A group of college students plans to bring college students from around the country to intern at Philly startups this summer.
It’s the ‘attract’ side of attract and retain economic development: a chance to raise the profile of Philly’s tech scene and get students and local startups talking to each other, said co-organizer Fabio Fleitas.
“Students know about Silicon Valley and New York startups for summer internships, but they don’t think about other great places like Philly to intern,” he wrote in an email.
They’re calling it PennApps Fellows, based on the successful four-year-old hackNY Fellows program that does the same thing with New York City startups. PennApps is the student-run hackathon that organizers say is the biggest undergraduate hackathon in the world.
College students, apply here by March 7. (They’re looking for both in-state and out-of-state students.)
The 10-week program will place 8 to 15 students with local startups, offer free housing and host tech talks, Fleitas said. The internships will be paid, he said. It’ll also organize Philly tours of neighborhoods like Chinatown and the Italian Market so students can get a taste of the city.
Despite the PennApps branding, the program is a joint effort between PennApps and student technology group nvigor. It’s organized by Penn students Fleitas and Sean Lynch and Swarthmore student Ascanio Guarini. They’ll use PennApps’ outreach list to spread the word to schools around the country, Fleitas said.
The team already has more than a dozen startups and tech companies on board to sponsor interns or programming, including:
Before you go...
Please consider supporting Technical.ly to keep our independent journalism strong. Unlike most business-focused media outlets, we don’t have a paywall. Instead, we count on your personal and organizational support.
Join our growing Slack community
Join 5,000 tech professionals and entrepreneurs in our community Slack today!
