A Startup Career Fair, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Long Lines
Last week we attended the ACM Startup Career Fair at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Many companies set up booths in a large foyer and spoke with over 400 CS and Engineering students. The magnitude of participation is cause for excitement. As the day’s classes came to an end, students flocked to the fair in droves seeking to learn about high-growth companies recruiting on their campus. One particularly long wait was at the Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) booth, where the top-tier Silicon Valley venture capital firm was recruiting for its portfolio companies.
Long lines, so what?
It was not long ago that most students strongly preferred to join well known brand employers. This was safe, easy and just what you did. Times have changed though and students are considering other opportunities. Talented and heavily recruited computer science grads increasingly want to work for high-growth employers at the cusp of “breaking out”. And the good news is, with the recent influx in legit high growth companies (Uber, Airbnb, Zenefits, etc.), that option is available to more students today than ever before.
Why the shift?
From talking to UIUC students and others around the country, we found out why interests are shifting. Recent grads want to help build world-altering businesses from the ground up. While practically everyone wants to work on projects “at scale”, students are showing more interest in helping to catalyze the growth that allows companies to reach said scale. Those who join high-growth companies will necessarily grow alongside their employer and many students are beginning to realize this. Joining a company in growth mode allows employees to leverage their efforts and write code that creates an immediate and lasting impact on a daily basis.
Andreessen Horowitz, a $4 billion venture capital firm, has over 100 portfolio companies including GitHub, Instacart, Slack, Teespring and Pinterest. Students, judging by their large queue at the a16z booth, believe that joining a startup backed by a proven investor is a solid way to begin their careers. We tend to agree.
Andreessen Horowitz Portfolio Stack
Since our mission at 500 Miles is to help students and professionals discover career launching companies, we decided to build a stack featuring 96 of a16z’s portfolio companies. Insights available in the Stack include headcount and talent quality, so you can have an in-depth look at how companies are currently performing.
Check out the a16z Stack on the 500 Miles app. While you are at it, you can also view our other popular stacks including: Wealthfront’s 106 Career-Launching Companies, Forbes’ “The Next Billion Dollar Startups”, The Breakout List, Wall Street Journal’s 70+ US Companies in “The Billion Dollar Startup Club”, Fortune’s THE UNICORN LIST and Top H-1B Sponsors.
