Getting Hired Is Too Hard, So They’re Starting Companies Instead
Starting your own thing can build your résumé—and maybe get you paid too.
Most college students spend their first semester adjusting to lecture hall classes and navigating life away from home. Now more of them are doing that while also conducting market research, building prototypes and figuring out how to file a certificate of incorporation in Delaware.
Dhruv Shajikumar was still in his first semester at Carnegie Mellon University when he started building an artificial intelligence platform for consulting firms. He took a leave of absence from school in January, and by the end of that month the 18-year-old and his co-founders had raised about $2 million in pre-seed capital. “Honestly, I was expecting to finish my first year,” says Shajikumar, who enjoyed campus life and joined a fraternity. But everything happened fast. On some calls, he says, investors committed 10 minutes in.