With over 81 colleges and universities within 25 miles of downtown Boston, it’s no surprise this city is regarded as one of the largest intellectual hubs in the world.
And companies have taken notice — small startups all the way up to Fortune 500 companies frequently cite Boston’s rich talent pool as one of their central reasons for choosing the Hub as home.
But how to find the truly talented among a sea of college students? Recruiting tech startup Door of Clubs thinks it has the answer in mining college clubs.
Co-founded by Pranam Lipinski, Adam Rosen and Oscar Moore in 2015, Door of Clubs is an online platform that connects student clubs from all over the country with top companies. 
“It started as a passion project,” Lipinski (pictured right) said. “I wanted to help students in college get more job opportunities.”
Door of Clubs’ platform is built entirely around student feedback gathered from thousands of interviews with students and is focused on getting funding, jobs and internship opportunities for club members. Students can sign up for free on the platform as club leaders or members, then send their resumes to partner companies like Under Armour, Bank of America, Amazon, Lockheed Martin and HubSpot, among others.
Once clubs reach a certain membership goal, they receive a check for up to $1,000 from Door of Clubs they can use to attend conferences or networking opportunities.
For partner companies, Lipinski said they’re gaining access to students who are more likely to be self-motivated team players with experience in public speaking, managing budgets, building products and being leaders.
Companies can use filters to look for students that meet the criteria they care about most when recruiting, like software engineering and sales, to marketing and product development.
“We’ve spoken to thousands of student club members and finding professional opportunities is the number one reason why most of them join a club,” Lipinski said. “They’re doing extra on campus to get those opportunities, but the way clubs receive opportunities is very outdated. They might get an email from a recruiter or blast out an email opportunity to their members.”
A former club founder, Lipinski has long had the entrepreneurial spirit. He launched land development company Mountain Stream Inc. shortly after graduating from Endicott College, but eventually decided to focus on Door of Clubs full time.
All student clubs are welcome to the platform, whether it’s an engineering club, multicultural club, business fraternity, beekeeping club and everything in between.
The company closed a seed round of $250,000 in September 2015, and raised another funding round for the same amount in August 2016. Like clubs, companies can sign up for no charge, but pay an increasing subscription fee for tiers of access.
Right now, Door of Clubs has over 1,000 student clubs on its platform and has 50,000+ users. In 2017, the company hopes to expand its user base and partnerships with companies across the country, and eventually, the world.
Photos via social media
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