A web-based startup founded by two Northwestern students has advanced to the third round of the Intel Innovators contest, an Intel-sponsored Facebook platform which awards up to $100,000 to select young entrepreneurs in the technology sector, according to a recent press release.
AlumTalks, which profiles successful Northwestern alumni, is looking to gather as many Facebook supporters as possible before the Feb. 20 deadline. Although the group is currently ranked second in the nation, it must remain in the top five in order to pitch its idea before a panel of investors in the final round.
McCormick senior Chirag Gupta and Weinberg junior Bill Wu founded AlumTalks in May 2011. The organization now consists of 20 NU students, in addition to two faculty members and one alumnus, and encourages students to take advantage of the NU alumni network.
“When we say our mission is to connect students to alumni, we don’t want to do it the way Facebook does it or LinkedIn does it,” said Gupta. “We want people to be having new conversations that they’d never had before.”
To generate these conversations, Gupta said he hopes to use the seed money to improve the organization’s website, making it more user-friendly and accessible for NU students. This could include offering an AlumTalks account to interested students, which would allow them to get in touch with profiled alumni.
Because the organization focuses on both telling stories and connecting students with alumni, Gupta said AlumTalks incorporated elements of a publication, a career resource and a social media outlet.
“We definitely view ourselves as a publication, as a news source,” Gupta said. “It’s just a different kind of news that we’re covering. We’re doing stories about people.”
Both Gupta and Wu still publish content for the site, which has gradually transitioned away from video interviews and toward text articles since it was founded. However, the organization has also employed NU students, who expressed interest before it entered the Intel Innovators contest.
“I think both sides win,” said Gupta. “The alumni get a little bit of attention for their own projects, and the students get to learn from the alumni and get more experience in publishing.”
Although AlumTalks originally limited itself to on-campus alumni and faculty members, Gupta and Wu expanded the organization over the summer, interacting with potential interviewees through social media and online discussion forums.
According to Gupta, alumni now contact him and Wu daily asking to be interviewed by AlumTalks writers. Gupta called this “phase two” of the organization and said “phase three” would mean facilitating even greater communication between students at the alumni network.
“We want to say to students, ‘Look, we have 400,000 alumni. These are people you should be able to connect with, and this is the platform to build those relationships and those connections,'” Gupta said.
Members of AlumTalks said they plan to set up tables Thursday in Norris University Center in hopes of gathering more Facebook supporters before the deadline. Although the organization is not guaranteed to win the contest, Gupta remains optimistic.
“I get a kick out of talking to strangers,” he said. “This job lets me do that every day, and that’s why I’m trying to make it bigger every day.”
