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Comment by robfitz | Hacker News Reader

I think a lot of students just aren't aware it's possible... All through uni, literally zero people told me startups even existed as an option. No professor, no career counsellor, no guest speaker... nobody.

I accidentally signed up for a course called "project proposal" thinking it was about submitting research to conferences, but it was actually about pitching ideas to VCs. Rocked my world.

Although it wasn't quite what I imagine they were hoping for, I dropped out after that semester and have spent the last 5 years happily entrenched in startups.

My best guess would be that they do not know the option exists and/or they do not believe they can do it. It does and they can.

So spread the word!

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Exactly, in my final year we'd be inundated by almost daily visits from the likes of KPMG, Logica, Accenture, Microsoft, HP, Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank etc telling us why we should work for them.

I only realised that startups were an option after being embedded in the London tech community for a while.

Things like Silicon Milkroundabout http://siliconmilkroundabout.com/ and http://www.workinstartups.com/ are great, but I think they only work for people who are already interested in working in startups.

As a community we might need to start doing outreach to Universities and attending their careers fairs to really get the message out there.

Plus there is also the legacy fear that start-ups are a risk. Students aim for big companies and recognised brands as it's entrenched in their psyche that they must build a decent CV from the minute they step out into the big bad world.

I think that's somewhat mitigated as the UK develops a few more household name brand start-ups like Moshi Monsters and Shazam but I agree it's an issue.

I think the key point we need to make there is that as a developer you want to go wherever you'll learn the most, and start-ups credibly offer that - both by exposure to the broader aspects of building a successful business and also by density of talent.

I don't think you can call Moshi Monsters and Shazam a 'startup' anymore.

That was my experience too. I studied machine learning at Cambridge and didn't know a single person from my class or years above me doing anything other than a phd, joining microsoft research (who were aggressively for computer vision grads then) or joining a completely different field like management consultancy or banking. Looking back I would have loved to join Skype or Last.fm then, but had no idea that they were hiring for people like me.

+1 on the guest lecture point. UCL runs a guest lecture series with founders, but that's focused on business students. This could be shared with other departments like CS and Design.

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