Tell us the story of how and why you started your company.
I went into Carleton wanting to go into business/finance and all the awesome alumni I talked to pointed me towards investment banking. Unfortunately most of the big banks don't recruit at Carleton and only look at "target school" resumes. Luckily, Carleton has an incredible network of helpful alumni who were willing to lend a hand and I landed a summer analyst position at Morgan Stanley in Hong Kong.
Afterwards, I took a term off from Carleton to cook in hole in the wall restaurants in China (that's a story for another time) and moved out to New York where I emailed all the alumni in finance and ran around town knocking out doors, figuring out what I wanted to do with my life. That's where the idea for Homi began.
We started Homi to help our friends find jobs. We wanted college kids to meet amazing alumni, hear their stories and find careers that really interest them. Homi stands for Humans of My Institution. Our mission is to help people within institutions build meaningful relationships and we're doing everything we can to make it happen.
What’s your most recent success or milestone hit?
We've got over 500 users now and have placed 7 students in jobs and internships. The best part about it is that we've seen a huge jump in user activity (up over 400% in July alone) as we add in more usability features.
Where do you see your startup in 1 year?
We want to be in colleges all over the country helping college kids find jobs and figure out what they want to do with their lives. We already have partnerships with a number of companies to help hire smart and motivated candidates, but we want to bring more employers onto the platform.
We've come quite a way since we started Homi six months ago and it's hard to imagine where we'll be in a year. What we do know is that by constantly learning, meeting new people and solving tough problems, we'll be able to build Homi into something amazing. It's really exciting!
