Standing room only

Thanks to Entrepreneur in Residence, Dan Phillips, over 80 students, with some having to be turned away, came on October 1, 2008 to hear him talk about what it is like to work in a start-up, and to sign-up for a chance at an internship.

The firms like what they see at UMass Boston. Two students, Wararat Tipwimolratchai and Wei Tang, have already been selected by Brighton House Associates venture backed start-up company in Marlborough. There is much more to come.

The College of Management and the Venture Development Center are supporting a university-wide internship program targeted at students who want to work for venture-backed start up companies in the Boston metropolitan area.

These companies are in a range of businesses including novel cancer therapeutics, home care services to the elderly, natural pharmacy, low-cost battery system, advanced microarray instruments, on-demand social media platform, and digital semiconductors.

Students can step into a job needing no more assistance than any other senior level employee. All students are welcome.

There's no doubt that venture capital is a highly competitive industry and an internship can give students the experience needed to secure a good job in the future. Furthermore, an internship will allow them to meet people in the industry who they can later network with.

Finding quality start up internship opportunities is extraordinarily difficult. Students at places like MIT and Stanford line up for jobs. But for the first time, UMass Boston students have the opportunity. What a gratifying sight, students in a cue to give Dan their cards following his presentation!

Dan has spent the last 25 years as an executive with four venture capital backed software companies. Two of these companies executed IPO’s and two were acquired by fortune 200 companies. The most prominent was as COO of Concord Communications which attained an $800,000,000 market cap and the most recent was as CEO of SilverBack Technologies which was acquired by Dell Inc.