Tech Opportunities (2021)

Last updated Aug 2, 2022

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This was originally published on my Medium Planning to have an updated version every year :)

People keep asking me how I find opportunities at startups and stay connected in the startup/VC space so I thought it might be a good idea to throw this list together! I’ll keep updating this article as I find more resources :)

The most tried and true way I’ve found for finding opportunities at startups is to meet as many people as possible and ask for introductions to cool startups they know about. That’s how I landed my roles at Curvegrid (shoutout to Towaki) and nuTonomy (shoutout to my high school robotics teachers Ms White and Mr Millar). However, there are some more methodological ways to find opportunities at cool companies through events, fellowships and some great online s̵t̵a̵l̵k̵i̵n̵g̵ techniques.

Application-based tech fair that hosted by Greylock, a large VC firm. Greylock has many university talent initiatives including the tech fair where they help pair talented tech students with their portfolio companies. Applications for tech fair open every year around April. You can sign up for notifications for when the 2022 applications open here.

The Annual Grace Hopper Celebration is a huge tech conference that aims to bring opportunities and inspire future generations of women in tech. The conference has tons of education workshops, networking opportunities and a huge career fair. When I attended GHC last year, I was invited to interview for 3 companies and ended landing an offer for one at the end!

If you are a university student, most CS departments across North America sponsor women from their universities to attend GHC. If your university doesn’t sponsor, you can always apply for a scholarship directly through the GHC website or through external sponsors such as Facebook and Google. Many large tech companies will offer application-based GHC scholarships every year, so keep an eye out around July-September every year.

Rewriting the Code is a great online community of early-career women with a passion for technology. RTC women come from 800+ colleges and universities, 51 countries and are engaged in tech projects, internships, hackathons and volunteering for good. They started organizing their annual virtual career summit last year and invite tech companies to connect with women in the RTC community through their virtual summit. Their summit is every year in August so be sure to register for it :)

Hackathons are not really meant for job searching. However, most large hackathons like Hack the North will have a large company expo/career fair where hackers can meet tech companies and even get sample products/technology subscriptions to build their project on. Hackathons are where tons of people make great memories, get ideas for their side project and network with other tech students (there are tons of hackathons open to the public too, so it might not just be students attending all the time). Even if there aren’t companies recruiting, hackathons are still great events to go to and build your skills 💻

Disclaimer: I haven’t actually personally done all of these fellowships but just heard great things about them (and/or applied and did not get in 🙃)

• Kleiner Perkins Fellowship — Cohort of Software Engineers, Designers and Product Managers get placed at Kleiner Perkins portfolio companies for internships. After the fellowship, fellows are offered a seed investment of USD$100K for any future startup they found. Applications for this typically open in October.
• Neo Tech Fellowship — They are a mentorship community that pairs tech students with their portfolio companies and offers support for fellows who want to start their own companies. Neo also has a venture arm to support their fellows and invest in promising early-stage startups. Applications for this typically open in May/June.
• NEA Fellowship — If you are interested in the VC/investments side, this is a 2-semester long fellowship for students to work alongside the NEA investment team in New York.
• 8VC Fellowship — Places tech students in internship positions at their portfolio companies.
• .406 Ventures Fellowship — For student founders to join a tight knit community founders and gain access to capital, mentorship and funding.
• Riot Fellowship — If you are interested in the VC/investments side this is a great fellowship to dip your toes in the water. This fellowship pairs fellows with investment team members to help source companies, conduct due diligence and learn the ins and outs of VC. I was part of the Riot summer fleet for 2021, feel free to ask me any questions about it!

Besides their career summit, the Rewriting the Code community is one the most active and engaging communities I have been lucky to have been a part of this past year. RTC has been such a great career resource for me in the past year. The have a member-only invite Facebook group where RTC women share career advice, specific interview tips and network. To become a member, all you need to do is apply on Team RTC — its a pretty simple process, you just basically have to prove you a real person, woman-identifying and student (undergraduate or graduate) interested in tech. They screen every member so that the community can remain a safe and inclusive space 😃

I attended the WeCode conference last year and their post-conference community is pretty active. Sometimes they post cool opportunities in their Slack channel. Definitely consider attending WeCode if you are a woman in tech (+ it was virtual last year due to COVID-19).

This newsletter is ran by Contrary Cap, a student VC fund. They company highlights as well as full-time and internship job postings at high-growth startups.

They share tons of tech opportunities, events, job postings and general tech news. Find it on Substack.

If you’re more interested in the investing/venture capital side of things, John Gannon’s VC newsletter sends out a newsletter with opportunities in VC (mostly full-time though), VC news and tips for breaking into VC.

• Scour LinkedIn — lots of founders know each other so oftentimes, once I found one, I could look through their LinkedIn activity and see them share other startups’ accomplishments.
• Look up VC funds like Kleiner Perkins, Greylock, 8VC, Social Capital, Neo etc. and go through their portfolio companies — you might even have better luck if you go through smaller VCs like Dorm Room Fund, Front Row Ventures, Rough Draft Ventures or regionally focused funds like Coral Capital (Japan). I did this a lot when job searching last year and had some luck with this approach. I did end up interviewing with some portfolio companies I found through VC websites but didn’t end up with any offers.
• Hit up tech Twitter — Twitter is kind of hard to find direction in but once you start following some tech people, your entire feed will turn into tech news and tech opportunities. I’ve heard of people getting jobs and opportunities on Twitter but have never personally gotten one myself from Twitter.
• Get involved with the entrepreneurship/startup community in your region — I am on the investment team at Front Row Ventures, which has also been a great way for me to get more involved with the startup ecosystem in Ontario

I hope this was mildly helpful! Just a little about me: I’m a computer science and finance student at the University of Waterloo and I’ve worked at two startups/medium-sized companies so far: SWE at Curvegrid and robotics engineering at nuTonomy and I’m an incoming SWE intern at Coinbase. Please reach out to me if you have any questions or think I should add some things to this list 😊

LinkedIn. Personal Website.