Help Yourself!

Generation Y

Hey Jason?

I had a quick question for you.. I know you study up a lot on career trends and what people want to do with their lives? Have you read much about the Generation Y trend and how employers are dealing with a new generation of workers? I?m starting a project on this and I?m curious to find if you?ve seen any sources that talk about this trend. (If you haven?t, you might want to check it out yourself. I think you?d find it really interesting.)

In case you’re curious why I’m asking, I’m working on a small project to take a look at how companies can consider Generation Y in the workforce and, in particular, what companies who are really good at attracting new, young employees are doing and what other companies should do. Let me know if you have any particular thoughts on companies that are really good at this— e.g. Facebook, Google, consulting firms, etc.

Hope you find this interesting. I’m looking forward to hearing from you!!

Wendi

Hey Wendi,

I have three great resources for you:

1) Recruit or Die - a book by three ppl - one of them is Ramit Sethi, a Stanford grad who writes a popular blog on personal finance and is the VP of PBWiki - http://www.alwaysrecruiting.com/book-excerpts/
2) Penelope Trunk talks about Gen Y stuff all the time - (here she discusses the Recruit or Die book and other things —> http://tinyurl.com/4z496j)  and her company - The Brazen Careerist Network is all about Gen Y bloggers
3) Peter Shehan is a 29 year old Australian who consults for Fortune 500 companies on Gen Y issues. Here is a Fast Company article on his book “Flip” http://www.fastcompany.com/blog-post/will-you-flip-peter-sheahan

Personally, (and these resources will basically say the same thing) Gen Y wants flexibility, no hierarchies, alignment of values, rapid feedback, mentoring and work that seems “cool” to them. That said, Google, Consulting and Web 2.0 start ups do well with Stanford grads, but for different reasons - amazing work environment, getting paid big bucks/prestige, super cool/dreams of blowing up.

Hope your summer is going well!
Jason

July Gumball Newsletter

Hey Friends,

We’re sorry you haven’t heard from us in a while - it’s certainly not because there hasn’t been any news! Belinda, our marketing director is in Bolivia for a few weeks, but we’ve got a couple cool things to report on!

Radio

We were featured on a show called Here on Earth – Radio without Borders at the University of Wiscosin. Three members of our team were on the show – and talked about starting up Gumball, relived the excitement of the Gumball Challenge, and encouraged callers to pursue their entrepreneurial passions. Check out the recording at – http://www.wpr.org/hereonearth/archive_080507k.cfm

Partnerships

We’ve formed partnerships with two organizations who have a network of colleges that will run the Gumball Challenge in fall 2008. Recycle to Eradicate Poverty is a group that encourages people to recycle old cell phones and ink cartridges and will use the Gumball Challenge as a way for its network of colleges to take action and spread the word. College Kiva is an organization whose mission is to spread the work of Kiva in the collegiate setting, so the Gumball Challenge is almost the perfect way to pursue their mission.

Free Gumballs!

Finally Gumball.com has contacted us, and they’ve agreed to be our official Gumball sponsor! While we still have a few thousand gumballs tucked away here and there, they are definitely getting stale. Gumball.com has generously agreed to provide all the fresh gumballs we need to keep our teams going!
That’s all for this issue of Gumball Greetings. Stayed tuned for more updates as the summer goes on!

Jason
Executive Director


Our Mission

Gumball Capital engages students with micropreneurship for social good through experience, education and investment. We created a one-week microfinance-benefit competition called the Gumball Challenge, where students form teams and create value using $27 and 27 gumballs. They return any revenue they generate to the Gumball Fund, which supports the working poor in developing nations through Kiva.org.

Cardio over the summer

Hey Gabe,

This is Jason, I’ll be one of your captains next year along with Bryant. I’m glad to hear that you being proactive about your preparation for next year. I promise it will be worth it - fall quarter is very tough.

While your focus this summer should be skill acquisition and strength and conditioning, cardio work will play a role in our fall training, specifically through our circuit conditioning. We’ll do Circuit once or twice a week for the first several weeks so getting a head start on it would be a great idea. Here it is:

• 1 rope climb (no legs, as fast as you can)
• 7 front uprise swing handstands
• 7 vault sprints to front layout over horse
• 7 pullup and overs (on high bar or uneven bars)
• 30 circles on the pommels
• 10 handstand pushups
• 7 muscleups in L-position on low rings (get a partner to help you by holding your legs)
• 5x snapdown to 3 backhandsprings
• 7 leglift through to skin the cat (on highbar or uneven bars)
• 60 sec ring support hold (have a partner hold the rings in and make sure your arms are straight)

Do all the exercises in a row without stopping, as fast as you can. You can start on any exercise, as you long as you complete it in the order specified (after ring hold would be rope climb)

Let me know if you have any questions or want to know more about other conditioning you should be doing. Your fellow freshman, John Marten, is here at Stanford training with us, so talk to him to get a sense of how things are like here.

Good luck,

Jason