

Million Dollar Carrot Dangled As St. Louis Redefines Itself In Start-Up Space - thecoffman
http://www.forbes.com/sites/marketshare/2012/06/14/million-dollar-carrot-dangled-as-st-louis-redefines-itself-in-tech-start-up-space/

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jeffchuber
The opening line:

"When you think of technology start-ups, a small cluster of cities comes to
mind – Silicon Valley, Seattle, Austin and Charlotte."

Charlotte?? I thought Raleigh-Durham was bad for startups - Charlotte has to
be worse. And where is the mention of New York City? Strange perspective.
Maybe someone from Charlotte can shed light on their Ive league status.

~~~
mindcrime
_Charlotte?? I thought Raleigh-Durham was bad for startups - Charlotte has to
be worse. And where is the mention of New York City? Strange perspective.
Maybe someone from Charlotte can shed light on their Ive league status._

Raleigh-Durham has quite the burgeoning startup scene, but I don't know anyone
(except maybe Charlotte fanboys) who would say Charlotte has a better tech-
startup scene. The RTP area is at least sometimes acknowledged by non-locals,
but I've never heard anybody mention Charlotte as a startup hotbed (well,
until now).

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the_bear
The article touches on this, but the real reason St. Louis could be a great
place to start a company is because it has one of the most underrated
Universities in the country. Wash U attracts very talented students to St.
Louis, but because the school doesn't have much name recognition, very few
tech companies recruit there. When I was at Wash U, the best tech jobs at the
career fair were (in order): Microsoft, Raytheon, and General Mills. Unless
things have changed dramatically in the last five years, I think it's safe to
say that there's not much competition if you're trying to hire developers
there.

Combine that with the low cost of living, and St. Louis might be the easiest
place in the country to hire talented young people.

~~~
tptacek
Ok, I'll bite. What would be the most effective way for my company to recruit
at WUSTL, bearing in mind that we'd be relocating people from STL to Chicago
(or NYC or SFBA, if that's what they wanted).

We've got WUSTL people on staff, and I'm sold on the caliber of its grads, but
direct-to-school recruiting has been a dead-end for us at other schools.

~~~
srunni
> What would be the most effective way for my company to recruit at WUSTL

As a recent (Spring 2012) graduate of the WUSTL School of Engineering, I would
highly recommend that you contact the Career Center[0] for opportunities to
participate in career fairs and register as an employer on CareerLink[1],
WUSTL's career website. The Career Center pushes CareerLink hard with
students, so if you post jobs on there, there's a good chance you'll get some
bites.

I attended a career fair just this spring, and it was _packed_ with students -
there were sometimes lines up to 10 people deep just to talk with industry
representatives. Don't give up so quickly on direct-to-school recruiting.

You should also look into offering summer internships for current students.
IIRC, WUSTL will match whatever you pay interns, making it less of a financial
burden for you, while still making it worth the student's while. This is
another way to grow your "reputation" on campus.

Finally, the students may find it easier to connect with an alum - get your
WUSTL grads involved in the recruiting process.

0: <http://careercenter.wustl.edu/>

1:
[http://careercenter.wustl.edu/tools/careerlink/Pages/default...](http://careercenter.wustl.edu/tools/careerlink/Pages/default.aspx)

~~~
philip1209
For engineering, Michael Chapin [1] is who you want to speak with at the WU
career center.

[1] <http://careercenter.wustl.edu/people/Pages/mchapin.aspx>

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rcrowley
The comments suggesting Wash U's CS program has (too much of) an academic
slant have a point but also miss it entirely. In my experience, the academic
is certainly emphasized over the pragmatic (for example, lots of talk about
algorithmic complexity but zero mention of testing or version-control). That
isn't in-and-of itself a problem, it's just a mistake in the order-of-
operations. I needed a lot of real experience to motivate the academic in me.

In college, you couldn't pay me to read cutting edge CS literature because I
was sure the academics were never going to teach me anything practical. Fast-
forward five years and I'm bored of what I was doing and interested in the
same hard problems academics are. (Of course, I'm coming to worse but
occasionally good-enough solutions.)

It'll be good for Saint Louis and Wash U to have an injection of that context
earlier because it might motivate the academic side of CS early enough for
students with a couple of years left to give more of a shit.

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yawn
Sounds great. Now where are the Who's Hiring posts/comments for St. Louis?

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philipkimmey
I'd love to see St Louis start to develop a tech startup scene.

Low cost of living, really cool neighborhoods and lots of smart programmers at
stodgy big companies. It seems like the city just needs some capital & a few
experienced tech entrepreneurs to get it going.

That being said, I don't know of any Wash U CS grads that stayed in St Louis
for startups - they all headed for the coasts (me included.) Hopefully that'll
change over time.

~~~
vnchr
Hey Philip, I'm working with the WUTE group leaders to (hopefully) launch this
fall an extension of the group called WUTE-VC where we can bring in VCs and
entrepreneurs to talk about the fundraising process from both sides of the
table. Sounds like you'll be out and about, but let me or someone with WUTE
know who in CS might be interested. Thanks!

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atpaino
As a college student and St. Louis native, this really excites me. I wish all
the startups in these programs the best of luck.

~~~
vnchr
Hey! I'm an Associate Partner at Cultivation Capital, one of the venture funds
mentioned in the article. I run an all-night programming Meetup called Code
til Dawn (<http://www.meetup.com/allnightlong/>), next one is on Friday night
if you want to come hang out and talk shop.

~~~
bzalasky
I was going to drop a mention for Code til Dawn, but you beat me to to it,
Israel. Cool to see St. Louis get some Hacker News love...

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dylanhassinger
The STL startup/tech scene is getting better every month. Join us!

<http://startlouis.com>

<http://stljs.org>

~~~
vnchr
Coming soon... <http://istl.co> :-)

