How To Make VFC Training Camp A Success
10 Tips from the First Cohort
Disclaimer: This post is not endorsed or sponsored by Venture for Canada or any of its Fellows, but is rather my humble rendition of the Values document created as a primer for future Fellows as an introduction to the program. Anything said herein is my own opinion and in no way reflects the position of Venture for Canada.
So the last 5 weeks have been a truly enlightening experience. Like anyone who has ever played sports or done a competitive activity at a really high level, you know there is this magic that happens when you work with others who are also at that level.
Training Camp is a gathering of some of the smartest, talented and driven people you will ever meet, and is an opportunity unlike any you will ever have again, so be sure to make the most of it.
In his article of the same name, Brian Chesky, CEO of AirBnB, discusses how Peter Thiel gave them the most important piece of advice they ever received: “Don’t Fuck Up the Culture”.
Culture is defined as “a shared way of doing something with passion” — and if there is a place where sharing a way of doing something with passion is valued, it’s at VFC Training Camp.
Here are 10 Tips from the Inaugural VFC Fellows on how not to fuck up the culture at Training Camp.
Be Candid
In the truly transformational read on managing creative teams, Creativity, Inc., Ed Catmull discusses how Candor — the act of being candid — is one of the pinnacles of success for any creative organization. The willingness to say things that need to be said, regardless of who is in the room, who the feedback is directed towards, how brutal it may be, or difficult it might be to implement, is one of the most critical aspects of growth within teams.
The VFC Fellows were required to read this prior to coming to Training Camp, and it was clear from day 1 that we had all taken this lesson to heart. Whether that meant giving honest feedback to one another on how no one will buy their idea because it is just too complicated; whether that meant telling your group that you just don’t have the technical skills to make their dream a reality; whether that meant telling presenters we learn best through engagement, not lecturing; or whether that meant pouring your heart out on how inadequate you feel sometimes — candor has been a running theme through-out.
Candor is not “being honest”, because when you tell people to be honest with you, they rarely are.
Candor is about saying the things that need to be said, regardless of the political tensions, personal reservations, feedback structure, difficulty, future work required, or any other barriers that may get in the way.
This does not mean you can openly bash other people’s ideas. That’s not the point.
The point of candor is to make Training Camp the best it can be.
And the point of Training Camp is simple: growth.
And the point of growth is simple: make it the best we can, whatever it takes, whatever “it” happens to be.
Therefore, Candor is also about being candid with yourself, as self-criticism is often the hardest — did I do a good job including everyone in the discussion? Was I too forceful? Did I put in an honest effort into this project? Was I a good team member?
Being candid with others often starts with first being candid with yourself.
Candor is a mechanism to growth, and though it takes much more than giving direct and honest feedback to have a successful team, there is no way you will reach your true potential without it.
Be Open
If you’ve made it this far, it is because you are genuinely awesome. The Inaugural VFC Fellow class was hand-picked from a group of 800+ applicants, through 3-stages of phone interviews, group interviews, and one-on-one interviews with some of the top people in the start-up ecosystem. If you have managed to get this far, you have either growth hacked your way through some pretty elaborate processes (meaning you are probably pretty awesome and want this pretty badly), or you are generally an amazing person.
So let that person come out.
No one here knows you, or it is very unlikely they do, so for this first time in (likely) a very long time, you get to totally re-invent yourself.
If you want to be the funny guy, be the funny guy. If you want to be the girl who is unbelievably dedicated, then be her. If you want to be a programmer, sales pro, marketing guru, or hardware veteran, then be that person.
But being open also means not trying to be something you’re not.
One of the fellows I met on the first day is still, in my humble opinion, one of the funniest guys I have ever met. He is a design wizard, totally crushed the layout of the first presentation we gave, and was a huge part of our success in the first challenge. He later confided that he didn’t feel he had any real talents to bring to the table.
Not only do I disagree with him on this, I challenged him to recognize that he made it this far for a reason.
So be open about what you’re good at, and what you’re not.
Be open with your experiences, your feelings, and your goals.
My roommate at Training Camp is to this day one of the most genuine human beings I have ever met. His openness within the first 24 hours set the bar for all of us to accept that if we were going to be a tight-knit community and grow through the challenges of entrepreneurship together, we needed to put down our guards and create a safe space to grow.
In the coming days I learned about his family, his travels, his girlfriend, his past relationships, his biggest mistakes, his regrets, his failures and all the demons he never thought he could confide in another person. It was one of the most honest gestures I have ever received, and challenged me to do the same.
So be open with your whole heart.
But most importantly, be open to change, to growth.
If you leave Training Camp the same person you entered as, you have fundamentally missed the entire point of VFC.
If you don’t have your most deeply held assumptions challenged, it is because you put up barriers to allowing that to happen.
If you don’t accept the challenge of being vulnerable around a group of people who want nothing more than to help you succeed at the highest level, how are you ever going to get there?
Being open means accepting that this is going to be hard, it is going to push your boundaries, and you will likely fail miserably before you succeed. But that is what it takes to be successful.
Building a culture of openness means letting yourself be open as much as it means providing a safe environment for others to be open. So allow others the room to open up. Challenge them to be vulnerable, even when it’s hard. Challenge yourself to be vulnerable, especially when it’s hard.
But an amazing thing happens when you open up to people: they open up to you too.
That’s how you build a community.
Be Humble
So yes, you are one of the top 30+ people who applied to the program, you passed all the tests and proved that you have what it takes to work with some of the top start-ups and growth companies in Canada.
Congratulations.
But accept the fact that in the real world, that doesn’t matter.
No one is going to do you any favours.
And you don’t “deserve” anything.
Being a part of this program means contributing, working hard, and providing more value than you extract.
We all know that to get to this point, you have to be a rock-star, and frankly, if you’re reading this, you probably are a rock-star.
But you still have to prove it.
Humility is a critical trait at VFC Training Camp. You will likely be introduced to many of the top movers and shakers in the Canadian start-up ecosystem and abroad, and they are donating their time (and in some cases, their money) to help you along your journey.
They don’t need to do that — they are doing it because they want to.
So be respectful of that. Be punctual to all sessions. Listen when they talk. Engage with them on their activities. Provide feedback.
Being humble means accepting that although you have kicked some serious tail to get to this point, that your journey is an uphill battle and you have a long way to go.
As an entrepreneur, you are always looking forward — towards the next deadline, the next goal, the next great technology, the next great opportunity — but you never forget where you came from.
That’s humility.
Be Generous
The first day of Training Camp for me involved getting up at 5:30am, finishing packing all my clothes and kitchen gear, jumping on the first bus I could get on to Toronto, sprinting to the Bay St. terminal from Union Station with nearly 50 lbs. of luggage, only to find out my bus had been cancelled and I couldn’t get on another one until the next day.
I sent out a nervous request in our Slack channel for Training Camp, and within minutes, I had secured a ride to Kingston with another fellow.
We had met once before for less than 5 minutes. We had talked about programs and schools, and entrepreneurship briefly. I didn’t really know anything about him.
And he certainly didn’t owe me anything.
But he gave me a ride without a second thought.
Less than a week later, when I ran out of coffee, another Fellow generously offered some of hers to save me another lengthy trip to the grocery store.
Several nights when we sat in the common room and played drinking games or Catan or Cards Against Humanity, Fellows offered beers so we could all join in the activity.
When a Fellow asked me for help finding a house in Kitchener, I did a lengthy search for her, got in contact with some friends on her behalf, and set-up a conversation so she didn’t have to go through the process of finding a house in a new city alone.
I also had the opportunity to cook for the group several times, which was a real win-win. I love cooking and often make FAR too much, and people love eating good food. It also saved us all a lot of time and effort balancing using the kitchen.
As part of the readings for Training Camp, we read the book Give and Take, which introduces the idea that there are 3 types of people: givers, takers and matchers.
Takers will try to pull out whatever they need from people in order to get ahead. These people are driven, often successful, and play for the short game.
Matchers will offer help to others only if they receive something in return. They are generally risk-averse, eye-for-an-eye kind of people, and don’t want to be made a fool of. They will help you if you strike a deal, but only if there is a clear upside for them in exchange.
Givers on the other hand are providers. They want to find ways to help people with the skills they have, even if they don’t get anything in return. They are genuine, honest, and care about those around them. They sometimes get burned for their generosity, but they don’t mind that — it’s all part of the game.
So which one would you rather be?
Interestingly enough, the people who are ultimately the most successful are Givers — they can also be the least successful, the book explains why, and how you can change that — because of the social credits they accumulate.
If you want Training Camp to foster a culture of community growth, where the goal is to help make everyone the best they can be, you have to be a giver.
But you also have to allow others to be givers when they can. Sometimes, this means letting them be generous to you as well.
Chances are, if you’ve made it this far, it’s because you’re a giver.
But being generous with your time, your money, your work, your experiences, your perspective, your goals, your feelings, your wants and needs, and most importantly, yourself, is critical to the success of the group.
Be generous with what you have.
Be Passionate
One of the criteria that VFC looks for in Fellows is that they are passionate about entrepreneurship. If you are going to be successful working for a start-up, and hopefully one day running your own start-up, you have to be passionate about entrepreneurship. It has to light a fire under you.
But the amazing thing about entrepreneurship is that it takes many different forms. It isn’t limited to just one kind of business, product, social environment, location, platform or type of person, but rather is really a framework you can use to reach success in a meaningful way.
Entrepreneurship really is a way of life.
And to be a successful entrepreneur, you really need to be passionate about whatever it is you are trying to build.
Being an entrepreneur is a hard road. For many, it is the hardest thing you will ever do, and if you are not innately passionate beyond any reasonable human capacity for the project you are working on, you won’t have the drive to succeed that it really takes to push through the hard times.
So when you come to Training Camp, bring that passion with you.
You will all have an opportunity to run a workshop on what you are passionate about, and share that with each other. This is one of the greatest gifts you can bring to Training Camp — the willingness to share your passion with others.
So when you do, don’t hold back.
And when others bring their passions, don’t hold back.
Be passionate for animals. Be passionate for social justice. Be passionate for 3D Printing. Be passionate for B2B Sales. Be passionate for Social Media. Be passionate for data analysis. Be passionate for financial statistics. Be passionate for Pivot Tables. Be passionate for wicked awesome high-fives. Be passionate for foreign languages. Be passionate for good beer. Be passionate for graphic design.
Be passionate for whatever it takes to push you through the resistance that the rest of society is going to throw at you when you tell them that you are going to give up the opportunity to make a ton of money in a stable job that promises respect and recognition in order slave away dozens of hours per week to make something that people may or may not want to pay for just because you want more than anything for it to exist.
And most importantly, be passionate for each other.
Be Curious
When you have some of the country’s top talent and proven leaders sacrificing their time to come and speak with you about the things they are innately passionate about, what do you do?
You listen. You engage. You absorb. You respond.
Our fearless leaders, Scott and Patrick, have slaved away, sacrificing their own careers and good nights of sleep, in order to convince some of the smartest people they could find to come share with us Fellows. That takes tremendous dedication and perseverance, and we want very badly to have those people return in following years.
So as a presenter, what is the one thing I want out of my presentation more than anything else?
My audience to care about what I am presenting on.
So when I drive 3 hours from Toronto to Kingston, getting up at 5 in the morning, and skip a day of work, to come and tell you about the thing that I care about more than anything in the whole world, what do I want in return?
Your curiosity.
Be curious about what I’m telling you. Ask deep, meaningful questions. Challenge me on what I’m saying. Tell me I’m wrong, and demand an explanation. Debate me on assumptions, results and problems. Get at the heart of why I do what I do. Delve into my own life story, and ask me why it didn’t have a clear, conscious arc.
Show your curiosity, because that’s why I’m here.
I want to help you, and I want you to want to be helped.
Show me that you care about what I’m telling you, and I will open up to you a world of possibility, knowledge, and hard-earned wisdom.
If you really want to get every drop of experience out of Training Camp, be curious. To your presenters, to your leaders, and to each other. Find out what makes your Fellows tick. Why do they care about what they care about?
Ask big, socially-awkward, totally irresponsible questions.
Because that’s why you’re here. That’s why your peers are here. That’s why your leaders and presenters are here.
To Learn. To Be Challenged. To Solve Big Problems. To Grow.
Be curious in all things, because that is how you find the real answers — the kind that open up the world to you.
Be Bold
One of the most fundamental principles of being a great entrepreneur is the willingness to be comfortable with discomfort.
Tim Ferriss said it well, that “A person’s success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have.”
I would challenge you to go one step further and say that success is often linked to the number of uncomfortable actions a person is willing to take.
Training Camp is a time and place for you to grow as an individual, but growth only happens outside of your comfort zone.
So at Training Camp, I encourage you to be bold. Do things that are outside of your comfort zone. Whether that means taking charge of a group project, joining in an activity you are unfamiliar with, or simply trying something you have never tried before.
At Training Camp in the first week, I played basketball for the first time in probably 5 years with some of the other Fellows. I got totally dominated. It was brutal. But I learned from the experience — mostly that I was out of shape — and I had a blast doing it.
I also learned how to code a website in a few hours, designed an entire web app, and did a comprehensive one-year financial projection for a business.
If you had asked me to do this previous to Training Camp, I wouldn’t have a clue where to start. But my willingness to extend beyond my own borders let me grow in ways I didn’t know were possible.
So if you want to get the best experience you can out of Training Camp, get out of your comfort zone. Ask crazy questions. Disagree with the speaker. Do a workshop on something you don’t know anything about. Take the lead on a project you don’t feel comfortable with. Join in an activity you suck at. Help others to achieve their goals in ways they can’t alone. Reach out to someone you wouldn’t have the guts to get in touch with otherwise. Dance in the hallways. Sing in the showers. Do the very thing you are most afraid of.
Be Bold.
Be Global
One of the founding principles of VFC is Ambition — the willingness and drive to create something much bigger than yourself. If you are a person who would forgo a well-paying, stable job at a Fortune 500 company to work at a startup for far less money, longer hours, and more responsibility, then chances are you are dreaming big.
And as a VFC Fellow, you are encouraged to dream big — to ask big, daunting questions that don’t have good answers; to start with problems that don’t have the technology to have solutions; to imagine a world so far beyond what we have today that few people will ever believe it is possible — that is the kind of big-thinking VFC encourages.
More than big thinking, VFC is about pushing your limits, bringing unfathomable passion, and moving beyond the constraints society sets for us.
If the founders of Twitter, Snapchat, Charity: Water, Uber or Amazon just took the safe route, and focused on the next paycheck, the next year, and the next rung on the ladder, chances are we wouldn’t have those organizations today.
But all of them began with a focus on bringing their idea global — of affecting change on a massive scale, and understanding that in order to move the needle, make some ripples in the water, and slowly change the world, they needed to dream big.
One of the Fellows said it best that you need to “Think Globally, Act Locally”, and I believe truer words have never been spoken.
Uber didn’t start out trying to take over the world’s taxi authorities. Uber started with one city, and a few people, and created a system to connect them. Then, moving city by city, it found ways of gaining traction and dominating the marketplace.
The number of VFC Fellows who have traveled internationally prior to the program is stunning. These are people who have seen the world, experienced its problems first-hand, and take the reins in trying to tackle them. From India, to Bangladesh, to China, to Germany, to Peru, to Ghana, to Sweden, to Mongolia, to Vancouver, to Halifax — Thinking Global means understanding all the ways we are different, but more importantly, all the ways we are the same.
So whatever your dreams are for after VFC, wherever your wildest imagination might take you, don’t be afraid to think big. Plan for the long term, not the short one, and acknowledge that all things worth having take time.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, and though growth to $1B has gotten shorter and shorter, don’t expect your Rome to be built in a day either.
Start small, start local, focus on customer #1, then #2 — but don’t settle for achieving a steady income and a good job — you’re part of this program because you’re willing to go for broke.
So risk it all. Jump on a plane and venture half-way around the world. Meet new people and eat amazing food. Backpack as far as your legs will take you, and carpool with people you just met.
Accept that your actions affect far more than just you, both locally and around the world.
Be a global citizen, and a local champion for change.
Think big.
Be Gritty
Venture for Canada offers a huge number of benefits to Fellows through the program: mentorship, world-class training, guest speakers, an amazing community of peers, connections to some of the top start-ups in Canada and abroad, amongst others.
What they don’t offer is a free ride.
Venture for Canada does not promise to get you a job. It does not promise to make you successful. It does not promise a starting salary, work experience, awesome connections, or even any fun.
What it does promise is opportunity — if you earn it.
Grit is the quality of relentless perseverance against odds stacked against you. It is the quality of persistence well beyond what is rational or socially accepted. It is the quality of dreaming bigger than your abilities and going for it anyways.
Venture for Canada is all about grit. Because, at the end of the day, they can get you a meeting, but it’s up to you to close the deal.
They will work hard to get you 15 minutes. You had better take it from there and transform it into a world-class opportunity, a good salary, and the next two years of your life.
It’s a lot of pressure.
And only the best of the best can do that.
But if you’ve made it this far, you are already one of them. Just remember that in the work of start-ups, there are no free rides. You earn everything: your own salary, the tools you need to be successful, and the lessons learned along the way.
If you don’t have grit you won’t make it very far out here.
This is the Wild West, baby, and only the toughest survive.
Got what it takes?
Further reading:
Be Balanced
A major portion of VFC Training Camp is spent outside of the classroom. A vast majority of that time is not spent on projects or work for Training Camp.
That means that a significant portion of the Training Camp experience is not spent working.
This a good thing.
As a Fellow, you recognize that life is not all about work. There’s more to life than slaving away endlessly, and truly in order to be as efficient as you possibly can, you shouldn’t be spending all day working.
For the 8+ hours per day we spend in the classroom and working on projects at Training Camp, there is still plenty of time to do things you love.
Go to the gym. Go for a run. Do yoga. Meditate. Cook something delicious. Read. Listen to a podcast. Play a board game. Tell stories.
Socialize with other fellows.
If you truly want to achieve personal and professional success in life, recognizing and living out a balanced lifestyle is critical.
It’s the “Work Hard, Play Hard” mentality.
One of the greatest gifts Training Camp offers is the time to get to know your fellow Fellows, spend time in community with them, and learn to struggle through the life of entrepreneurship and start-ups with a caring support group.
And the best way to build that isn’t by listening to lectures together.
It’s not even slaving away late into the night on projects together.
It’s going to the gym together. It’s doing yoga together. It’s laughing, playing board games, cooking, and telling stories together.
It’s being a community together.
Venture for Canada relies on the strengths of its Fellows to be a world-class program, and in order for each Fellow to be the best they can be, we must all embrace balance.
So work hard. Work harder than everyone else in the office. Arrive earlier and stay later. Put in overtime when you need to, and go well above and beyond whatever your boss asks of you.
Be a flippin’ rockstar.
But remember that your boss wants you to be a human being.
Play video games with the gang on lunch break. Start a great conversation at the lunch table. Sit with someone new during meetings. Organize socials for the office, and be the center of attention.
Know that the best entrepreneurs are office rock stars and social champions.
So be both.
Be balanced.
Bonus: Be Canadian
I love the “Top 10” format, but I also believe in under-promising and over-delivering, so here is tip #11 — the most important of them all.
So let me make this easy for you:
I fucking love Canada.
I think it’s the most beautiful, talented, humble and generous nation I have ever been to. I’ve had the opportunity to travel the world, and I have never felt more Canadian than when I was no longer in Canada.
My heart yearns for its open plains, its mountainous backdrops, its bustling city centers, its pristine lakes, and its east coast charm.
I would love to live somewhere else for a few years just to broaden my cultural horizons, but never will I disregard my country as the greatest nation on the entire flippin’ planet.
We have the majority of the world’s fresh water.
We have diversity, tolerance, and peacekeeping that is so engrained in our culture that we often politely fight about it.
We are a country of broad spectrums: from sweeping landscapes and diverse backgrounds, to languages, people, stories and cultures.
That is what makes us so amazing.
This is one of my favourite pieces of poetry ever written. It brings a tear to my eye every time.
“We dream so big that there are those who would call our ambition an industry.”
The point is simple: Canada is awesome.
We even have astronauts who play the guitar on back cottages and say they are sorry mid-song while convincing the entire flippin’ planet that we don’t live in igloos and ride polar bears to work (at least some of us don’t).
But sadly, we are nothing compared to what we could be.
The required reading for the inaugural VFC Fellows included “Why Mexicans Don’t Drink Molson”. It’s a sharp reminder that Canada continues to fail on the global scale.
Mike Katchen, CEO of WealthSimple and VFC Supporter, makes a great case in this article here:
So what do we do about it?
The point of Venture for Canada is more than simply getting the best graduates across the country jobs at start-ups. We’re not a recruiting agency.
The point of Venture for Canada is more than training smart people in entrepreneurship. We’re not a university class.
The point of Venture for Canada is more than connecting diverse groups of people together. We’re not a networking event.
The point of Venture for Canada is rather self-explicit: improve Canada.
As a VFC Fellow your job is simple: make Canada the greatest country in the world.
Wow.
That’s a big challenge.
I mean, we’re just over 33 million people, most of which who love hockey, some of which who speak french, and whose national icon is a small woodland creature (hey, gotta love those beavers).
How in the heck are we going to become the best country in the world?
That’s quite the challenge, eh?
But if we learn anything from start-ups, it’s that taking on global giants is what we’re all about.
And at the end of the day:
Canada is a start-up.
We’re a (relatively) small group of people with diverse, complex backgrounds, who don’t really have our identity totally figured out, have a boatload of resources at our disposal, and our competitors don’t take us seriously (yet).
I mean, what else would you define a start-up as?
We are a country that is well-connected, incredibly educated (relatively), fiercely ambitious, and hard working. We take care of one another, and fight based on values, not profits, because we know that common courtesy really is uncommon. We say sorry and we mean it, and sometimes, we say sorry even when it isn’t our fault, because we believe that relationships are more important than grudges.
We are proud to be working where we are, and although we don’t make as much money as we could elsewhere, we’re proud of where we come from and the vision we share for the future.
So if you want to make Canada the best damn country on the planet, here’s the most important tool in your arsenal: entrepreneurship.
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has. — Margaret Mead
So as a VFC Fellow, your challenge extends far beyond your day job. It is far bigger than the goals of next quarter, or the routines you do every morning to get ready for work. It is more than the sum of the parts you put together with your colleagues, and is bigger than the long-term vision of your company.
Your duty as a VFC Fellow is to change the world; to make Canada a global force.
So take these values with you wherever you go.
Be candid with one another.
Be open about your strengths, weaknesses, goals and dreams.
Be humble and recognize humility in each other.
Be generous with your time, your gifts, your talents.
Be passionate for all that lights a fire beneath you.
Be curious about everything and continually seek to learn more.
Be bold in your actions and in your convictions.
Be global in your vision and your understanding.
Be gritty and persevere beyond all reasonable measure.
Be balanced and play as hard as you work.
Most importantly, be Canadian through and through — in whatever way that means to you.
Now go forth and make us proud.
I wish you success.
-Brendan and the Inaugural VFC Class
