New recruiting platform aimed at entrepreneurial students

July 28, 7:51 AMEntry Level Careers ExaminerHeather Huhman

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An entrepreneur myself, I don’t hide my encouragement for students and recent graduates who have the entrepreneurial spirit within them. So, when I discovered FledgeWing, a new collaborative online community that connects students with mentors, early-stage, small and medium-sized businesses, I knew I had to write about it.

Founded by NYU Stern undergraduates Lewis Drummond and Josh Myers, the company aims to be a “one-stop shop” for university students looking to springboard their entrepreneurial ideas and careers.

“Josh and I founded FledgeWing back in the summer of 2007 after, as student entrepreneurs ourselves, we struggled to find a useful resource for putting us in contact with other students,” said Drummond. “We discovered many existing online entrepreneurial sites, but none focused on university students or featured cross-university audiences, simple student-mentor networking or online project collaboration. In addition to being able to use the FledgeWing platform to launch our next venture, Josh and I saw FledgeWing as a tool to build up our own contact lists of entrepreneurial students and mentors.”

Aside from student and mentor networking, the site provides a project area for collaboration and interest pages for students to discuss the latest trends in their favorite industries. FledgeWing also offers corporate subscriptions and hosts an impressive array of competitions, forums and business articles.

What challenges did these young entrepreneurs face when starting FledgeWing? “One of our first challenges was to get large universities and their alumni interested during the due diligence process,” said Drummond. “Some institutions were hesitant that their students’ ideas might somehow be exploited or that alumni might be unwillingly contacted too frequently. To overcome these challenges, we invested into a unique comprehensive IP agreement that all users agree to upon sign up and introduced profile settings for mentors on how frequently and by whom they can be contacted.”

Now, having established links with 170 universities worldwide, FledgeWing is attracting a dedicated and passionate talent pool. Partnerships with entrepreneurial clubs and institutes serve to expose both communities to a wider international student audience while a feedback-style rating system ensures quality control for both student users and mentors.

Corporate accounts enable companies not only to recruit the top entrepreneurial minds in universities through selective search criteria, but also to interact dynamically. Firms can post detailed descriptions of pertinent organizational problems they are facing in the case study area, gaining innovative solutions as well as an assessment of a student's business acumen. In addition, companies can have dedicated pages to list their internship opportunities, recruiting events and contact details, as well as host forum discussions.

For students, established mentors, or “real world” professionals, are on hand to answer their start-up questions and offer business advice while FledgeWing's comprehensive intellectual property agreement protects their “million dollar brainwaves.” Furthermore, the detailed search engine for finding fellow students makes FledgeWing a unique portal for the nurturing of young business minds.

According to Drummond, there are several reasons for a student to sign up for a FledgeWing account: 

• FledgeWing supports 170 universities from more than ten countries with the majority of students interested in some sort of entrepreneurship. Using the selective criteria in the advanced search, it is easy for students to find exactly who they want to help build out their fledgling venture. This sort of selection isn’t possible on the likes of Facebook whereby one mostly searches for people that you know. Each student has a FledgeWing score, based off of their cumulative positive feedback, which ensures quality control and allows you to know how active they are within the FledgeWing community.
• FledgeWing allows you to create your project online, with document collaboration, privacy options, forums, project tickets and goals along with commenting and rating features. If made public, other students can find your idea and pitch in their ideas while mentors and VCs may be interested in investing. Additionally, we regularly run business plan competitions with cash prizes, to which you can submit your project.
• FledgeWing enforces a comprehensive legal agreement to protect your intellectual property that every user signs up and must adhere to. Although it is a delicate balance between no protection and an overreaching contract, we have had positive feedback and no legal disagreements to date from this policy.
• FledgeWing frequently hosts all-expenses paid networking events around the world. To date, we have had events in London, New York, Oxford and Hong Kong for our students and mentors to meet in person and share their latest entrepreneurial ideas.
• FledgeWing posts jobs and internships from small or high-growth companies that students can browse or might be recommended to in the monthly personalized FledgeWing newsletter. Furthermore, companies post “case studies” or real-world problems that students can answer as a means of a pre-interview assessment. Companies also list their recruiting events and have forum discussions.