In 2011, Kleiner Perkins debuted its plans for a summer internship program to place top engineering talent from colleges at the firm’s portfolio companies. The benefit is two-fold: students get to work at the startup level, are mentored and startups get access to young engineering talent that could become full-time after graduation. Last year’s fellows program was a success, says the firm, and today Kleiner Perkins is announcing the second set of fellows. You can see the new class of fellows here.
The program itself is fairly similar to last year. Engineering students are given the experience of working on tough technical problems at startups. Fellows are placed at Kleiner portfolio startups and are also invited to exclusive events at the firm and at portfolio companies.
There are 34 fellows in this year’s program, with applications received from over 1,500 students from over 120 universities (nearly a thousand applicants applied last year). Over 90% of the fellows last year were offered follow-on offers with the companies.
This year, 15 Kleiner-backed companies are hosting Engineering Fellows including Apcera, AppDynamics, Chegg, Coursera, Gumroad, Klout, Nebula, Nest, OKL, Opower, ShapeSecurity, Shopkick, Square, Twitter and Upthere. The firm said one of the noticeable differences this year was that there was greater interest from applicants in the enterprise space.
This increased interest in enterprise is perhaps another sign of the renewed interest in the space.