The Mentors

When a founder decides to build an impact driven organization, at some point they have to make an important decision on whether to structure it as a for profit entity or a non-profit. While a for-profit can maximize financial upside to the founding team and shareholders, a non-profit by definition can focus more of its effort on the impact it wants to have in the world. In this week's episode bring back Darrell Silver [https://thementors.co/podcast/how-darrell-silver-of-thinkful-taught-himself-how-to-build-companies-part-i/], the founder and former CEO of Thinkful, a for-profit education venture, to talk about why the model of the non-profit freeCodeCamp [https://www.freecodecamp.org/] is so innovative in its funding and impact model, and why he is now a major donor and supporter of the organization that was founded with a similar mission to his. In this rare interview, we got to dive into some of the nuances of how nonprofits are managed and how freeCodeCamp has been able to deliver 1.1 billion minutes of instruction with just a 12 person team by making their education model open source. We also discussed how people who want to improve their career prospects and pick up a technical skill can best decide whether to learn online for free or pay tuition for an instructor guided education experience if they can afford it. Tune in to hear our interview with Darrell Silver about the story and future of freeCodeCamp. If you want to support their work, you can donate as little as $5 here [https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate] which will directly contribute to 250 hours of free education! See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for privacy and opt-out information.

Kevin Urrutia decided to teach himself to code while in college so that he could turn all the different business ideas he had into reality. Little did he know that after years of building apps and websites and trying idea after idea, he would need to completely change his mindset about how to get ideas off the ground to have his first entrepreneurial success. Kevin left his home in New York to go to Silicon Valley and work as a software engineer for Mint.com and later a little known startup called Zaarly where he would learn the power of SEO and marketing. After reading every marketing and sales book he could find, he moved back to start an online maid service called Maid Sailors. In this episode he talks about how his new found love for marketing helped him scale Maid Sailors to millions of dollars in revenue, and truly kicked off his entrepreneurial career helping him launch several more startups, including his digital marketing agency Voy Media [https://voymedia.com/]. This show is brought to you by School16 [https://www.school16.co/], a tech career accelerator for professionals interested in roles in Product, Marketing, Sales and Operations at top tech firms and startups. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for privacy and opt-out information.

In today's episode we're sharing an update on what's been happening with our own entrepreneurial venture, School16 [https://school16.co], and how our publishing schedule for The Mentors will change going forward. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for privacy and opt-out information.

This week we got the chance to interview a former SpaceX Engineer and founder of biohacking startup Levels [https://www.levelshealth.com/] as part of a special podcast recording hosted by School16 [https://www.school16.co/] in front of a live audience. In this episode, Josh Clemente told us about how he pushed his way into getting an opportunity to work at Tesla and then SpaceX, where he ended up leading the Life Support Systems team. He credits his time at SpaceX for teaching him how to think big and go after nearly impossible goals, and his time running his own general contracting business in college for giving him the confidence to start building a business that was going after a massive opportunity. Listen to find out how Josh came up with the idea for a continuous glucose monitoring technology that is being made available to anyone to help people avoid some of the most common and dangerous diseases. We also discuss how he built the right team to help him get his first customers, find investors, and start bringing it to the masses all in less than 2 years since he conceived it. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for privacy and opt-out information.

This is one of the most common questions we get from aspiring entrepreneurs. The answer, however, is less about what you should learn and more about how you should do it. Entrepreneurs come from almost every background imaginable, but one of the biggest contributors to founder success is previous experience with working on highly talented teams. Let's take the most famous example - the "PayPal Mafia." Companies like SpaceX, Yelp, Yammer, LinkedIn, and Square all came from individuals that were employees at PayPal. Some of them came from engineering, while others lead operations or sales teams, but the factor that separated them from other people starting companies at the same time was their experience working with and learning from other incredibly talented individuals. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for privacy and opt-out information.