Scott Gerber, founder of the Young Entrepreneur Council, was hard at work founding his second company when he realized something was missing that could help him achieve his dream.
"I made every possible mistake one could make as a rookie entrepreneur," said Gerber of his first company. "After it failed, my mom said it was time to go get a real job, but to me that wasn't possible. I wanted to take the lessons I learned from my first company and put them into a new business. Soon, I figured out what would help move me forward — a group of like-minded peers."
That's when the idea for the Young Entrepreneur Council, an invite-only non-profit that brings together some of the sharpest young minds in the startup and entrepreneur world, was born.
The YEC is a club wherein the membership consists of some the most well-respected young minds in entrepreneurship. The YEC is no snobbish country club of elite upper-class startup owners (membership dues are only a few hundred dollars every year to "keep the lights on," said Gerber); it's a place where ideas are exchanged, connections are made and, possibly most importantly, mentorship happens.
"I finally said 'Wow, wouldn't it be great, what if we could give back and get from one another in a way that makes the community at large realize entrepreneurship as a viable career path,'" said Gerber.
The YEC's main goal is making entrepreneurship, considered a too-risky career choice by many parents of Generation Y youth, seem like less of a dangerous leap. The YEC is also behind #FixYoungAmerica, a drive to bring Congress's attention to entrepreneurship issues, and other partnerships designed to promote entrepreneurship as a career choice.
When Gerber was starting to build the YEC, he met Ryan Paugh, who's something of a cult legend in the online community-building world. Paugh co-founded Brazen Careerist, where he served as community manager and built a vibrant network for Gen Y youth to share career and job-seeking advice.
Gerber and Paugh immediately hit it off, and Paugh began helping Gerber build the YEC network on the side while pulling full-time duty at Brazen. Now, Paugh is switching gears — he's been serving as chief of staff at YEC, but now he'll be co-founder as well (while still serving in an advisory role at Brazen).
"I graduated and took the first job I could get because I just wanted to get out of parents' basement and pay back my student loans," said Paugh, who worked for a pharmaceutical company before building Brazen.
"It just so happened that I was wrong that corporate jobs are stable. Maybe they were 10 years ago, and maybe that's why we're seeing a shift, but as I'm looking now at people who graduate and can't find work, I think entrepreneurship is just as unsteady as the corporate world and hopefully that's pushing people back towards it."
Gerber echoed Paugh's comments.
"Automatization, globalization and the recession have changed everything," said Gerber. "I believe that means entrepreneurship, which some people equate with 'risk-taking' even though a good entrepreneur mitigates risk, is becoming a more popular career choice again. The playing field has changed."
The YEC is all about "making entrepreneurship less of a lonely place," said Paugh, while pointing to a private online message board where members can brainstorm, swap ideas and support one another through stressful events, such as startup launches. The YEC also organizes special networking events and offers members one another's contact information "on speed dial," as Gerber put it, a service which he believes adds a "concierge feel" to membership.
"One of the most amazing and robust communities I've been a part of is the private forum for YEC," said Paugh.
"It's open and honest, and it doesn't allow preaching and selling," said Gerber of the YEC community. "It's about helping, it's about learning from others. What we offer is a peer-to-peer group for younger entrepreneurs."
The YEC has accepted just a hair more than 400 members out of more than 10,000 requests to join. Once inside the YEC, members are often immediately sold on the value. Several have donated $10,000 or more — many times the annual dues.
"Most people say they get value of [their annual dues] within 30 days or less," said Gerber. "We keep it reasonable because it's a non-profit, and we're not overcharging the young and the collegiate. We refer to the YEC as a family, we want members that were actively going to be participating in the big picture of this."
"We want members who feel invested," added Paugh. "And a small price tag does make people feel more invested. We have people in the community that love the organization enough to own it."
How does one get access to this Justice League of young entrepreneurs? That's the "secret sauce" of the organization, said Gerber.
"How do you define a successful entrepreneur?" asked Gerber. "That's now our proprietary [code], an algorithm if you will. Are they seeded? Funded? Have they exited? There are so many different ways to look at it. Our standards of exclusivity are not a barrier to say 'You're not good enough,' but rather, the power of giving knowledge to others should come with a sense of responsibility."
Up next for the Gerber, Paugh and the YEC? They're developing a platform that aims to become the go-to spot for crowdsourced entrepreneurial know-how by connecting youth who aspire to become entrepreneurs with well-established startup owners for mentoring opportunities.
"Our goal is to be the center of it in the sense that we want to aggregate the best of the best," said Gerber.
"Every program we do with the YEC is meant to fulfill social need and promote free enterprise. I think you can do well and do good at the same time. Unemployment is a disaster, and if we can create a series of programs that are free and create a level of access never seen before from a variety of people that have done well before, I think we can create something pretty powerful."
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