Startup Shell Applications
At the beginning of every academic semester, the Startup Shell team gears up to admit a new batch of members into our community. This post will cover what we’ve learned about membership over the years and how prospective Shellers can prepare for the application and interview.
Membership
Startup Shell is a student-run incubator and coworking space. We bring together cool people working on cool projects to collaborate in our space, helping each other grow our companies and learn new skills.
Selective
We’re often asked why our community is selective or exclusive. Here’s why.
- We have limited physical space. We want to ensure that our coworking space remains a comfortable work environment. Luckily, we’ve been actively expanding the space to be able to accommodate more members.
- In order to maintain a productive program, we try to keep our numbers under control so we can best address the specific needs of each member. This isn’t an “entrepreneurship farm;” it’s a community.
- Members are admitted based on their skills and collaborative energy. Shell students are deeply invested in sharing (on top of the work they put into their own venture). We take an inside-out approach to inclusivity: administering an exclusive membership process but then sharing the resulting highly-concentrated set of skills with the community through open events, workshops, and open office hours.
Batches
Back in 2012, things were pretty informal. The initial set of Shellers was an organic know-a-guy kind of group. The first interviews were set up informally as we entered the summer of 2013. Over that summer, we knew we needed to get organized as interest was growing and our founders were graduating*. So we planned for a quasi-rolling batch system, deeming the OG Shellers “Alpha Batch” and the previous set of interviewees “Beta Batch”.
Our first Membership Point, Dan Gillespie, set up the Gamma Batch application process and we were blown away with over 100 applications in the first public outreach effort we ever made. There was so much interest that we quickly organized another round later that semester and brought even more people into our community. These members were affectionately named the Gamma Dos Batch.
In order to stabilize a bit, we ditched the rolling process and committed to two application opportunities at the beginning of the Fall and Spring semesters. We’ve now accepted around 120 members since 2012.
Application Process
Here’s how it works.
The Application
Prospective members first apply at startupshell.org/apply. It’s a simple Google Form that helps us keep track of applicant logistics and get an inkling idea about what people are working on.
The application questions used to be much more granular than it is at the moment. Here is what we asked, circa 2013.
- What do you bring to the table? Tell us about your skills, interests, and super powers.
- What projects do you want to develop in the Startup Shell? Note specific ideas you are pursuing or startups you are working on.
- What’s the gist? Pitch yourself in 140 characters or less.
- Feel free to impress us with links to stuff you’ve made or are working on.
We shifted to one primary short essay and a links field after finding that people blurred lines between questions anyway. This question cuts the fat and gets to what we really want to know. The rest, we can find out in the interview.
- Tell us about your venture. Why do you want to join Startup Shell?
- Links to stuff you want us to see
Leading into the next batch, I think we will return to granular questions again to help us stay more organized as we grow.
Interviews
We pore over the application responses, but the interviews that follow are by far the most important step in the process. It gets us face-to-face with our applicants so we can really get to know them and their venture.
In the interviews, we ask questions that directly factor into our decision and cut the “greatest weakness” bullshit. Here are a few key questions we ask and what we actually hope to learn from them.
What are you working on?
Pretty straightforward here. We want to see that students are working on ventures. In the last year, we have shifted from a hackerspace-ey coworking space to a venture-focused coworking space with incubator resources. With so much demand, we now only admit people who are working on a venture, be it a software startup, non-profit, art project, food product, fashion line, etc. This ensures that they will stay motivated and engaged in the community. Additionally, all admitted ventures will present at our bi-annual Startup Shell Demo Day. New ventures are great so long as they are more than an idea.
We really want to see the fire in your eyes. Skip the buzzwords and just tell us what your venture is about with a “matter of fact answer.” Some great nuggets of wisdom can be found in Y Combinator’s application advice. (We share a lot of values with YC.)
Who is on your team and what do they do?
Team dynamics are generally a pretty good indicator of how successful this venture will be. The first thing we look for here is if the team has the core competencies needed to build their product or execute their business operations.
Outsourcing or “looking for developers” immediately throws up a caution sign. It’s fine to be in this situation, but it’s up to applicants to prove that they have the situation under control. It’s obviously beneficial to be able to do as much as possible in-house.
Solo founders are fine so long as they meet the core competency prerequisites. Large founding teams (four or more) are concerning. We find that the ideal group size is generally two or three.
Sometimes, people like to drop how many employees or interns they have. When this comes up, we immediately compare team size to progress. We generally only want to accept the core team members (company decision makers) to be Startup Shell members as they are the ones who need the resources the most. Employees and other team members are of course welcome to work in the space and get involved in the community.
We don’t want to fragment teams, so we only accept core teams as a whole. We’ve seen sole founders show up and explain that their partner is having a tough semester and won’t be able to participate in the Shell. That’s totally understandable, but doesn’t really work in relation to our program. Badmouthing teammates is a red flag, too. This stuff seems obvious, but it proves as an easy filter for us to narrow our search.
This “How to Start a Startup” video from Sam Altman has some great advice on teams.
What progress have you made so far?
This question is huge, perhaps even the most important question out of them all. Progress is a clear indicator of how committed you are to your project. It also helps us distinguish who most needs the space, resources, and community that we can provide.
If new teams are working fast, that’s a great sign. We’d much rather accept a fresh project that is accelerating than an established venture that is stagnating.
Shell Talks are an opportunity for members to share their interests and expertise with the community. What will your Shell Talk be about?
Here, we are solely looking for insight. Shellers are intellectual, constantly thinking about things outside of class. It’s one thing to say that you’re starting a food delivery service, and another to show that you have the unique insight to actually make yours successful. I like to say that insight is reflected in the paragraphs following the intro of a Wikipedia article. Applicants should show that they have this sort of deep expertise. When interviewees bashfully respond with “I dunno, maybe something about computers?”, it shows that that they may need more time to hone their skills. This question is also a great chance to bring up some diverse interests.
Decisions
We try to finish interviews and get to decisions within a week. Our Membership Director creates a committee of directors and volunteer members to democratically select the new members. With up to 150 applicants at a time, this process requires careful coordination and hard work to remain efficient, effective, fair, and transparent.
The committee gets debriefed and signs up for interview slots, usually no more than three or four interviewers per group. Interviewers will take notes throughout the interviews to help jog memory during later discussion. After the interview, each interviewer will give the candidate a score between 1 and 4. This score represents how good of a fit someone is for the program, not necessarily how much we like them or believe in their venture. The aggregate of these scores will aid discussion later and give us a general sense of how people stack up.
The committee gathers at the end of interviews to make final admission decisions. This meeting has taken up to six hours in the past! Each candidate is discussed thoroughly. Beyond the binary admissions decision, every candidate is given feedback on their strengths and areas of improvement, which is relayed back to them in the decision email. The Membership Director also takes notes on appropriate next steps for certain people, whether that is connecting a newly accepted member to a key contact or designating time to mentor non-accepted applicants one-on-one.
All of this information is stored in a spreadsheet. Here’s a look at how we use these documents.
Gamma Batch, Fall 2013
The spreadsheet contains every candidate and some of their details. The 1 through 4 scores make it easy to visually understand how everyone compares. At the bottom of the document, we track how many people an interviewer has covered and also the average score given. This isn’t so much factored into the decision making, but it keeps us in check.
Note how many applicants have something listed under the “Team” column. While Gamma Batch members were not required to enter with a venture, this is a requirement for new batches. In the Zeta Batch document below, you’ll see how many people are applying with ventures (how exciting!).
Gamma Dos Batch, Winter 2013
In our second batch, we had a smaller applicant pool and resorted to a simpler binary recording system.
Delta Batch, Spring 2014
This was our smallest batch, so we tried to do more in-depth written feedback from each interviewer instead of using the spreadsheet.
Epsilon Batch, Fall 2014
The decisions get harder and harder every year. We accepted a massive 25+ person batch here among a pool of really strong candidates. As our team does more outreach and our presence at Maryland increases, the quality of applications goes up. This isn’t so much that the people get better, moreso that the culture at University of Maryland is becoming increasingly entrepreneurial and Startup Shell is doing a better job of setting expectations.
Zeta Batch, Spring 2015 (pending)
We will use this document for our applications this week. Notice how many people with ventures are interviewing compared to previous rounds. This increase in venture-focused applicants is a direct reflection of the UMD culture shift. So awesome!
Going Forward
Every semester, we review and revise this process because we care about getting it right. Our director team is getting better and better at accommodating the needs of our members and their ventures with applications. We’re always open for feedback: hello@startupshell.org
*
I wanted to name batches with the NATO phonetic alphabet (Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, …) instead of Greek letters, but at that point it was too late to turn back.
I’m Jeff Hilnbrand — hit me up on Twitter and check out my portfolio. Thanks!
