If you haven't built relationships with entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and people in the tech community, it can be hard to find startups that have job openings. Especially, ones that are actively hiring. I've done a ton of networking, but ironically, I found my job at Acquia through VentureLoop, a job board for venture-backed startups.

At first, it seemed unlikely that I'd be considered or even receive an email response (I was applying a couple months after graduating). But I had to try and it worked. (I'll have to do another post on advice for that process.) But, in the meantime, here are 5 sites where you can begin your hunt. You never know, just apply!Continue Reading...

If you haven't heard, there's a Hollywood movie planned for Facebook. It's based on the lasted book by Ben Mezrich, "The Accidental Billionaires," that tells the story of Mark Zuckerberg, the founding of Facebook, and its tales of "sex, money, genius, and betrayal." The supposed "tell-all" supposedly goes into the nitty gritty of everything from Mark banging chicks in the bathroom stalls to how the market leading social network was born.

West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin has been busy writing the script for the movie, but apparently its been leaked. Carson Reeves who reviews Hollywood scripts on his blog, ScriptShadow, got a hold of it and wrote a review. Here's a piece of it:

 Continue Reading...

We all love excuses because they enable us to make the more convenient decisions.

We all hate excuses because they can prevent us from chasing our dreams.

It can be difficult to take a dive, a risk, and an unusual journey. But, how do we overcome the daily excuses that prevent us from doing so?

My girlfriend just wrote about an approach she took to overcome excuses that have been preventing her from starting and writing a blog. It's simple, yet her approach to writing things down makes so much sense. Essentially, it helps shift your perception of reality that can often take the form of an excuse.

I wanted to point it out because I think it can be a good first step to overcoming excuses that may be preventing a lot of us from chasing our dreams. Especially, entrepreneurial ones. Here's a brief excerpt from her post:

I grew up hating the word excuses. Its what my parents told me I was making up when I didn’t want to do something. “I’m not making up excuses!” I would say. That was a pretty good one, looking back.

One of the problems with having a big imagination is that excuses come easily, and intricately. When something is so detailed and entangled in personal weaknesses, it becomes difficult to refute. The excuse becomes a remedy to the problem.

One of the main methods in cognitive behavioral therapy for getting a patient to understand the absurdity of the thoughts they choose to believe is to write them down. There is something very honest about words standing up on a page. So here they are, ten excuses I found myself making over the past year (and tonight) that have hindered me from writing: Continue reading on Alexandra Hastings blog...

Media has been obsessed with the ongoing saga and competition between the electric car start-ups such as Tesla and Fisker Automotive. There's many others, too. For instance, VentureBeat has chronicled 30 different electric car companies.

The automotive industry is shambles and are start-ups beginning to take over.

Yes, these companies are impressive. But, what do you get when you take it to an even higher level? Can a car be crowdsourced?

So far, the answer is yes. And we've already explained how Local Motors plans to crowdsource the design of a car. But, have they been able to make their mark?

The start-up that originally stemmed from a Harvard Business School competition is already on to the next phase by using competitions to crowdsource engineering. But first, lets take a look at what they've been able to produce using the crowdsourced approach. Below are some of the designs for the final product.  And then we'll take a look at the next stage.Continue Reading...

The following is an interview with entrepreneur Stuart Schultz, the founder of Gradspot. You can think of Gradspot as a resource hub for recent college graduates. The interview dives into his experience starting Gradspot, challenges Stuart faced, his business model, how he's growing his start-up, advice, and long term plans. (Shoot me an email if you'd like to do an interview with College Mogul.) Enjoy...

1. What inspired you to start Gradspot?

When I was transitioning from college to the real world, I, for the first time, recognized that I didn't have any safety nets around me and there weren't any specific resources that could help me tackle issues that I ran into - and I don't mean, how to find an apartment, I mean, how, as a recent grad, with not much income and no credit, can I find an apartment? As I took a step back, I became even more surprised that even though millions of people are transitioning each year, no one is sharing their experiences nor the tips and tricks that they picked up. So, I built Gradspot.com to fill this need - we want Gradspot.com to both be a place you can turn to find out how to approach issues you confront in life after college as well as a place where you can share your experiences with people going through similar ones. We started developing the concept about two years ago (April 2007).

2. What is the Gradspot pitch?      Continue Reading...

The following article is from College Magazine, written by Ashley E. Nolan, a student at Maryland University, and syndicated here with permission from the magazine. 

Style in the City: Colette Young

Perched high above New York City in her studio apartment near Penn Station, Colette Young snacks on baked chicken and balsamic sautéed Portobello mushrooms, leftovers from the night before. Just beyond her left shoulder, a mannequin is dressed impeccably in a black and gold shift dress, complemented by a chic black hat a la Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Colette opts for a more comfortable outfit, wearing a gray tank top, her sleek brown hair in a bun.

With a resume that includes co-founding a contemporary women’s boutique in her hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma, meeting with manufacturers in Korea and designers in Paris and attending cocktail parties at the gossip-worthy Beverly Hills, you might think Colette has been a fixture on the high-end fashion scene for decades. In fact, she is just 18 years old, a budding freshman at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City.

“My mindset isn’t that of an 18-year-old,” she said laughing. “It’s 30.”

Meet L’Colette      Continue Reading...

It should be hardly surprising that you find me criticizing about the lack of support for the growing trend of college entrepreneurship if you've read my previous post, The Grey Entrepreneur. There are going to be seismic social changes which will be great opportunity with the increasing supply of student entrepreneurs in the market.

Education is far too archaic and bureaucratic to make the paradigm changes necessary. And this is coming from a student attending Babson College, the number one ‘ranked’ school for entrepreneurship. As good as they are, the Y-Combinator’s ,TechStars  and DreamIt Ventures  aren’t big enough to cover or assist the growing number of young, first-time entrepreneurs. [Here's a directory of other start-up incubators.]Continue Reading...

Great cities attract ambitious people. You can sense it when you walk around one. In a hundred subtle ways, the city sends you a message: you could do more; you should try harder.

- Paul Graham

Paul Graham writes brilliant essays on technology, startups, and innovation, which I recommend as must reads for any entrepreneur. In one title "Cities and Ambition", he discusses the different types of personalities and characteristics that a city has. Each city sends a particular message, which in turn, can have a huge effect on the type of people that it attracts and the type of community that it builds.

How much does it matter what message a city sends? Empirically, the answer seems to be: a lot. You might think that if you had enough strength of mind to do great things, you'd be able to transcend your environment. Where you live should make at most a couple percent difference. But if you look at the historical evidence, it seems to matter more than that. Most people who did great things were clumped together in a few places where that sort of thing was done at the time.

I live in Cambridge, MA, where Graham describes the message as "You should be smarter. You really should get around to reading all those books you've been meaning to." I completely agree with him.

New York is all about being rich. And...

Silicon Valley is all about being powerful.

But, what about being entrepreneurial and supportive of start-ups.Continue Reading...