A nearby startup had found a way to keep interns for a full year.
That got my attention. Reonomy was hiring engineers, and I was already spending a lot of time turning referrals into calls and meetings. The engineering-leadership search had filled the calendar, but we also needed more ways to bring people into the team and let them grow with the work.
I asked the founder of TheSquareFoot for a quick call about the internship program his company had used. We caught up, and he introduced me to somebody currently in it.
The program was NUS Overseas Colleges, run by the National University of Singapore. Students went to partner countries for forty-eight weeks. They worked at a technology startup and also took classes through a local school. In New York, that academic partner was NYU Tandon.
Forty-eight weeks was the interesting part. A short internship can disappear into setup and onboarding. Almost a year gives somebody time to understand the product, the data, the code, and the people around it. It also gives the company enough time to learn whether the arrangement actually works.
I did not know the details yet. I had questions about the program, the students, the schedule, and what Reonomy would need to provide. The email thread shows an introduction and a meeting getting arranged, not a finished hiring plan.
The current application window was closing soon, so I kept the next step small. I asked for fifteen minutes. Our offices were a block apart, and I offered to walk over or meet for coffee. A few calendar options went back and forth.
There was no big recruiting announcement at the end of the week. There was a practical new path to investigate, and somebody nearby who had already used it. That was enough reason to make the walk.