London startups tap UK’s top universities for engineering talent
- Deliveroo, MyOptique and Secret Escapes were among the startups that have partnered with student-run organisation HackCampus to bring more software engineering students into startups.
- 1,000 students from King’s College, Imperial, UCL and other top UK universities applied to take part.
- The HackCampus initiative, supported by Index Ventures, a leading international venture capital firm, aims to create closer connections between startups and universities
The third year of HackCampus, a paid internship programme that places the best engineering students in London tech startups, culminated on Thursday with a demo day at Deliveroo’s new London HQ. Students presented projects they undertook over the Summer. More than 1,000 software engineering students from across the UK and Europe have applied to participate. The best have been selected by HackCampus for the 10-week paid internship at some of the UK’s fastest growing startups.
“Silicon Valley owes a lot of its success to building a very strong connection between universities and startups. In the UK, and across Europe, we are missing this link and that’s why we have decided to launch HackCampus,” said Harry Lachenmayer, co-founder of the student-run initiative. “All too often instead of joining startups, the smartest engineering students end up working for banks and consultancies who have an army of recruiters. We hope to change that and make it easy for startups to take on interns and tap all that amazing talent coming out of our universities.”
HackCampus has partnered with many of London’s top startups including Credit Benchmark, Deliveroo, EDITED, onefinestay, Secret Escapes and SwiftKey. It is now looking to significantly ramp up the number of startups involved, in the lead up to its fourth year. “The interest from students has been incredible. We have some of the smartest engineering students applying. We are now seeking more companies to join us next Summer,” Lachenmayer added.
By hiring HackCampus interns, startups bring some of the best new talent to their company, raise their profile at universities, gain extra resource to prototype new ideas and tools and provide their team with an opportunity to further develop leadership skills. “HackCampus do a great job of vetting the interns, and making sure they’re good enough to work at your company,” said Salim Hamid, Lead Technical Recruiter, Deliveroo. “Working with interns gives us a number of benefits, and HackCampus makes it easy to work with interns,” added Donovan Frew, CTO, Secret Escapes.
Dominic Jacquesson, Director of Talent at Index Ventures and Director of HackCampus since its founding, commented: “A shortage of technical talent is one of the key barriers to growth for London’s entrepreneurs. With some of the world’s leading universities on our doorstep, it’s been terrific to build bridges between them and our thriving startup ecosystem. Feedback we’ve had from both startups and students has only been positive, and I’m particularly excited that two of this year’s interns have already been offered permanent software engineering roles by the startups they’ve been working with. I look forward to continuing Index Ventures’ support for HackCampus, as it becomes a key part of the UK’s startup scene, fostering innovation and creating jobs.”
If you work at a startup, and want to hire software engineering interns this summer, you can apply to take on interns here.
If you are a student, and want a chance to get an internship at a startup in London, you can find out more here.
