By Heather Faherty, Startup Institute alumna
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In the past few days, I have sat or been on phone calls with several people who were curious to hear more about Startup Institute. They were interested in applying, but weren’t sure if they should or not. I valued my time in the program, and the thing I told each curious person was the most valuable part of the program to me was the ability to meet such cool people.
The networking you obtain through the program is unbelievable. Besides learning technical skills, I knew going into the program that the scope of networking it would provide would be key to my success during the program, and key to my success outside the program post-graduation. When I started the program, I had only about 180 connections on LinkedIn. Now post-graduation, I have over 400 connections. I gained 45 connections on LinkedIn from the members in my immediate NYC program alone (42 + 3 program employees), not to mention over 200 more through the events we as a SI group hosted or attended during the program. Most of those 200+ connections are founders of companies, venture capitalists, marketers, sales/business development gurus, designers, or software engineers in the tech community.
Just to prove the networking capabilities the program gives you access to, I decided to map my LinkedIn connections (all 403 of them and growing daily). The blue blob of connections in the bottom rightish contains all links I made in Startup Institute. I have more links from SI than my Northeastern undergrad institution (sorry NU - I love you!)!
I only look forward to continuing to count the amazing people I know and continue to meet on a daily basis, thanks to Startup Institute. It will be incredible to see how this map expands within the coming year…
Apply to Startup Institute Chicago, and ignite your own LinkedIn explosion.
