Startup Institute Boston works with professionals, career changers, and dynamic individuals to equip them with the skills needed to have an immediate impact on the startup company they join. Our primary objective is to align passion with profession, and usher students into a life they love.
Our program is a full-time, immersive, two month experience that will catapult you into Boston's technology ecosystem in the areas of web development, product and design, marketing, or sales and business development.
We’re here to help solve the undeniable challenge Boston startups are facing in recruiting, training, and retaining young talent. Our experience and position within TechStars and the larger startup ecosystem has shown us that many early hires are ill-prepared for the unique, fast-paced nature of startup working environments. We believe our program will help remove the hiring burden for top-performing growth companies in Boston that need highly-qualified talent to contribute to their product delivery from the moment they join the team.
We also offer RampUp - a part-time, community driven, hybrid learning experience which teaches in demand skills to individuals looking to advance at work or just learn something new.
The Web Development track will give you advanced knowledge of Ruby on Rails, time to hack, and mentorship from experienced developers.
The track is focused on teaching Rails to developers who have an existing grasp on programming for the web, and have proven their ability to learn quickly. In the first two days you will have a solid understanding of a model-view-controller architecture, followed by a series of Rails labs helping you build a Rails app. From here you will focus on a pair programming project with a strong focus on agile development tactics. In addition, the sessions will give you exposure to topics such as test driven development, Git, AWS, Heroku, node.js, JavaScript, and mobile-first methodology.
The following is an outline of the Web Development curriculum experience:
Ruby on Rails Essentials
The Product & Design track will prepare you for a position as a UI or UX designer, front-end developer, or product manager.
You are going to spend half of the program deep in code. Within the first two days you will have a portfolio piece living on the web. After focusing on HTML and CSS current industry best practices, you will dive into jQuery and Javascript to make your website or webapp interactive. The second half of the program is focused on user-centered design, navigation and flow, rapid ideation, and typography, elevating your skill set to create beautiful websites and web apps. Finally, the track ends with a capstone project, where you will plan out and create a website or web app from inception to delivery.
The following is an outline of the Product & Design curriculum experience:
HTML, CSS, jQuery and Javascript
From day 1 your perception of marketing will be completely transformed. In the first two days you are going to dive deep into HTML and CSS, closely followed by implementing SEO best practices onto your own landing page and customized blog. The Technical Marketing track will train you to be a full-stack, self-sufficient marketer whose mission is to help a company increase their customer base by a factor of 10. You will learn relevant industry tools like Google Analytics, Google Adwords, HubSpot, Mailchimp, and others. And so you’re prepared when you drive 10x traffic, you will learn basic SQL to do your own data pulls from your customer database. This is not the lame marketing course you took in college, this is startup marketing.
The following is an outline of the Technical Marketing curriculum experience:
The Conversion Funnel
The Sales & Business Development track will prepare you for a sales, business development, or account management role at a startup.
Selling for an early stage company is a completely different ballgame. We will break sales down into a replicable process you can implement at your new job. The first half of the track will focus on inbound and outbound sales models. From prospecting & lead generation to account management, you will learn that sales is both an art and a science, and the critical revenue driving force that fuels a startup. There is no better way to perfect your style than to do it. The last four weeks of the program are focused on the Ultimate Sales Challenge, where you will actually sell a product or service to customers, bringing them from prospect to sale by implementing all the strategies you learned.
The following is an outline of the Sales & Business Development curriculum experience:
Inbound Sales
Our instructors are the very entrepreneurs and professionals looking to hire our graduates. They teach with real world examples, and let students under the hood to learn how the startup engine really works. See all instructors
We partner with an elite group of employers to foster meaningful relationships with the community, and focus on advancing every student’s career. See who's hiring
Who’s behind Startup Institute? We are!
Co-Founder and CEO
Aaron is responsible for the growth and oversight of Startup Institute Boston and has held key roles across various organizations impacting the startup ecosystem including Head of Special Projects for TechStars Boston. He helped create Le Camping, the first startup accelerator in France where he focused on building their mentorship and evaluation programs.
@Aaron0
Co-Founder and COO/Dean
Shaun is responsible for strategy and operations at Startup Institute Boston. His mixed background in athletics, acting, and consulting sets a unique culture, which results in a competitive and collaborative environment where intelligence and improv conquers all challenges.
@idealexit
Director of Instructor Development
Will is responsible for helping instructors mold their incredible experiences into engaging, experiential lessons. He was a tenth grade math teacher for Teach For America at the Denver School of Science and Technology. He led his students to outperform the Denver region on state assessment in both growth and overall performance.
@wkeato
Director, New York
Christina is responsible for launching the New York campus of Startup Institute. She has an eclectic background with experience ranging from classical music, acting, and arts management to management consulting and entrepreneurship. Most recently Christina was the founding CEO of Quincy, a vertically integrated ecommerce brand based in NYC, and experienced first-hand the difficulties of finding top talent prepared to the hit the ground running in a startup environment.
@cmwalla
Program Manager
Kailey is responsible for building relationships with partners of Startup Institute Boston. She enjoys connecting the most innovative companies in Boston with the amazing talent pool at SIB. Leading the charge on student engagement both inside and outside of the program to promote the unique SIB culture, Kailey ensures that students become integral members of the Boston startup community and tech ecosystem.
@kaileyraymond
Head of Program Design and Operations
Jeremy is responsible for overseeing operations and designing the experience of Startup Institute Boston. He is driven to create meaningful change, encourage personal ambition, and to inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs. His background in design, music and art culminated in the launch of his own business, Carter Custom Instruments, where he constructs high quality musical instruments for professional artists.
@ccimediums
Director of Marketing and Communications
Will is responsible for all marketing and communications at Startup Institute. Before joining SI, he spent three years as a senior member of Knewton's marketing team, leading content and aquisition efforts as the company grew from 30 to 90 employees. Prior to joining the startup world, Will lead search marketing offerings on the agency side at BKV, Ogilvy, and Converseon. Making the jump to a startup was the best career decision he ever made, and he's always happy to lend an ear to anyone considering the same move.
@willfleiss
Web Developer
Brian writes code, and works with the team to turn business vision a technical reality. He's a big fan of our "Dev Track", and works closely with students. He likes Vim, Python, and Django (ssshhh... don't tell our Rails students). When's Brian isn't thinking about code, he's in the programming community gaining and sharing knowledge with other coders. He's currently organizing Code Mentors Boston and Code Raising, TMing for RampUp, and working on an Open Source project with the Open Concept Lab.
@briandant
Front-End Developer
Paul is the front-end developer at Startup Institute. After three years doing front-end for Bentley University, Paul joined Startup Institute with experience in front-end scalability and dev organization. Outside of the office, he can be found snowboarding, slacklining, or in the woods of Vermont.
@paulnorthup
Co-Founder and Chairperson
Katie acts as an advisor to the SIB team, mentor to the students and graduates, and moonlights as an amazing communication and team dynamics speaker during crosstrack sessions. She is the Managing Director of TechStars Boston and a founder of Project 11, a firm that invests in and assists early-stage startups. She has also been active as an educator, teaching a course with SIB co-founder Reed Sturtevant on entrepreneurship at the MIT's Sloan School of Management.
Co-Founder
Reed acts as an advisor to the SIB team, mentor to the students and graduates, and is a soft-spoken grounding force on all topics related to venture capital and where SIB students fit into startup organizations. He is a founder of Project 11 and a co-instructor with Katie Rae at MIT's Sloan School of Management. Reed was the founding Director of Microsoft Startup Labs and before that was CTO of EONS, Inc., Managing Director and VP of Technology for Idealab (which founded several companies including Picasa and Compete), and co-founder of Radnet and RadioAMP.
Advisor and Academic Architect
Mark was the first architect of our academics and provides strategic vision for Startup Institute. His passion for higher education, entrepreneurship, and innovation have helped to make Startup Institute what it is today. He is serving as Director of Product at edX, was formerly professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, and hails from the University of Washington, Northwestern, and Johns Hopkins. Mark is humbled by his colleagues and wants all young people to do startups.
Advisor
Richard is CEO of Fresh Tilled Soil, a leading user interface design firm based in Boston, MA. Richard's global experience in web-based technology, design and marketing businesses provides him with the necessary insight into providing high-return UI/UX solutions for Fresh Tilled Soil's client base. The company has delivered design and marketing solutions to over 300 clients across several industries since the start of 2005. Clients range from Fortune 500 and public companies like Microsoft, GE Healthcare, and EnerNOC, to top brands like Blue Cross Blue Shield, Ritz-Carlton, Viacord, Harvard University, MIT, Boston University, Communispace, Innosight and dozens of startups and emerging businesses like HubSpot, Vertica, BlueLeaf and hundreds more.
