Summer is coming, and that means college students are starting to look for internships. Startups could always use an extra hand, especially a hungry young 19-year-old with a lot to prove. Enter Startup Roots, a summer Fellowship program that matches startups with a college student intern.
Startup Roots is a non-profit with a simple goal: to provide college students with a summer-long introduction to the startup world. In turn, Startup Roots will give a few lucky startups a college intern for the summer.
How does it work? Startups apply for interns. Interns apply for Startups. Startup Roots hand-picks the best applicants and matches them up. There are two types of interns: Engineering and Business.
But it doesn’t end there. The most important part of the program is that Startup Roots Fellows will go through a crash course in startups throughout the summer.
Each week, speakers will talk about a variety of startup topics to Startup Roots Fellows. Speakers include Steve Blank (Author, Stanford Lecturer, 7-time Entrepreneur), Jeff Clavier (Investor in Mint), Ann Miura-Ko and Vivek Wadhwa.
So far, over 70 students have applied to be a part of Startup Roots. Startups who’ve applied include Flowtown and KISSMetrics, and a variety of angel-funded or post-revenue startups.
Startup Roots all started when a group of Founder Institute graduates identified the need for a more cohesive summer program for college students interested in startups. Startup Roots co-founder Himani Amoli says, “Our recent foray into entrepreneurship has made one thing terribly clear: school doesn’t prepare you sufficiently for what’s out there. We decided to take matters into our own hands and develop a full-fledged summer program that would provide students with everything they needed to know about startups.”
I am a co-founder of Startup Roots myself, and Startup Roots excites me for similar reasons. Specifically, as an intern at Microsoft when I was in college, the best parts of the internship were the community events with fellow interns and the weekly talks and sessions by famous Microsoft personnel. Even Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates addressed the interns! I want to provide Startup Roots Fellows with a “big company” internship experience while they get to enjoy the benefits of working for a small, kick-ass startup.
Applications are due April 15th so if you’re a startup or a college student, apply ASAP at http://startuproots.org.
