About the Fellowship
The Almaworks Fellowship is a program that connects ambitious undergraduate students with select Columbia and Almaworks cohort and alumni startups. Fellows work closely with the company’s founding team to impact organizational strategy, product development, or go-to-market strategy. Furthermore, Fellows have access to our MBA Mentors-in-Residence with experiences in entrepreneurship, management consulting, investment banking, and venture capital.
The specifics of a fellow-company partnership will vary, though responsibilities will include:
Meeting with Almaworks founders to gain a deep understanding of their businesses’ strengths, potential areas of growth, and barriers to success. Specific tasks depend on your expertise, but may include:
Conducting customer discovery and competitor analysis
Spearheading market research
Developing VC fundraising strategies
Reporting on novel business development or marketing verticals and go-to-market strategies
Working alongside the company’s founders to test, refine and implement the solutions of your team
Perks of the program include:
Exposure to Columbia's most promising founders and startups. Almaworks companies have raised $30M in seed funding and have gone on to participate in world-renowned programs like TechStars, Y Combinator and Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator. See our portfolio page for a complete list.
Weekly tailored fellowship programming from talks with successful founders, Almaworks Fellowship alumni, an entrepreneurship book club, and fellow bonding events
A strong network of driven and bright founders and undergraduates interested in entrepreneurship, startups, software engineering, consulting, investment banking, and more. Past fellows have stayed on full-time with their startup, continued their education, or assumed full-time roles such as Facebook’s RPM program.
Note: this is an 8-week-long fellowship that runs in tandem with the Almaworks Accelerator program. In the summer, Fellows can expect to work part-time or full-time while in the program, depending on the nature of their work and the company’s needs. Fellows’ personal and professional interests are taken into account before they are matched with a given company. Please direct any questions to almaworks@columbia.edu.
Next Steps
Testimonials
Nupur Dave, SEAS ‘23
Benjamin Chen, GS ‘21
Amee Assad, CC ‘20
“Participating in the Almaworks Fellowship program gave me an amazing amount of insight into the world of startups. I worked hand in hand with the CEO of a YC-backed startup, spearheading important tasks in outreach, marketing, and growth. I have had an amazing mentorship experience which opened my eyes to the world of VC's, being a female founder, and much more. I would recommend this fellowship to anyone interested in startups or company growth.”
“It is rare to have the opportunity to work closely with the founding team of a start-up with great potential. The Fellowship program exposed me to many essential aspects of running a start-up. The fellowship program brought me some unique perspectives which I believe would be tremendously invaluable to my later career, no matter what I would do in the future.”
“The Almaworks Fellowship brought me closer to my goal of one day founding my own company. Working directly with founders has given me insight into the startup world and has helped me appreciate each step of the process of starting your own company. The relationships I've made through the Fellowship program, whether it was with founders at companies, my mentor or others in the cohort, has given me direction in my career path and shown me the types of incredible endeavors each is in pursuit of!”