

Ask HN:  As a graduating senior, how did you get into startups? - hoka

Graduating Computer Engineering + CS with honors at a top 15 engineering school in the US here.  Unfortunately, my town is dead and I have no interest in staying here.  I have professional experience with Python (Sqlalchemy and django mostly), Java, Titanium Mobile, and a few other technologies.  Class and hobby experience with C++ and embedded C.<p>After a few internships with IBM / a local startup, I think a startup-to-small-sized company is the right fit for me.  I want a team that works hard and cares about what they do with as little bureaucracy as possible.  I know I'm not ready to lead a huge team from a dev perspective, but can get there and I definitely have the people skills already.  Despite whatever technical skills I may have, I think my business sense would probably trump it in the long term, and I know I can talk to customers / investors.<p>As someone not living in SV/Boston/NYC and still in school, can you recommend any places to look / figuring out interview planning?  Right now my plan is to get in touch with companies that interest me and try to set up a week or so of in-person meetings/interviews assuming I can coordinate the timing/compensation.  Beyond that, email communication is my only other plan.  On a related note, would it be bad to suggest that the company brings me on under a provisional (6 months to a 1 year) basis before evaluating me for full time?<p>I've had no trouble in the past going to my school's career fair and talking to recruiters to generate leads, but this hunt is a little different.<p>I'm not looking for advice that necessarily applies to my specific case; I'd appreciate any advice/stories of how you transitioned from senior year to a startup.  Please don't mistake my startup enthusiasm for naive "I want to be a startup hustler!" stuff.  (private messages are welcome too, of course :-) )
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dennisqian
For me (recently graduated in May, in a very similar boat as you), it came
down to networking and getting noticed. I attended
StartupWeekend/3DayStartup/hackathon events around my town and university.
That put me in touch with a lot of relevant people who could give me intros
and referrals to startups I was interested in. Also note that many of the
sponsors of hackathons done at universities are often from tech hubs like
SV/NYC.

I also threw my resume into startup application aggregators such as
engineerapplication.com, nycstartu.ps, hackruiter.com, and angel.co/talent.
Each of those sites got me 2-3 conversations each.

Once you meet one or two people in your tech hub of choice, it'll be easy to
get introduced to many more.

~~~
hoka
This is awesome advice! I'd only heard of hackruiter before, and I applied
when my skill set was much smaller than it is now.

