We're building the minor leagues for business - where raw talent becomes proven competence through wisdom, not paperwork.
Transform the broken education-to-employment pipeline by creating a generational mentorship movement that democratizes access to entrepreneurial networks and accelerates career development for students who lack family connections or financial safety nets.
Skip years of painful learning through direct knowledge transfer from experienced entrepreneurs
Build verifiable work portfolios instead of relying on traditional resumes
Gain network access to 200+ entrepreneur circles that would otherwise be unreachable
Achieve financial stability ($70-85K) while developing real business competency
Create sustainable career pathways for the 58% of Gen Z graduates who can't find full-time work
Solve the "go around the system" problem - get results without disrupting internal team workflows
Access AI-comfortable generalists who can tackle problems across multiple domains
Receive reverse mentoring on technology trends and Gen Z market insights
Get affordable, flexible talent without $4,700 hiring costs and 41-day timelines
Fulfill the mentorship desire while receiving exponential value back
Replace the failing traditional career pipeline with relationship-based development
Address "The Squeeze" - economic pressures forcing students to rapidly adapt AI capabilities
Bridge the gap between students needing experience and entrepreneurs needing affordable talent
Create a new model where both sides "always get back more than they give"
"This isn't just about business transactions. The goal is to create 'care and custody' relationships where mentors take genuine responsibility for student development, ensuring they don't have to 'go through what you had to go through.'"— John, ProspectForge Founder
At its core, ProspectForge is built on the belief that wisdom transfer should be personal, intentional, and transformative. We're not creating a gig economy—we're fostering a mentorship economy where relationships compound value over decades.
Genuine investment in student success and growth
Taking responsibility for their professional development
Relationships that change lives and careers
Everything about the system is broken. The unemployment statistics are one thing, but the need for entry-level work is disappearing and younger people have to start looking at opportunities that allow them to start their "careers in the middle instead of the beginning," having to take on opportunities at 22-24 that their previous cohorts would maybe do at 30 (Inside Higher Ed).
Many Gen Z grads find themselves in a Catch-22: "entry-level" jobs demand 3-5 years of experience, leaving them to hustle for that experience elsewhere. Professional networking becomes even more crucial in such an environment, but here Gen Z without family or insider connections are at a disadvantage – it's estimated ~70–85% of jobs are filled via networking and never publicly posted (Apollo Technical).
As AI continues to enter the workforce, we're living through a fundamental contradiction. AI is simultaneously removing the need for entry-level work while also enabling people to "start in the middle." This creates a paradox that students must navigate daily.
The opportunity side is real: Upwork's gross volume from AI gigs grew 60% year-over-year in 2024, and Fiverr reported an explosion in demand for "AI-skilled" freelancers - 18,000%+ increases in searches for AI automation specialists over just six months (Upwork; Computerworld). Students who can leverage AI tools are accessing work that previous generations couldn't touch until they had years of experience.
The displacement side is equally real: No-code platforms make basic automation increasingly accessible to non-specialists, while AI tools enable consulting activities to be automated directly (Northwest Education). McKinsey reports that 45% of consultant activities could be automated with existing technology, creating displacement pressure for traditional entry-level roles (Medium).
Students are caught in the middle of this contradiction. The true devastation that AI will do to the job market cannot be quantified and there is not much to do. Regulation has failed and there is not much looking back. Yet students feel the need to adapt to the changing work landscape despite feeling shaky about the implementation of AI and the ethics of using it. 44% of Gen Z students believe they must know how to use AI for their future career, and over half say schools should teach AI literacy.
This isn't like the creation of the internet, which dismantled jobs but simultaneously opened up a whole other "dimension" for work and opportunity. AI definitely does bring some opportunity, but not like the internet did. The contradiction is sharper, the timeline faster, and the ethical questions more urgent.
Those without prior connections are suffering in the job market, and my fear is that this divide will only cause more systemic issues than the ones that already exist. Students from less privileged backgrounds (first-generation college students, for example) who can't tap an alumni network or nepotism pipeline feel this acutely, contributing to a sense that the "old playbook" (apply blindly to jobs, get picked) no longer works.
From my observations, and my perspective, there are a lot of tech-literate, highly capable students that are getting looked over when real opportunity exists in fields where they would thrive more than their well-connected peers. If the industry is moving in a direction that is going to limit opportunity, yet also grant it to many who have less experience, I fear that people who have preexisting connections are going to be able to take advantage of the need for "generalists" before those without connections, cementing inequality before we can even begin to address it.
I look at the opportunities that I had in high school and can understand that I was incredibly privileged, and that a lot of talented people who have the same or even greater skills than me are struggling to make a dent because they lack connections and don't know where or how to start. That is why I want to democratize opportunity as much as possible here.
Now, this doesn't mean that if you are privileged or have connections that you are not allowed to use this platform, that would be silly and counterintuitive.
I want to do whatever possible to change things, or at least do my part with what I have to be able to make a difference. I want to democratize opportunity and give leverage to those who wouldn't have had access to it, so they can then pass it along. I want to be able to have more meaningful conversations about the ethics of AI with people who can make changes, and I fear that protesting from the sidelines is not that effective. I want to be able to elevate as many people as I can, even if it's one person at a time.
As I develop this project, I want to bring on experts in these fields in order to make some sort of ethics board where we develop a part of the moral and ethical framework needed for this next venture of reality. I want to enable discourse between Gen-Z and older generations to find solutions to the growing ethical concerns about the use of AI through conversation. As ProspectForge grows, I believe that the ability we will have to enact change will grow.
The next step that I want the platform to take is in gathering talent despite being a graduate, a student, dropout, or having not attended college at all. If you do better doing freelance work, creating a freelance system that values future connection more than just getting the job done. Shorter gigs and opportunities where you do one series of problem solving.
ProspectForge aims to become the place where raw talent becomes proven competence through wisdom, not paperwork. Like baseball's minor leagues, we develop future stars through real experience and expert coaching.
Success means creating a platform where struggling students become empowered professionals and cost-constrained founders become career makers, with relationships that compound value over decades.
The ultimate measure of success isn't just platform metrics, but whether ProspectForge becomes synonymous with "the generation that fixed the broken career system."
Students placed, mentorships completed, problems solved
Salary improvements, network growth, skill development
Industry adoption, education reform, cultural shift
Being remembered as the generation that fixed the career system
Be part of the generation that transforms how careers are built and how talent is developed. Whether you're a student seeking opportunity or an entrepreneur ready to mentor, the future starts here.