It’s a daily occurrence that a college student emails me asking how they can get involved in the Boulder startup community or any startup ecosystem. This gets me both excited and sad – excited that another young soul is ready to put their energy into the fray and sad that opportunities for them to do so are not readily available or visible to them.
For those students looking to get involved in Boulder and in Denver, I always point them towards Startup Summer, a program out of Startup Colorado.
I like to describe the program as a 10-week immersion program into this startup community. Just as being complete immersed in a culture is the best way to learn that culture’s a language, being immersed in a startup community is, well, the best way to be a part of that startup community. The program does this through placing a cohort of students at various startups as an internship region, giving these students exposure to the top entrepreneurs and mentors, and providing a set of crash courses on entrepreneurship that allows the students to truly understand the discourse. A sample of companies participating are Gnip, TeamSnap, SendGrid, and Revolv. You can find the full list here.
Startup Summer is in its third year. For the first time, there will be two programs – one in Boulder and one in Denver. All the internships are paid. Application close on February 28, 2014 – go get the last few positions while you can.
Oh, and if you’re a company in Boulder or Denver that wants to participate, ping me at brad@feld.com and we’ll see if we can fit you in this year. If not this year, then the next.