Startup Institute

The Startup Institute did its job. When I left two months after beginning I was hired by an alum as a software developer. I have been employed in this capacity ever since. I leaned some software development, and more importantly I learned the soft skills required to feel comfortable and excell in a start-up / any technical agile environment. I learned enough technical skills. The focus was not really on learning only programming. At the time I found this a tad disconcerting, but the fact is even the hardest core boot camp is not going to prepare you for being a developer.  It is not some rote facts and rules learned about object oriented programming that truly matters, It is your intellectual curiosity, and ability to learn on the job that will help you get and keep your first job. I learned Ruby at  SI and I worked with Python in my first job and now I work with Python, Bash and PHP in my current position. What has helped is the network, soft skills I learned at Start Up Institute. Start Up Institute is a great value that changed my life for the better.(cliche but true :))

 

 

Startup Institute was a great experience that really helped kickstart my web development career.  I would say it's biggest strength is the network you form during and after the class.  You make connetions with great peers, as well as great people in the industry.  The instructors are mostly people who are currently working in real development jobs, so you get very relevant advice. For me, the biggest weakness is that the cirriculum, at the time I was there at least, was not so good at helping you get a portfolio together for prospective employers.  If you are motivated enough, you can get it done yourself, which is kind of the whole point of having a loose cirriculum, but I think it would benefit from having a more structured program.  Overall, I would highly recommend this program. 

Startup Institute has been by far one of the best educational experiences of my life. I was worried at the beginning that my fellow classmates and I would be competing over limited resources (job opportunites in the city), it was quite the opposite. The phenomenon that occured was actually very intentional, a support community was created, a "family" --- sounds too good to be true right? But it is true, once you are in Startup Institute, you are in a family, with experienced parents who want your best. How do they provide you their best? The curriculum changes and refreshes based on the needs of the market, so you know you're in demand when you graduate. Most importantly, they teach you HOW TO NETWORK. This invaluable skill and the family SI creates are your lifevests in this field.

I got my first freelance gig from a partner company 3 days into the bootcamp and I landed a job at Upworthy immediately after the bootcamp through the SI Network in other cities. I made friends for life that I know I can reach out to in the future for support in any way.

Bonus: In Boston's Startup Institute, there exists a man named Alan Telio, he's the Godfather to all the graduates: best, most compassionate advisor! 

I wish I could do my experience all over again :) and I graduated in 2014!

Startup Institute was a great experience that has helped me build both hard and soft skills. While it was a good coding bootcamp for Ruby on Rails, it had many other benefits to make you a well rounded startup employee. SI focuses on soft skills that give you the emotional intelligence to thrive in a startup environment. I took away new open source coding skills from the Web development track, but as an employee that sits between business and technology, I was able to customize my learning and take advantage of other sessions in the sales, marketing and design tracks. It is important to choose the city where you want to find a job because of the network you will build while at SI. Overall it was a great experience that has helped me in my career and has added amazing people to my network.

When I moved back to NYC from San Francisco the Startup Institute provided me an opportunity to integrate myself into the east coast startup scene. It offered a great curriculum in the technical marketing track which I pursued to boost my marketing skill set and introduced me to a network of like minded and talented individuals. Although my life pre SI was in the startup world, post SI I have since taken a job working in Higher Ed as the head of digital marketing for a private university in the northeast. I never would have predicted that this is the path I would have ended up on when entering SI, but that's kind of the great thing about it. The skills you develop here really give you the opportunity to work anywhere and the network of people to help venture into to different indsutries.

I attended Startup Institute in Boston as part of the Web Design track- There are 4 focus areas: Web Design, Web Development, Sales, and Digital Marketing.   I would not have the amazing job that I have today, if not for Startup Institute. You gain the skills and street smarts to work in the startup world, and an amazingly supportive and strong network of alumni, who will be there for advise and building connections.

Highly recommend the Startup Institute for the quality of instruction and support that you'll receive.