schools we might try to pilot at that I can get answers to the above question (i.e. where should we pub this to get the best people?)
• Nontraditional paths (dropouts, people who didn't go to college, outstanding HS students who don't want to go to college)
  • Pioneer does some work in this space.
  • Don't have great visibility here to be honest; deferring to one of you on this.
• First 1-2 years of FT
  • Can be similar to ODF publicity/distribution, seems like there is already significant interest from 'too early' folks in ODF already.

💙 My passion and relevance

• Made advice page (right) with resources for ambitious students, had ~50 1:1 conversations with underclassmen in the past 2 mos. about their passions and ambitions. I know how broken current mentorship/learning opportunities (esp around startups) are at univs.

Advice

Rishi Tripathy

• Have build communities from the ground up.
  • President of my engineering school (1300+) (worked with admin around community/learning initiatives).
  • Advised univ. leadership on how to build/restructure entrepreneurship programming on campus.
  • Around business & entrepreneurship (~400+ total students participated) in HS.
  • **Notion @ Duke (**40+ members) communities in school.
  • Taught for-credit class on PM, built Product @ Duke (120+ members) group around it

Duke ESG (Engineering Student Gvmt.)

Central Jersey Student Innovators' Association

PM House Course- So you Want to Be a Product Manager?

[2/26] Notion x Duke 2

https://entrepreneurship.duke.edu/student-activities/student-founders-program/

Duke's "Founders' Program", which piloted last year and that I advised on programming choices.

• Personal Experience
  • Unremitting grit and persistence: got me two internships, Notion campus ambassadorship, working with folks at Breakout, Google APM role, this, etc. I have a knack for good cold emails/Twitter DMs/etc.
  • Skin in the game: I'm heavily invested in cultivating a inclusive and inspiring garden of collaborators, mentors and friends around myself, as I see founding in my future (and it's fun!)
  • Have filled out 300+ applications to tech companies in the past two years, with 30+ interviews
  • Have worked closely with team at Breakout List, thinking about why startups are exciting for students
• Have literally talked about very similar problems (finding other ambitious young people, encouraging people to think about starting companies instead of just being a cog at <BIGCO>) with YC and they haven't been nearly as on top of it as I'd like. I think the On Deck team is able to be a lot more innovative and driven about this.