For Students With a Mission, a Little Capital Goes a Long Way
Soon they realized that things would go better if their food bore the minimum possible resemblance to an insect, so they dried and milled their crickets into flour. In November 2013, they entered and won the pitch competition at Harvard’s Igniting Innovation Summit on Social Entrepreneurship, serving “chocolate chirp” cookies
.. Why do so many students from elite schools end up in corporate jobs, even when they don’t want to? It’s because there’s a structure for that. The big tech, accounting and banking firms recruit students early, offering them the certainty of a safe job and comfortable career path. Turning that down means taking a leap into the void.
Having a fellowship made the leap easier. “That structure needed to be there for me to feel more comfortable about taking that risk,” said Wang. “I remember that my mind-set before was: I’m going to go work in consulting to gain a skill set or network and then I’ll feel comfortable taking a risk.