Why Resilient Coders Has OpenView Excited About the Future of Boston Tech

July 30, 2015

Last week, OpenView had the great honor of hosting students from the Resilient Coders Summer Camp for a pitch session with our investment team.

Resilient Coders OpenView

If you’re not familiar with the organization, Resilient Coders is a volunteer-based program focused on making technology and the surrounding tech community more accessible to urban youth who might not otherwise gain that exposure. Through the Resilient Coders’ program, students have the opportunity to learn HTML and CSS after school, engage in ‘co-working’ sessions and gain hourly employment in the field. High performers participate in Resilient Lab, a web design and development shop with real clients.

As part of Resilient Coders’ Summer Camp, students are taught by professionals and coached along with their peers as they build their very first web applications. This year’s students were tasked with building an app for the Mayor’s office solving two problems: snow removal and youth unemployment.

Resilient Coders Pitch

Prior to visiting OpenView, the students spent time specking wireframes and fine-tuning their pitches. Four teams pitched their applications to and fielded questions from a panel made up of Partners, Associates and Analysts on our Investment team. In the end two winners were selected and the winning applications will be developed over the remainder of the summer and presented at Resilient Coders’ Demo Day on August 27th.

OpenView & Resilient Coders

When founder David Delmar set out to build Resilient Coders, he envisioned creating an organization that would not only give young students the chance to interact with Boston’s tech community, but also one that would increase the pipeline of diverse and qualified talent interested in the innovation economy. This mission is near and dear to our hearts. We know just how hard it can be to find not only qualified talent, but also a diverse talent pool from which startups can build truly amazing and inclusive teams. Diversity is so crucial to the vitality of the tech community in and beyond Boston, that OpenView has made partnering with organizations like Resilient Coders and Startup Institute part of our long-term goals.

The Resilient Coders students came into our office with such energy and excitement, they truly energized our entire team and reminded us why we love doing what we do. We hoped to make an impact on the students at the start of the day, but in the end, I think the biggest impact was the one the students left on our team.

Senior Talent Manager, Engineering

<strong>Meghan Maher</strong> is Senior Talent Manager, Engineering, actively recruiting top talent for OpenView and its Portfolio Companies. Her tech background has helped OpenView hire for nearly 20 IT and engineering positions. Meghan began her career at AVID Technical Resources, where she was a Technical Recruiter for two years.