My name is Bryan Besecker.

Not long ago, this was a wall in my bedroom of my former Lower East Side apartment in NYC. I had gone from looking to career transition to trying different brainstorming hacks to come up with startup ideas.

My story before this:

• Proudly from Philadelphia
• Villanova grad '09
• First job in Boston for ~2-yrs after graduating in the last year of the Global Financial Crisis
• Some perspective for people who don't graduate during a very severe recession - be thankful
• Moved to NYC
• Did economics and investment strategy research for chief economists, strategists, and CEOs
• Wanted to do something different
• Didn’t know what
• Tried out a bunch of stuff
• Had trouble finding direction
• Got better at figuring it out
• Became interested in startups and venture capital
• Was drawn to the more longer-term and non-conventional way of thinking
• Joined a couple of paid communities for guidance and peer support to help make the transition
• Needed an industry to focus on. Chose education and career support startups (EdTech) given personal experience, what I was seeing amongst my peers, and beliefs about certain cultural and social issues I learned more about as I got older and through my job
• For instance, in my finance job I had become curious why there seemed to be more people struggling (career wise and financially) and stressed despite a labor market that kept "improving" and an unemployment rate that was approaching historical lows (this was all pre-Covid). The point is I came to believe we were measuring the "health" of the labor market incorrectly and that a lot of people needed career help
• Did lots of research and networking around EdTech themes and startups