This Week @ The Garage SF (10/15)
Introducing The Garage SF, an extension of The Garage at Northwestern, providing resources, programming, and connections for Northwestern alumni working in tech in the San Francisco Bay Area. Our mission is to create a collaborative community that supports one another professionally and facilitates serendipity through connection.
This weekly newsletter serves as our main channel of communication to one another, broadcasting upcoming events, open professional opportunities, and gives & asks from within our community. If you’d like to include something in next week’s newsletter, email me at mike.raab@u.northwestern.edu.
Upcoming Events
Friday 10/18, 5:30pm: The NU Club of San Francisco is hosting a Northwestern vs. Ohio State football viewing party at House Rules
Tuesday 10/22 7pm: The Garage SF is putting together an intimate dinner specifically for founders. Open to all NU alumni founders. Spaces are limited, apply here
Gives
These are available resources, opportunities, and offerings provided by others in The Garage SF community. If you’d like to include any “Gives” in next week’s newsletter, email me here.
Tour of Northwestern space at 44 Montgomery: if you haven’t checked out NU’s sleek space in downtown San Francisco and would like to, email me.
If you have any requests of the NU community in the SF bay area, shoot me an email, and I’ll include it in the next weekly newsletter.
Asks
These are requests from others in The Garage SF community. If you have an ask you’d like included in next week’s newsletter, email me.
Mistro makes it easy for remote companies to provide benefits to their internationally distributed teams. Founders Sarah Ahmad (’18) and Collin Pham (’18) are currently raising an angel round. If you’re interested in potentially investing, email Sarah at sarah@mistro.io for more information. (More info about Sarah and Collin, The Garage SF’s first EIRs, is below)
Jobs / Opportunities
These companies have relationships with The Garage SF community or are explicitly seeking Northwestern alumni candidates. If you’d like to include open positions at your company, email me.
Kapwing, a creative software company that enables digital storytelling ($12.7M raised), is hiring engineers, content creators, product designers, customer support, and a growth lead. Apply directly here.
Ripple, which provides a frictionless experience to send money globally using the power of blockchain (>$120M raised), is hiring in SF across engineering, design, finance, IT, marketing, and more. Apply directly here.
How did Northwestern prepare you for founding a startup in San Francisco?
“Northwestern, and The Garage specifically, have connected us with invaluable people and resources that have helped form many of the soft skills we’re using today.
While at Northwestern, we were also both very involved with The Garage — Sarah was the CEO / founder of HotPlate, Collin was the CEO / founder of Local Technologies. We took our companies through NU’s pre-accelerator program, Wildfire ‘17, which exposed us to a lot of similar challenges we’re facing today.
More recently, since moving out to San Francisco, The Garage’s resources and network have helped us find our early investors, and more smoothly make the transition to working full-time on Mistro.”
To read the rest of the interview with Sarah and Collin, click here.
Meanwhile, back in Evanston…
The Garage at Northwestern hosted its quarterly Startup Matchmaking event on Thursday, October 10! This popular event matches Northwestern students interested in joining a startup incubating at The Garage with recruiting teams that are looking for new members. It’s an ideal way for students interested in entrepreneurship to get involved at The Garage. This quarter, the event had record attendance with more the 200 attendees! Recruiting startups included recent Wildfire participants Catswork, alula, and Tilt and new Resident teams like Scope and Qade (you can see The Garage’s full list of startup teams here).
One more thing…
This newsletter is a resource for you: the Northwestern community in the San Francisco Bay Area. If you have any needs, wants, or asks of the community - please let me know! Similarly, if you’d like to get involved or offer mentorship, job opportunities, event ideas, workspace, or any other resources - get in touch!
Go ‘Cats,
Mike Raab ‘12
Director, San Francisco
The Garage at Northwestern