Developers of NYC Startup Tour to Visit ff Venture Capital

After work on April 18, thirty-five curious developers will visit the ff Venture Capital offices to learn about our fund and listen to technical talks by the founders and technical experts of Parsely and Movable Ink.  If you’d like to join them, contact Skillfer ASAP; there may still be some openings.

The NYC Startup Tour selects promising startups each month and brings developers into their offices for technical presentations and demos and a chance to mingle with the startup teams.

There are an overwhelming number of opportunities for developers in New York’s thriving startup community, and deciding where to apply can be a daunting decision. The tours give developers, especially those outside of the startup community, cultural insight and inside information on the technology roadmaps of the companies. This creates a low-pressure environment for developers to explore and learn about startups.

The developers on the tours come from a wide variety of backgrounds. A lot of the members come from financial institutions and large companies and don’t have much exposure to startups. Others range from students to senior developers. The developers attending are a combination of personal invitees from Jovena Whatmoor of Skillfer, the architect of the NYC Startup Tour, and those that register on the Meetup site. Different attendees are invited for each event, based upon general fit and expected interest in the participating startups.

During the tours, the startups are asked not to actively recruit, or even go over job openings. Instead they create a welcoming environment for two-way conversation. The presentations and demonstrations are followed by a Q&A session, and afterwards the group breaks for the visiting developers to talk directly with the hosting startup developers. This way, before considering applying for a job at the startup, the developers can determine if they have the technical skills, are a cultural fit and are excited by the technology and overall business model.

During their first two events, the Startup Tour visited ZocDoc, SquareSpace, ideeli and Skillshare. Anthony Calenda, CEO of SquareSpace, gave the second-ever private demo of the new 6.0 release, highlighting the beautiful UI and slick HTML5 features. Nick Ganju, CTO of ZocDoc gave insight into how they oversee scaling of their system. At ideeli, four different presenters from different levels of the web and devops teams presented. And at Skillshare, Malcolm Ong talked about his hands-on work building the product with a very small team.

Skillfer is now working with Foursquare, Yodle, 10gen, Thrillist, AppNexus, Conductor, Meetup, GetGlue and Boxee to plan tours for the summer.  To sign up for the next startup tour, visit skillfer.com .

Get invites to exclusive events, jobs, and research.

Get invites to exclusive events and research.