Startup Institute - CLOSED

Startup Institute was a fantastic experience.

Pros:
Great feeling of solidarity with classmates and SI staff
Support when needed
Uses real industry professionals to instruct as well as give guidance and advice

Cons:
Curriculum is a bit unstable. Inconsistency... Read More is felt through out the program in regards to the Web Development track.

Overall, despite the difficulties regarding the curriculum, I believe the soft skills that are taught are critical to success in finding a position in any field.

It is what you make it - so the hustlers stand out above the rest.
I came into with some prior marketing experience (and signed up for the marketing track) so I found the blend of hard skills and soft skills to be just right.
The most valuable aspect was... Read More the connections...industry leaders and startup founders currently in the trenches came in to mentor us. And would leave their contact info with the offer to chat over coffee - the networking was huge.

In the end, I was hired by Ladder.io before the program was even over - and it's currently my dream job.

If you are going to Startup Institute its a great expereience. You will meet so many people from the industry and becuse it belongs to Tech Stars it has some very good Y Combination with venture capatalists which you will not get any where else.

If you... Read More are doing any thing other than back end web dev you will most likely find a job in the startup industry.

They just dont have the expertese or instructurs to teach in a way that will make you a good programmer.

Their teachers are part time contributors who you will most likely only see once and most are not CS degree grads. They will tell you to look through google for everything. Teaching is sporatic with no consistancy and its almost like throwing mud on the wall and see which one sticks.

As a matter of fact you will learn a lot of bad skills from doing random stuff and not learning methodically without skipping the necessary details.

In the end you will not get a job or even feel remotely prepared to apply as a web dev.

Only one of my cohort (web devs) got a job and he had a bachelors in CS. I checked previous cohorts and same story atleast in NY.

Its definately worth it if you have a CS degree or been to a boot camp before. They will expose you to a lot of top industry people and very inspiring.

Its also worth it if you are in any of the other programs and you will get a job.

Its hard to find the info on Web Dev part of Startup Institute and thats why I wrote this to help you make a better decision.

Startup Institute is not really a bootcamp because in a bootcamp everybody is fed the same training, the same food, the same goals, and though you become a finely honed machine (or soldier) you lose your individuality. SI is, contrary to that, very much... Read More about you as a person, about you as a professional, and about your dreams and goals. The program encourages, better said, forces you to look deep inside and try to see what you want to do with your career. Once you decide, the staff will support you wholeheartedly, and the network of SI alums will be for you to tap into.

Rich DiTieri and Stephanie Canzanos, and everybody at SI, only has one goal and that is to make you better, as a future employee, but also as a person --and they devote a lot of time in emotional intelligence, in empathy, and in doing the right thing. Now, what the program is not is training or class. Yes, you can learn a lot, but this is the veritable torrent you will be drinking from, and in a few weeks. So this is not minicollege, nor General Assembly and there is no time for you to seat there and have SI to teach you to be a programmer (but you will be given the resources, the alumni, the materials, the classes, but alas, you will need to work on your own time as 8 weeks is just too short for you to learn programming unless you do all the prework and work on programming on your own time afterwards --of course).

SI is not even a founders school (though many a founder has come from SI). This is not even a guarantee to a job --there simply are not such things out there-- but it is a great opportunity and taking the plunge is all well worth it. I would do it again in no time. ABSOLUTELY AWESOME!

Attending SI with the focus of becoming a front end developer was an amazing decision and I would do it again in a heartbeat.

I had been teaching myself front end skills for about 6 months prior, attended their part time course in JS and loved it. They... Read More introduced me to tons of companies who were looking to hire people of my skillset, helped teach me more on networking and did a lot of focus on finding a job that would be a good fit.

Because SI doesn't have a front end track I took web design, which was interesting but very basic. If you have been teaching yourself you won't learn a ton from the in track sessions but they will still be able to find a company with the right fit.

They also continue job support for 3 months after the program and their job placement rates are crazy high. I definitely credit SI with helping me to get my job and would recommend it to everyone!

For those of you unhappy in your careers and desiring innovation, fast-paced and free-flowing work environments will do well to join the Startup Institute. You will learn more in eight weeks than you ever thought possible, and create a vast network of... Read More colleagues. It will be difficult, but totally worth it. It changed my life.

Before I ended up at StartUp Institute, I had a variety of odd jobs all related to the startup tech scene, but I was unhappy as I wasn't able to convert into the developer world (mostly stuck as an intern or entry level employee). I had signed up into... Read More the product track (which became webdesign) - which was a mix of front-end development, UIUX design, and product development/management. Over the course of two months, the staff and team at SI Boston helped tremendously in advancing the knowledge of myself and other classmates. After graduating, within a month - I had landing a frontend developer role and first employee at a financial technology startup and ended up developing the complete frontend of their application in AngualrJS. I stayed their for a while but since then, I've advanced my developer skillset to include Angular 1.5/2, React-Redux, and Python... I just started a company with 2 of my colleagues and have fundraised and am now Co-founder & VP of Product and will be looking for SI alumni in the future for hiring!

I have to say that when I first was interested in Startup Institute (SI) I looked for reviews, looking for the bad, or at least for the not-so-very-good. I could find practically nothing negative, and now after becoming an SI graduate, I know why: the... Read More bootcamp is fantastic and the staff is extraordinary.

SI has four facets: 1. "fireside" chats by founders and key startup figures, 2. collaboration that mimics the startup experience (IdeaHacks and projects) in addition to a light internship with a partner company, 3. a technical curriculum that also includes job search, private job fairs, and presentation skills, and last but not least, 4. discussion and reflection of what you want as your career, who you are as a person and a professional, and what you want to pursue in your own life. The above demands would make the experience a potential madhouse and an extreme pressure cooker, but it all happens in the context of a supportive and nurturing staff --who has also selected a cohort that for the most part aims to support you. This has been done so wisely and as a constant of past bootcamps so that now an extensive network of alumni is standing by to help you.

Some advice for those that are admitted: study your material and pre-work. This is particularly important If you want to be a developer. Make sure to study Rails and Ruby to the point of executing at least 1/3rd of the Michael Hartl book. (When I took my course, the subject was Ruby on Rails). Make sure you already learned to program Ruby on your own, and can get around the concepts of Rails. You do not want to have to skip key sessions or meeting great people, or spend the valuable time of an alumni discussing syntax errors or easy concepts vs. job leads. The instructors are usually peers from past SI sessions. This means that they are great sources as they can become your friends and give you an inside scoop and a network when applying to their companies --more than instructors, this is perhaps their greatest value to you. In addition, make sure you are comfortable with the command line and that you become proficient in other technologies on your own, and prepare yourself for the technical interviews.

Does this mean that SI's 8 weeks will not transform you to the point where you will become a Master Ubercoder? That's about right --if you want to be a coder first and last, SI will spend your time in stuff you might think is secondary: self-growth, meeting CEOs, building friendships, learning about the business, etc... But if you want to be a master coder AND have a balanced career, then SI is for you --but you will have to complement it with self-work and depending on your learning style and self-motivation this could mean attending other 100% technically-focused programs, GA, Hack Reactor, or of course SI's RAMP UP.

Last dollop of advice, make sure that you find an avenue to keep fit and relaxed, and make sure you eat your vitamins and veggies. You need to keep your stress under control, an exercise routine to be grounded is best, and need to take care of yourself so that you can be ready for the challenge, because this is a challenge. This is an exceptional program --by all means apply. And if you do not get in, ask for feedback and take it to heart, then try again. If you want this experience hard enough, you will get in --and you will not regret it, but will cherish the time as a highlight of a lifetime.

For me the Start Up Institute was perfect. I was able to spend time figuring out what I really wanted out of a career, meet and network with a ton of Boston start-ups and growth phase companies and learn some hard skills along the way. This was a jam... Read More packed 8 weeks of growth, discovery and learning and one of the best parts was going through the process with other like-minded people. While we came from all different backgrounds and experiences we were really able to bond around our shared goals.

I found the instructors and course material to do a great job of providing a good overview and some basic skills for each of the topics covered. If your goal is to become an expert in SEO or Google Analytics you will want to do more than just the required work on your own, but if your goal is to prepare yourself for a change for both soft and hard skills it is great.

The whole SI team is invested in the success of everyone, as are all my fellow cohorts, I really feel like when it comes to career moves I will never have to go it alone again.