When your city doesn't have a lot of 'startup talent'
When it comes to startups, there are some cities that just completely outshine every other city in every department: number of startups, available engineering talent, groups of investors, community of early adopters and press etc. San Francisco bay area and NYC are the top two in the US at the moment, infact it is pretty evident even on College2Startup. About 70% of the jobs submitted to us are in those two cities, while the remaining 30% is unevenly spread out between the other cities.
Startups are built in many different cities, however, just like plants, they need the right combination of ‘aid’ to blossom. This is why we see a lot of startups relocating to parts of the country that are considered to be more startup friendly in pursuit of bigger success.
We got an e-mail from a founder who was about to post a job with the hopes of finding a Ruby on Rails engineer to join his startup in a rather remote city in Iowa, but wondered if there was even a chance of convincing a ‘top talent’ to move there. Overall, he was looking for up to 6 employees to fill the startup jobs he had open but didn’t want to move to a different city to do it.
Finding ‘employees’ could be easy, but finding the right startup talent isn’t. You don’t just need skill, you need a specific type of attitude and mentality. This is why College2Startup focuses so much on exploring the background and personality of everyone applying to a job opening we post. So what do you do when there isn’t a lot to choose from in your city?
1.) Consider Telecommuting. 37signals is a prime example of a company whose staff telecommutes and does it effectively. As long as you are able to designate and review the work done properly, having your employees in different cities across the country isn’t such a bad idea. Take it or leave it, most of the best startup talent are those who have gone to schools with a very active startup community or know people in the space and are interested in it. Often times, they are in cities where the supply of talent is much higher than the demand for it. It might be a little tricky convincing them to move away from where they’ve always known (just because startups are so risky), but getting these people to telecommute could solve a lot of problems.
2.) Start a tech/startup event. There are many tech meetups around the country, there’s probably one every day in Palo Alto, whereas some cities don’t have that luxury. As a founder, you may need to take it upon yourself to start a meetup and try to unearth those hidden gems. Some really talented people may be in your area, who are absolutely keen on working at startups or even building one, but have no clue where to start. Some of these people may even just need to see someone else do it to ignite a passion in them. Before you know it, your meetup is growing from 2 to 5 to 10 to 20 members.
3.) Career fairs and College campuses. Most of the prospectives who subscribed to receive startup jobs mailed to them have come from these two places. We have been pretty active at career fairs, college entrepreneurship/tech meetups etc. We have also tried to be as visible as possible online, especially on a site like Hacker News where we like to say “our target market predominantly resides”. If you can’t find the right people, going to career fairs and setting up a table isn’t a bad idea. You get to enlighten people about startups and may even find one or two people who could fit the bill.
Finally, we also get a lot of questions about our demographics. In terms of location, up to 45% of people who have subscribed to receive jobs are in the two main cities: San Francisco and NYC. But our list spans the entire country. So regardless of where your startup is located, you will certainly find a few people in that city or atleast around it who are on our list.
College2Startup Blog
