Small businesses used to be small, but then things started getting super-sized. Suddenly the skills you learned are outdated and the rules that once dominated the workplace no longer apply. The Startup Institute isn’t just a guide to this new landscape, it immerses you in it before you have to step into the real world.
The Startup Institute enrolls students in any of four educational tracks: web development, web design, technical marketing, and sales and account management. These full-time courses last eight weeks and provide an intensive introduction to the modern business world. There are also part-time classes for those who just want to hone their skills.
If the first thing you think of when you hear the word “startup” is all the work required on the back end, you’re not off base. Coding like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript are tools that almost every online company needs. But for so many boot camps and classes, that’s where things start and end.
Kelcey Gosserand, associate director of Startup Institute’s New York City branch, knows how important coding is, but is proud of the fact that there’s an emotional component to what the company does.
“The first week of the program,” she says, “we have a session called EQ. There’s a color wheel, and you learn communication styles based on personality traits. The color wheel has red, blue, yellow, and you figure out if you’re an introvert or if you’re an extrovert.”
Gosserand says the goal is making people comfortable in their own workspaces.
“Communication is key,” she explains, “but when you have a flat org structure, you’re going to be speaking directly to the CEO and directly to the intern. Communication’s moving very fluently.”
There are many ways to learn the skills that go into the work of a startup. The Startup Institute’s goals are to get someone ready to live and breathe within a startup, and that means recognizing that there’s more than just coding, more than just marketing, more than just sales. These are all crucial elements to a company, and they should all interact with each other.
“Cross-functional teams” are a crucial aspect of the Startup Institute’s learning experience, Gosserand says. On any given team, she says, there can be “two developers, a designer, a salesperson, a technical marketer, all working together.”
“Everyone is speaking different languages,” Gosserand says, “but they’re working towards the same goal.”
Stefanie Gray went into the Startup Institute having heard about other boot camps with a focus on coding, coding, and more coding. Gray definitely wanted to get a handle on these skills, but she also wanted to learn about networking and job-hunting skills.
“If you’re a recent graduate,” she notes, “you haven’t learned how the tech world in New York functions in 2015.”
Key to that experience was the Startup Institute’s location inside a WeWork building. That lowered the intimidation factor for Gray.
“It made you feel like you were at home with the startup community,” she says. “You didn’t feel like some trembling student worried if you would get a job. It made you feel like working and hanging out with all these people who had awesome jobs around you.”
Getting thrown into the deep end can be scary—Gosserand compares one of the courses at the Startup Institute with earning a two-month MBA. But today’s business world requires a different set of skills, and the Startup Institute knows what it takes to swim in those waters.