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    Andrew Yang Believes in New York and Himself. Is That Enough?

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    Andrew Yang Believes in New York and Himself. Is That Enough?Mr. Yang has brought political star power and a dose of optimism to the New York City mayor’s race. But his gaps in knowledge about how the city functions have led to the perception among critics that he is out of his depth.Andrew Yang has been endorsed by several notable Asian American leaders, including Representative Grace Meng, left.Sara Naomi Lewkowicz for The New York TimesThe New York City mayoral race is one of the most consequential political contests in a generation, with immense challenges awaiting the winner. This is the fifth in a series of profiles of the major candidates.Dana Rubinstein and May 26, 2021As Andrew Yang approached the corner store in Manhattan, a cameraperson in tow, the setting seemed familiar. It couldn’t be that bodega — the place he visited in the infancy of his mayoral campaign, the place that brought him ridicule because it wasn’t really a bodega in the New York sense, with its bright lights, wide aisles and well-stocked shelves.Oh, but it was. Mr. Yang had returned to the scene of an early campaign crisis, a place that was to be a simple backdrop for a seemingly innocuous tweet in January in support of bodegas. Instead, New Yorkers questioned his knowledge and authenticity — a hint of the criticism that would follow many of his quick takes on matters both substantive and light.Mr. Yang was unfazed, then and now. He entered the 7 Brothers Famous Deli in Hell’s Kitchen, greeted the workers like they were old friends, and repeated his order from his first visit: green tea and a handful of bananas.“Just like the old days,” he said, before affixing a campaign poster to the storefront window.With less than one month to go before a Democratic primary that will almost certainly determine the next mayor of New York City, Mr. Yang’s off-the-cuff, can-do persona has fueled his candidacy in a city just emerging from the pandemic.Mr. Yang said it had been an adjustment to be viewed as a leading candidate in the mayoral race, suggesting that he was more comfortable in the role of “scrappy underdog.”Sara Naomi Lewkowicz for The New York TimesHis failed bid for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination brought national focus to universal basic income, and gave him instant name recognition, good will and political star power in the New York City contest.But Mr. Yang’s apparent eagerness to please, his willingness to make unorthodox, sometimes spontaneous policy pronouncements, his lack of experience with New York City politics and gaps in knowledge about how the city works have all contributed to the perception among critics that he is out of his depth — underscoring his potential weakness as a mayoral candidate.For Mr. Yang, his front-runner status in the New York City mayoral race has taken some getting used to. In private conversations this year, he has come across as supremely confident about his chances. But he can also seem taken aback by the increasingly sharp criticism he attracts.“I’m frankly a bit more accustomed to being the, like, the scrappy underdog —that was sort of a more natural posture for me,” he said in an interview this spring.He seemed, at the outset of the race, to satisfy some New Yorkers’ psychic needs. But in the final weeks before the June 22 primary, as the city reawakens, the race’s dynamics have changed. Polls have tightened, voters are paying more attention, and well-funded competitors are spending millions on television, threatening a victory that once seemed well within Mr. Yang’s grasp.An affinity for the underdogMr. Yang founded Venture for America, which aimed to create 100,000 jobs by deploying recent graduates to work at start-ups. Far fewer jobs were actually created.Gretchen Ertl for The New York TimesMr. Yang was born 46 years ago to Taiwanese immigrants living in Schenectady, N.Y., then known as Electric City, presumably for the central role that his father’s employer, General Electric, played in its economy. When he was four, his family moved from a home there with a green shag carpet to Westchester County.His parents were both technologically oriented: His father worked at I.B.M.; his mother, who had a master’s degree in statistics, worked for the State University of New York at Purchase as the director of computer services, before becoming an artist.Mr. Yang recalled a relatively homogeneous upbringing: In his middle school class in Somers, N.Y., he remembered one other East Asian student, a girl.“Everyone said we should date, which made neither of us very happy,” said Mr. Yang, who would be New York’s first Asian American mayor.Some of his classmates were cruel, calling him racist slurs and making jokes about his eyes. Having skipped kindergarten, he trailed his classmates in size. His voice changed later than theirs did.The experience, he said, gave him an affinity for the underdog, and left lasting wounds.“I’ve never forgotten what it felt like to be young,” he wrote in his 2018 book, “The War on Normal People.” “To be gnawed at by doubts and fears so deep that they inflict physical pain, a sense of nausea deep in your stomach. To feel like an alien, to be ignored or ridiculed.”Today, Mr. Yang often comes across to voters as exuberant. But he describes himself as “naturally introverted,” and in person, that energy comes across as a switch that can flip on and off. Out of the spotlight he can seem low-key, even occasionally withdrawn.Mr. Yang thrived academically, and halfway through high school he transferred to Phillips Exeter Academy, a selective boarding school in New Hampshire, the first in a succession of elite institutions that would lead him down the path to corporate law: Brown University, Columbia Law School and a junior position at Davis Polk & Wardwell, the elite New York law firm that he quit after five months.The work was grueling — and when his officemate, Jonathan Philips, broached the idea of a start-up, Mr. Yang was intrigued, Mr. Philips recalled.“It’s like he all of a sudden woke up,” Mr. Philips, now a North Carolina-based investor, said, recalling long conversations about “the intersection of economic and social betterment.”They co-founded Stargiving, a company designed to help celebrities fund-raise for charities. There, Mr. Yang pitched and hobnobbed with powerful people and practiced dealing with the news media.Still, Mr. Yang has acknowledged, the initiative “failed spectacularly.”He moved on to other endeavors, including a party-hosting business and a position at a health care company, before landing at a test-prep company, later called Manhattan Prep, that was run by a friend. He eventually became its C.E.O. and acquired an ownership stake.When Kaplan, the test-prep giant, bought the company, Mr. Yang walked away with a seven-figure prize.But he has said he was disenchanted by the career track enabled by the test prep company, which funneled promising students to business school and then Wall Street.Still eager to make his mark on the world, he founded Venture for America, a nonprofit that aimed to deploy recent graduates to work at start-ups and start companies in struggling cities across the country. Venture for America was a seminal chapter in Mr. Yang’s life, introducing him to the national stage and shaping his image as an entrepreneur.The results were mixed. Mr. Yang set out to create 100,000 jobs, but only about 150 people now work at companies founded by alumni in the cities the nonprofit targeted, a New York Times investigation found. The program also faced accusations of bias under his leadership. Mr. Yang has defended his tenure there.Mr. Yang ultimately left the organization to run for president and write the book that became the foundation for his campaign, in which he warned of the dangers posed by automation and laid out his universal basic income proposal.Mr. Yang’s presidential bid stunned many people who had worked with him and knew him as a smart and relatable nonprofit leader, but certainly not as a practiced politician. In a field studded with governors, senators and the former vice president of the United States, Mr. Yang was a political outsider who had never run, let alone won a campaign of his own, and the bid was quixotic from the start.Mr. Yang’s campaign was never especially polished — juvenile hijinks were occasionally caught on camera — and he dropped out on the night of the New Hampshire primary. Yet he proved to be a strong fund-raiser, and his campaign lasted longer than those of several far more seasoned contenders, including Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, former Gov. Steve Bullock of Montana and now-Vice President Kamala Harris.He campaigned on the notion that the federal government should give every American citizen $1,000 a month in no-strings-attached cash. To some voters, it was a compelling vision delivered by a steadfastly upbeat campaigner, and it earned Mr. Yang a loyal following.Now, instead of a guaranteed monthly income for all New Yorkers, he is calling for a $2,000-a-year payment to 500,000 of the city’s poorest residents, a sum one of his opponents has said amounts to “U.B. Lie.” He has yet to clearly delineate how he will pay for it.Mr. Yang’s presidential bid in 2020 was largely based on the idea that the federal government should give every American citizen $1,000 a month in no-strings-attached cash. Christopher Lee for The New York TimesIf Mr. Yang’s campaigns have been premised on the promise of restoring humanity to government — his first television ad in the mayor’s race was called “Hope” — his call for a basic income reflects a darker understanding of history and human nature.The central argument behind his initial proposal was that technology was rendering much human labor obsolete — the “Great Displacement,” he calls it — and that the United States will descend into Hobbesian lawlessness without some form of guaranteed cash.In his book, he ruminates about how the violence might begin, and how the ruling class might react in ways that further cement the divide between the haves and have-nots.“One can imagine a single well-publicized kidnapping or random heinous act against a child of the privileged class leading to bodyguards, bulletproof cars, embedded safety chips in children, and other measures,” he wrote in 2018.Mr. Yang’s visions of an imminent descent into anarchy do not play much of a role in his mayoral campaign, and the language in his book is a sharp departure in substance and tone from his often-buoyant New York appearances.More than anything, he is running as the big-thinking optimistic candidate from outside the sclerotic political ecosystem, arguing that he alone has the magnetic personality and coalition-building skills to galvanize New York City’s economy, bring back tourists and remake government.As mayor, he says he would turn an old rail line in Queens into a park; build and preserve 250,000 units of affordable housing; and create a 10,000-person corps of recent college graduates to tutor students whose learning has been impacted by the pandemic.As he bounces from one event to the next, celebrating the return of sporting events and reopening of movie theaters, he has cast himself as New York’s cheerleader.“I reject the notion that you have to be a creature of the political establishment to be a real New Yorker or an effective mayor,” said Representative Ritchie Torres, a New York Democrat and an early Yang backer, whose district — the poorest in the country — would stand to benefit from Mr. Yang’s guaranteed income proposal. “He’s enlivened the mayor’s race with the sheer force of his personality.”‘Can you imagine?’Mr. Yang has proposed trying to seize New York City’s subway from state control, but has not elaborated on how he would convince Gov. Andrew Cuomo to acquiesce.Dave Sanders for The New York TimesMr. Yang’s entry into the New York political scene was turbulent.He sparked controversy for spending parts of the pandemic with his wife, Evelyn, and their two young sons at their home in New Paltz (“Can you imagine trying to have two kids on virtual school in a two-bedroom apartment?” he asked, in a remark that was widely seen as tone-deaf.). He acknowledged he had never voted for mayor before..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-1jiwgt1{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;margin-bottom:1.25rem;}.css-8o2i8v{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-8o2i8v p{margin-bottom:0;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}And he incensed some New Yorkers with a range of atypical views, from suggesting a casino on Governors Island, which is not legal, to his signaling that he would take a hands-off approach toward Hasidic yeshivas, which have faced intense criticism over the failure of some to provide a basic secular education.Yet for months, Mr. Yang has maintained a lead in most of the sparse public polling that is available, and he is among the strongest fund-raisers in the Democratic field, raising $1.4 million in the last two months alone. There is a palpable sense of enthusiasm — or at least a measure of being star-struck — among many voters who meet him.And he has a ready answer when asked about his dearth of government experience. He says he will surround himself with experts in city operations, like Kathryn Garcia, the former sanitation commissioner and one of his competitors, whom he has said he would like to make a deputy mayor. (Ms. Garcia has dismissed those remarks as sexist and said that she has no interest in serving as his No. 2.)Were New Yorkers to elect Mr. Yang, they would be taking a bet on a leader whose personal magnetism is known, but whose ability to manage a 300,000-person bureaucracy with a nearly $100 billion budget is not.He has never overseen a unionized work force, though he noted that he regularly interacted with members of a health care union when he worked at a health care company years ago.Before running for mayor, he acknowledged, he had “almost certainly” never visited one of the city’s public housing developments, which together are home to half a million people.Mr. Yang has said he would like to make one of his competitors, Kathryn Garcia, center right, a deputy mayor. She has rejected the idea.Hilary Swift for The New York TimesHis own campaign adviser, Bradley Tusk, a prominent lobbyist and venture capitalist with interests in regulated businesses, has referred to him as an “empty vessel.” And his knowledge of New York City can seem spotty.He has lived in the city for 25 years, mostly in Hell’s Kitchen. But in a January interview, he seemed awe-struck by the conditions in some New York neighborhoods.“You saw things that were very, very dark and bleak,” Mr. Yang said, following a tour of Brownsville, a largely Black neighborhood where more than half of households earn less than $25,000 a year. “And people who had given up.”One ally likened Mr. Yang to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who started with a scant résumé and nevertheless achieved.But to many in New York City’s governing class, who prize themselves on their hard-won understanding of New York’s political ecosystem and are aware of just how difficult its bureaucracy is to navigate, Mr. Yang’s campaign smacks of hubris.“Yang has never done a damn thing in New York City,” said Richard Ravitch, the former lieutenant governor and a respected figure in New York politics, who has said he supports Raymond J. McGuire for mayor. “He knows nothing about the government, has no set of relationships with the institutions or the people. I don’t think he’s qualified.”A grab bag of supportersMr. Yang has attracted a significant following from influential ultra-Orthodox Jewish leaders, largely because he has signaled he would take a hands-off approach to yeshivas if elected.James Estrin/The New York TimesMr. Yang presents himself as a nonideological champion of good ideas, an approach that has helped him build a sprawling coalition that includes some Asian American voters and lawmakers, Orthodox Jews, the occasional left-wing endorser and, Mr. Yang hopes, young people.But in the context of New York City Democrats, he is in many ways a political centrist who has alienated a number of activists and won the support of Wall Street billionaires who often back Republicans.He supports making some changes to the police force, like appointing a civilian commissioner, but he was an early backer of adding more officers to patrol the subway and he is a critic of the “defund the police” movement.After a far-reaching Albany budget agreement passed, he said that he supported the measure, which imposed higher taxes on wealthy New Yorkers. But he has been reluctant to express support for tax hikes on other occasions and is perceived as one of the most business-friendly candidates in the field.He is running as an anti-poverty candidate, promoting a public bank to assist struggling New Yorkers. But he has also told Kathryn Wylde, leader of the Wall Street-backed Partnership for New York City, that he wants to end what he sees as the “demonization” of business leaders and that he feels the sector’s concerns in his “bones.”His appeal to centrists and conservative voters is not a new phenomenon, though it was sometimes obscured by the seeming liberalism of his universal income platform.During his presidential run, Mr. Yang’s appearances on podcasts hosted by Sam Harris, Joe Rogan and Ben Shapiro — who have large followings that include many who lean to the right — broadened his appeal among young, male conservatives.In an interview, he said he could not be held accountable for his interlocutors’ opinions. But aspects of his personal behavior have bothered some New York Democrats, too.He recently courted controversy by laughing when a comedian asked him if he choked women. Mr. Yang called the remark inappropriate and said he tried to leave quickly.And his presidential candidacy was trailed by allegations that Mr. Yang fostered a “bro” culture. He also faced two accusations, which he has denied, that he discriminated against women at Manhattan Prep because of their gender.Mr. Yang has won endorsements from several City Council members, including Vanessa L. Gibson, center right.Sara Naomi Lewkowicz for The New York TimesBut Mr. Yang’s allies and rivals do not doubt his capacity to win.So far, his opponents have struggled to build an effective case against him — though there is little doubt that their efforts to do so will only intensify in the final weeks of the race, as will media scrutiny of his policy positions.At a recent campaign event in Lower Manhattan, Mr. Yang tried to elaborate on his plan to wrest New York City’s subway from state control. It is a long-sought goal of a few transportation experts and also of Mr. Tusk. But it is widely acknowledged to be an uncommonly heavy political and logistical lift, and one to which Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo is unlikely to agree.New York City’s transit press corps was having none of it.Mr. Yang was quizzed on the size of the transit system’s bruising debt load. (He failed that test.) He was asked to say precisely what was new in a proposal he had been touting for months. (Not much.)After the barrage of questions, Mr. Yang put on his mask and descended into the dimness of the Bowling Green subway station to wait for the uptown 4/5 train. For a moment, he was able to trade the din of the media for the squeals and groans of the subway system. More

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      Andrew Yang Promised to Create 100,000 Jobs. He Ended Up With 150.

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      Mr. Yang is running for mayor of New York City as a bold thinker and entrepreneur. But his results have been uneven.The idea was as simple as it was ambitious: help struggling American cities by recruiting promising college graduates, finding them jobs at start-ups in those cities and training them to open businesses of their own.That plan formed the backbone of Venture for America, a nonprofit organization founded in 2011 by Andrew Yang, who waged an improbably durable campaign for president last year and now has surged to the front of the pack in this year’s race for New York City mayor.Mr. Yang has undeniable star power, helping to fuel his rise as a political newcomer with big ideas and boundless optimism about the future of the city. Unlike most of his opponents, he has not worked in government or managed any large organization. Indeed, the most extensive leadership experience of his life was at the helm of Venture for America.With the zeal of an evangelist, Mr. Yang raised tens of millions of dollars for the organization with the goal of creating 100,000 jobs in cities where they were most needed, such as Detroit. The aim led the Obama administration to declare Mr. Yang a “Champion of Change” and paved the way for his political career.But a review by The New York Times of Mr. Yang’s tenure at Venture for America found a yawning gap between his bold promises and the results of his efforts.Only a small fraction of the group’s alumni have started companies, and most of those businesses have either closed or moved to traditional start-up hubs like Silicon Valley. Today, only about 150 people work at companies founded by alumni in the cities that the nonprofit has targeted.A self-described “numbers guy,” Mr. Yang left the group’s budget depleted, tax filings show. In 2017, when he left to run for president, the nonprofit spent $2.6 million more than it raised, ending the year with only about a month’s worth of cash in reserves.The goal of Venture for America was to recruit college graduates to work in struggling American cities and train them to open their own businesses, creating jobs.Gretchen Ertl for The New York TimesMr. Yang also failed to recruit many participants of color, even creating a points system for applicants that ended up hurting graduates of historically Black colleges, records show.This uneven record threatens to undermine Mr. Yang’s main campaign pitch: that he is an enterprising problem-solver who can lead the largest city in the United States into its recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.“Andrew comes up with these grand ideas, and he loves to obsess about them and talk about how great they are, but he doesn’t think through all the details,” said Cris Landa, a Venture for America employee between 2016 and last year. She said the nonprofit had an important mission and a talented staff, but Mr. Yang did not lead successfully. “He couldn’t be bothered to actually focus on the details.”For this article, The Times interviewed more than 50 Venture for America alumni and former employees. Many praised the organization for creating opportunities for aspiring entrepreneurs. But nearly two dozen said that despite noble intentions, the program was misguided and ineffective.In a statement, a campaign spokeswoman defended Venture for America and also emphasized that Mr. Yang had experience running a company — managing a small but successful test-prep firm he had joined as an instructor.“Andrew was the C.E.O. of a successful private company that became #1 in the country in its category and was acquired by a public company in 2009,” said the spokeswoman, Alyssa Cass. “He then started a nonprofit that helped create jobs around the country and a presidential campaign that grew from nothing to a national movement. He also wrote a New York Times best seller on the impact of technology on the economy.”Venture for America, which is still in operation without Mr. Yang, declined to comment.Mr. Yang has said he would be eager to delegate some of the gritty details of managing City Hall. He told The New York Post editorial board recently that he saw the mayor’s role as one that was, in part, about “team-building, culture-setting.”Questions of managerial competence and the ability to implement a vision are of vital importance in the race. New York City has a $90 billion budget and a convoluted government bureaucracy with about 300,000 employees; a thicket of political interests compete for attention and money. The election is poised to be the most consequential in at least a generation, unfolding against the backdrop of a pandemic, economic uncertainty, gun violence and racial and socioeconomic inequality.Nearly all the leading candidates have more experience navigating city government than Mr. Yang does, including his chief rivals: Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president; Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller; and Maya Wiley, the former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio.Mr. Yang is largely running a personality-driven campaign that emphasizes his background as an entrepreneur, but he has little personal experience in founding companies.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesNo tech, little entrepreneurshipStill, it is Mr. Yang who has led the polls, casting himself as a big-thinking candidate who is willing to experiment with unconventional proposals and build coalitions and relationships, including in the private sector, as he did at Venture for America.Mr. Yang has proposed some specific policies, including a plan to give about $2,000 a year to the poorest New Yorkers, a scaled-down version of the universal basic income he proposed while running for president. But he is largely running a personality-driven campaign that highlights his background as an “entrepreneur” — the first word of the biography on his Twitter profile.The message appears to be resonating. Mr. Yang is perceived by many voters as a successful tech entrepreneur.Despite that widely-held belief, Mr. Yang has little personal experience founding companies or in the tech industry. Ms. Cass noted that Mr. Yang, who is Asian-American, may face stereotypes because of his race.Asked about his most successful entrepreneurial venture, she said, “nothing was more successful than taking an obscure idea of cash relief and turning it into the cornerstone of a presidential campaign that activated millions of Americans,” an idea that, she said, was reflected in federal stimulus payments during the pandemic.Mr. Yang, 46, graduated from Columbia Law School in 1999 and briefly worked as a corporate lawyer in New York. He quit after five months.In 2000, Mr. Yang started a website called Stargiving that sought to use time with celebrities as an incentive for people to donate to charities. That project “failed spectacularly,” as he wrote in his first book.A year later, Mr. Yang started Ignition NYC, which hosted parties for professionals seeking to have fun and make business connections. It flamed out after about a dozen parties, according to a co-founder.Mr. Yang bounced between jobs before landing at the test-prep company, then called Manhattan GMAT, referring to the exam for business school. The founder was a former roommate of one of Mr. Yang’s high school friends, and eventually asked Mr. Yang to run the business.Mr. Yang ran the company for about four years and helped oversee a sale to Kaplan, the test-prep giant, which netted him a little more than $1 million, former employees said.On the campaign trail, Mr. Yang talks often about that experience. But he played a much larger role in founding and leading Venture for America.A new ideaMr. Yang used $121,000 to start Venture for America in 2011, records show. He has said he developed the idea after seeing many students at the test-prep company go into finance or consulting, even as they said they wanted to change the world and nascent companies badly wanted their help.College graduates recruited by Venture for America attended a monthlong boot camp at Mr. Yang’s undergraduate alma mater, Brown University.Gretchen Ertl for The New York Times“There’s a supply and a demand. We just need to connect the two sides,” he wrote in a letter announcing the group, which he said would resemble Teach for America, the nonprofit that recruits graduates to teach in low-income schools.“Our stated goal is to generate 100,000 U.S. jobs by 2025,” he wrote.The idea drew widespread attention from the news media, including The Times, and donations poured in — mostly from big banks, including UBS and Barclays, as well as from Dan Gilbert, the head of Quicken Loans, and Tony Hsieh, the founder of Zappos, the online shoe retailer.In 2012, Venture for America selected its first class, 31 men and nine women.The group trained them at a monthlong boot camp at Mr. Yang’s undergraduate alma mater, Brown University, and then helped them apply to work for two years as fellows at start-ups in Cincinnati, Detroit, Las Vegas, New Orleans and Providence, R.I.The start-ups paid the fellows up to $38,000 a year, and gave $5,000 to the nonprofit. Many companies jumped at the chance to land top talent at a bargain rate. Venture for America encouraged fellows to come up with their own business ideas, offering to help them find funding.Soon, Venture for America began recruiting much larger classes of fellows and expanding to more cities as Mr. Yang raised more money — and made increasingly large declarations about the success of the program.While leading Venture for America, Mr. Yang ultimately told donors the organization had already created as many as 5,000 jobs. While running for president, when critics questioned the claims of success, he said it had created thousands of jobs.But those numbers were based on an unusual calculation, according to former employees: If the nonprofit sent a fellow to work at a start-up, and that start-up later increased in size, then Mr. Yang claimed those new positions as “jobs created.”Ms. Cass, the spokeswoman for the Yang campaign, acknowledged that method, adding that the group also counted the jobs filled by the fellows themselves.Mr. Yang used $121,000 to start Venture for America in 2011. In the years since he left the company, it has stopped touting its goal of creating thousands of jobs.Guerin Blask for The New York TimesIn the years since Mr. Yang left Venture for America, it has shifted away from declarations about jobs and the 100,000-job goal altogether. Recently, it changed its website to say fellows had started companies that together created almost 450 jobs..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}For its analysis, The Times obtained a list of all current and past fellows, analyzed their profiles on LinkedIn and contacted everyone who said he or she had founded a company. In cases where founders did not respond, reporters obtained information about companies.The review found that of the nearly 1,000 alumni, about 200 said they had started businesses. But about half of those ventures quickly failed, which is not uncommon among start-ups. Many of the others have no employees other than their founders. And most of those that have survived have moved away from the cities where they began.In the cities Venture for America has targeted, there are only about two dozen businesses still in operation, collectively employing about 150 people. Ms. Cass, the campaign spokeswoman, said Mr. Yang was proud of all jobs created, regardless of where they ended up.A movie starring YangSeveral founders said they actually started their businesses before joining the group, including Yelitsa Jean-Charles, a 2016 fellow who invented Healthy Roots Dolls, a multicultural children’s toy company in Detroit that Venture for America has featured on its website.“I benefited from the training that I received from Venture for America, but I absolutely would be where I am regardless,” she said. “V.F.A. was not a determining factor in my success.”Other founders defended the nonprofit.“Did V.F.A. on paper live up to exactly what it said it was going to do? You already know the answer to that,” said Marino Orlandi, a 2015 fellow who founded Aiva, a tech company in New York. “But I don’t see that personally as an indictment. I see that as what happens when you try to be ambitious and solve hard problems.”In interviews, many alumni said Venture for America had succeeded in more intangible ways, teaching about entrepreneurship, fostering long-lasting connections and sending committed people into economically disadvantaged cities. Some said they still lived in the cities and remained friends with other fellows.“It’s a network of other highly ambitious and, in my mind, talented human beings,” said Jack Feldman, a 2016 fellow. “You have a very good network of people who are capable of helping you do out-of-the-box things.”In the early years, Mr. Yang personally recruited fellows. Several alumni praised him as accessible and genuine and said they viewed him as a mentor.But others said they did not enjoy the same support. Some women said Mr. Yang seemed to prefer playing basketball with male fellows to spending time with them. And some fellows who are Black or Latino said they never felt welcome, partially because there were so few of them.Under Mr. Yang, Venture for America focused on recruiting from Ivy League Universities.Gretchen Ertl for The New York TimesVenture for America sent its fellows into cities populated largely by people of color, but its first classes were more than 80 percent white, and nearly 80 percent male, records show.Under Mr. Yang, the organization focused on recruiting at Ivy League colleges, former employees said. As part of the selection process, applicants received a score based on their alma mater. Internal records show the rubric ended up classifying virtually all the country’s historically Black colleges in the lowest tier.So all other things being equal, graduates of the prestigious Howard University, for example, would have had a harder time getting into Venture for America than students who attended other schools — including many that fell far lower in the college rankings released each year by U.S. News and World Report.Vanessa Paige, a Black woman in the 2015 cohort, said that at a start-up where she worked as a fellow, she heard an executive use a racist slur in a meeting. She reported the incident to Venture for America and transferred to a different company, but Mr. Yang and the nonprofit continued to work with the start-up for another four years, emails show.“I believe that he had behaviors and practices at V.F.A. that were anti-Black, and that led to negative experiences for fellows of color, specifically Black women,” Ms. Paige said.Ms. Cass said Venture for America did the right thing by relocating the fellow and eventually cutting ties with the start-up. She also acknowledged that the application process was deeply flawed and said that any bias was unintentional.Others cited additional problems. During Mr. Yang’s tenure, some noted, the organization stopped sending fellows to several cities, in part because it struggled to raise money and find start-ups willing to accept fellows.After Mr. Yang left in 2017, Venture for America eliminated the metric that disadvantaged historically Black colleges, increased its diversity and expanded support for fellows, former employees said.Many people at Venture for America were surprised when Mr. Yang announced he was planning to run for president.Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesAlthough Mr. Yang does not emphasize his time at Venture for America on the campaign trail, his tenure is memorialized in a 2016 film about the program, starring him. The movie, Generation Startup, was directed by an Oscar winner and marketed as an independent feature documentary, available on Netflix.The nonprofit raised the money to fund the documentary’s $1.5 million budget, internal records show.The film follows six fellows in Detroit and ends triumphantly, suggesting that the nonprofit had changed their lives and led four of them to start businesses. (Ms. Cass said the filmmakers chose the subjects.)But none of the fellows live in Detroit today. Only one founded a business that got off the ground: Banza, a chickpea pasta manufacturer that is Venture for America’s biggest success story. It produces its pasta in California.Susan C. Beachy contributed research. More