Summer of health: Thanking Greenling
Building a company is a great experience. It also takes all the time we have got. So, when someone told us they would buy our groceries and deliver it to our door, we were instantly sold. Greenling is a great Austin company that we got introduced to when our company, Meritful, won Capital Factory’s move your company to Austin competition.
Greenling is awesome. You subscribe to their service and put in your dietary preferences and build a grocery basket. They take it from there. They get you organic foods from local farmers and providers and deliver it to your house fresh every week. In many places, you can choose between two days of delivery, and they give you a lot of flexibility in what is in your delivery basket—-you can change it from week to week, pause it, delay it…everything you would expect. Have a look at our first delivery, in nice green baskets:
We appreciate this is not an easy feat of sourcing, logistics and technology, and it is great to see how it all comes together in Greenling. They are graciously taking care of our groceries, and we would like to thank them very much. We would especially like to thank Jeff and Sarah who made it very easy to work with Greenling, and get our deliveries. Thank you so much!
Meritful is a platform for companies to engage and hire talented students and graduates. We provide a student relationship management platform that allows companies to start early in their college recruiting process and build relationships with promising students. Meritful is used by growing companies who have a need for top college talent.
The Cube House: Thanking HomeAway
This is a public service announcement
Sponsored by Meritful and the good folks who work at Capital Factory
“Fellow Americans, it is with the utmost pride and sincerity
that we thank HomeAway, as a living testament and recollection
of history in the making during our generation”…
(For those of you who follow Hip Hop history, you can the listen to the rest of the song from the Grey Album—-which samples Jay Z and The Beatles—-right here)
Hip Hop aside, we really want to thank HomeAway for making it incredibly easy to get setup in Austin. HomeAway is taking care of our accommodation in Austin after our company, Meritful, won Capital Factory’s move your company to Austin competition.
HomeAway is a great Austin success story. It provides an online vacation rental marketplace and connects homeowners and property managers who list their properties available for rent with travellers. With half a million rentals to choose from, you are bound to find a unique, convenient place that you are going to love, and within your budget. Here is our pick in downtown Austin (“The Cube House”):
As a company, HomeAway is an inspiring story. Founded in 2005, it went public six years later, and continues to be an active part of the Austin startup ecosystem. We are very grateful for the help we have got from HomeAway, and very excited about building a relationship with such a great company in Austin. We would especially like to thank Eileen, Jordan and Victor at HomeAway who made it very easy to find and book a place. Thank you!
Meritful is a platform for companies to engage and hire talented students and graduates. We provide a student relationship management platform that allows companies to start early in their college recruiting process and build relationships with promising students. Meritful is used by growing companies who have a need for top college talent.
Thanking uShip and SpareFoot: moving superpowers
When we first landed in Austin, we went to a taco place.
We didn’t have to worry about unpacking our stuff, or finding a place to store it. The reason? Two great Austin companies took care of that for us after our company, Meritful, won Capital Factory’s move your company to Austin competition.
One company is called uShip. uShip helped us ship our stuff to Austin for free—-we are talking about furniture, household items, vehicles…the whole nine yards. Founded in 2003 in Austin, uShip is the world’s first and largest online shipping marketplace. Once we decided on our dates, we listed our stuff on uShip’s reverse auction website where movers bid for moving your stuff. And in under a week, we had everything settled, and found great shippers that took our stuff safely and securely to Austin. Couple that with the amazing level of customer support we experienced during the week, our move couldn’t have been any easier. We especially want to thank Gillian and Ingrid, who made it a breeze. Thank you so much!
So, your stuff moves to Austin, but where does it sit until you find a permanent place for it? Here is where another great Austin company helps you. SpareFoot! SpareFoot operates an online marketplace for self-storage unit listings. If your idea of storage units is forking over serious money to Public Storage, you are in for a treat. Here you will find a great selection of smaller and independent storage facilities all around the country, with ratings, pricing and everything else you expect. We were done with everything in less than an hour. We found a top rated storage facility on SpareFoot, very close to downtown Austin, and our stuff is safe and sound there. Another pair of great people from SpareFoot, Denise and Rachel, made it so easy to get setup. Great support sounds like an Austin thing, and something we work on everyday at Meritful as well. Thank you so much!
Meritful is a platform for companies to engage and hire talented students and graduates. We provide a student relationship management platform that allows companies to start early in their college recruiting process and build relationships with promising students. Meritful is used by growing companies who have a need for top college talent.
Meritful Unlocks Austin
I am very delighted to announce that Meritful has a new office in Austin. Our path here has been an interesting one, and we are now in a better position than ever to serve our clients, and help you recruit, engage and hire talented students. Let me share some of the exciting details with you.
We came in contact with Capital Factory, a startup accelerator and co-working space last March, through a business competition at South by Southwest (SXSW)—-the annual festival of technology and the arts in Austin. Capital Factory had put together a competition with a compelling package for the winning company to help them get established in Austin. Even without the added incentive, Austin is an ideal city for Meritful. It has a great university and is a hub for a growing number of technology companies, and in close proximity to several other industries in Dallas, Houston and beyond. So it made perfect sense for Meritful, and its mission to help companies hire talented students. We entered the competition, and over a hundred companies and 5 presentations on the SXSW stage later, Meritful was selected as the winner.
Over the last two months, we have been working on the logistics of moving to Austin. As we have a growing list of clients and relationships in Michigan, we are going to keep our Ann Arbor presence (we also love Ann Arbor a bit too much). On the other hand, our Austin office will be responsible for continuing to develop Meritful, and building new relationships in this part of the world. What this means to you, our clients, is that we are in a strong position to keep building Meritful as the best platform to recruit and hire talented students. We now have more resources and connections to serve you well.
We are very excited, and very grateful for Capital Factory and the sponsoring companies that made this possible. It has been an incredible couple of months. Just three days after putting up our office here, President Obama came to visit Capital Factory! We look forward to meeting some great people and companies, and develop relationships in Austin. Over the next days, we will be publishing special posts thanking and highlighting our sponsors. Meanwhile, we will be busy keeping Austin wired!
On a personal note, I would like to sincerely thank our advisors, mentors, investors and clients that have made this path possible. We bleed blue through and through, and we are indebted to countless people in Michigan without whom Meritful would not be here. We will continue to work hard to represent the state and University of Michigan everywhere we go. Thank you so much.
Azarias Reda, PhD
CEO
Meritful
Press Release: Meritful launches a SaaS platform for company recruiting teams to connect top student talent with company ambassadors at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC
For the past 20 years, the college recruiting process at companies has not changed much. It goes something like this: find the campus you want to recruit at, attend the career fairs, post your jobs on boards and your company site, ‘speed-date’ a few candidates over 2-3 interviews and hope that you make a good decision. Meritful, launching at TechCrunch Disrupt in NYC, wants to improve that process.
“Recruiting new graduates is a smart move for companies”, says Dr. Azarias Reda the co-founder and CEO of Meritful. “Top graduates bring a lot of talent, energy and hard work to a company and they cost a lot less compared to experience hires”. Meritful is an enterprise platform that focuses on a key piece of the recruiting process—-building engagement and capturing student mindshare. Meritful allows companies to create this engagement year round, even over multiple years by connecting their top student candidates with professionals and alumni at the company. By allowing employee ambassadors to interact with students in a professional environment, Meritful creates additional data points for both companies and students to make better employment decisions, reducing poor hiring choices and early turnover.
Through Meritful, students have a chance to show who they really are, ask pertinent questions to alumni from their school or professionals in their future role, and show their interest in a company. Conversely, companies can directly engage students and find out a lot more about them. For example, Meritful’s “challenge” tool allows company recruiters or professionals to directly test students for certain aptitudes or skills.
“We want to allow companies to use their best promoters—-their employees—-to show off who they are behind the corporate curtain and attract the right candidates.” says Lander Coronado-Garcia, Meritful’s other Co-Founder. Lander points out that campus recruiting for technical talent is steadily increasing in demand while supply is stagnant. In order to attract top talent, companies need to give candidates a sense of their culture and show students that they will be valued and nurtured.
Prior to launching publicly at TechCrunch Disrupt 2013, Meritful was in private beta with six companies. “Meritful is a thoughtful, relevant and easy to use engagement forum for students and companies.” says Sandy O’Gorman, the head of talent Twilio Inc, one of Meritful’s pilot clients. Meritful is currently in the process of raising a seed round, and recently won a startup competition at South by Southwest with a prize of over $100,000.
TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013 (http://techcrunch.com/events/disrupt-ny-2013) is TechCrunch’s fourth annual conference in New York City. The format combines top thought-leader discussions with new product and company launches. Morning executive discussions debate technology-driven disruptions in many industries, while the afternoons are reserved for the Startup Battlefield, where 30 new companies will launch for the first time on stage, selected to present from more than 1000 applications received from around the world. The winning company will receive a $50,000 grand prize and the Disrupt Cup at the conclusion of the conference. The conference is April 27 - May 1, 2013 at the Manhattan Center, 311 West 34th Street (at 8 Ave.) Manhattan, NY.
Meritul Mid-Week Roundup
Meritful’s recap of relevant articles from the past week. This week: a convicted computer hacker’s perspective on U.S. law and hacking, a disturbing study that shows almost half of college-educated workers are overqualified for their jobs, and ideas to combat the quarter-life crisis.
A Bad Time for Hacking
Citing Hacker Ethic and Aaron Swartz, a previously convicted computer hacker details several cases, asking for reform laws, claiming the stance: “It’s a bad time to be a hacker in the United States, even as the United States need hackers more than ever.” He makes a compelling case. (SOURCE: panodaily.com)
Are You Overqualified for Your Job?
A recent study, released by the non-profit Center for College Affordability and Productivity seems to think that the odds are not in your favor. The study’s leading researcher says that out of 41.7 million graduates, there are only 28.6 million jobs that require a college degree. Yikes. (SOURCE: consumerist.com)
Get Out of Your 20-something Slump
A Huffpo Op-ed piece about the quarter-life crisis, and some tips to overcome said crisis, from finding a mentor to setting distinct career goals. (SOURCE: huffpo.com)
Remember to Stand Out,
Your Friends at Meritful
Meritful Mid-Week Roundup
Meritful’s recap of relevant articles from the past week. This week: public universities now offer free online courses for credit, an engineer student’s unjust expulsion after finding a security breach in his school’s security system, and five things you should never say to a professor.
Universities Now Offer Free Online Courses for Credit
Following suit with Harvard and other top colleges, some public universities are now offering free online courses, and for credit. University of Cincinnati and Arizona State University are among those universities engaged in this new system. (SOURCE: nytimes.com)
Live Long and Prosper,
Your Friends at Meritful
Meritful Mid-Week Roundup
Meritful’s recap of relevant articles from the past week. This week: some cool new tech classes being offered at colleges across the country, an op-ed piece on Facebook’s new search engine, and the Top 10 Things Every College Senior Needs to do Right Now.
New College Courses Focus on Tech, Virtual Communities
You might be feel a twinge of envy in your Stats class when you hear about interesting tech classes that are being offered across the country, from Robot Ethics at Carnegie Mellon to GPS at M.I.T. (SOURCE: mashable.com)
Is Facebook Finally Useful?
A Slate op-ed argues that Facebook’s new Graph Search is a search engine that could prove invaluable, potentially changing the way we use the web. (SOURCE: slate.com)
Things to Do Before Graduating
U.S. News’ list of top 10 things college seniors should do runs the gamut from using social media professionally to conducting informational meetings. (SOURCE: usnews.com)
Live Long and Prosper,
Your Friends at Meritful
Meritful Mid-Week Roundup
Meritful’s recap of relevant articles from the past week. This week: how to maximize your time, combating stress, and how job interviews are the new first dates.
Time Management
- Feeling frazzled with too much to do and not enough time on your hands? Harvard Business Review has some ideas, one of which may come as a bit of a surprise—avoid perfection. (SOURCE: blogs.hbr.org)
- Living in a culture that seems to promote stress isn’t easy. Increase mindfulness and decrease stress with some of these HuffPo tips, including mobile apps. (Source: huffingtonpost.com)
- In some cases, fitting a company’s image can trump qualifications, especially in creative sectors. (SOURCE: businessweek.com)
Live Long and Prosper,
Your Friends at Meritful
By Jasmine Zhu
Unpaid internships and Gen Y’ers, which seem to go hand in hand like peanut butter and jelly— or cabernet sauvignon and gorgonzola—(for those of the Pinterest ilk), are often a source of contention. Using experience as a former editorial intern, I’ve compiled a list of the pros and cons of unpaid internships.
Pros
- Immediate industry experience
- Working in close quarters with arbiters you might otherwise never have a chance of meeting
- Recommendation letters and opportunities post-college
Cons
- Generally considered a privilege of the upper-middle class
All other cons seems to arise from one of two conditions—complaints from a naïve intern hoping to have a more active role (“Yes, Joe, your ideas are terrific—we’ll immediately overhaul our current blogging platform, release your friend’s folk-rock album, and while we’re at it, I might as well just step down from my position and let you have my job” –CEO at Def Jam Recordings) or those that have accepted shady internship offers. Of the latter, I’ve definitely had friends that have been accidentally beguiled into working 40+ hours a week unpaid while their boss conspires to lure them in on pyramid schemes. The best thing to do in this scenario would be to quit as soon as possible, fume for a day or two, then laugh the whole thing off and use it as an anecdote to entertain friends at parties. From there, obtain a more fitting internship, or find a summer job.
In my experience, unpaid internships are generally (and only) “worth it” if you can glean tangible value from them, and if you can afford to have them. If you have time to devote 10+ hours a week to hanging out with friends, couldn’t you reallocate some of that time towards learning HTML and learning about a company that you’ve always been interested in? Think of an unpaid internship as a class you’re auditing, or a hobby you’re keen on developing—pay attention, listen close, and observe those around you. You might learn more than you think.
