Bain Capital Ventures, a leading venture capital and growth equity firm with over $2 billion in committed capital, today announced the launch of StartUp Academy, a newly created initiative to provide students with invaluable exposure to entrepreneurship and insights on how to build a business and work with innovative technologies.

Through the StartUp Academy program, Bain Capital Ventures (BCV) will seek elite technical talent from top-tier undergraduate, masters and PhD programs throughout the country, including: Duke, Harvard, MIT, University of Michigan, Princeton,University of Pennsylvania, Stanford, USC and University of Waterloo.  The program seeks to place individuals who are looking make an impact at a startup by placing them in engineering and product management positions at startups funded by Bain Capital Ventures.

An inaugural 2012 StartUp Academy class was selected during a nine-month pilot of the program.  BCV received 779 applicants of which 21 students, or less than 3% of the original applicants, were selected to participate. The participating portfolio companies are expected to continue to hire aggressively through the program.  Recruitment for the 2013 StartUp Academy class will begin in the fall.

Upon joining the program, the students will join a full-time or intern level position at one of BCV's growing portfolio companies. All participating companies are market-leading startups, including: BloomReach, Nomis Solutions, Rent the Runway, Sneakpeeq, Survey Monkey, TargetSpot, TellApart and Tokbox. In addition to working alongside the management teams of these companies, StartUp Academy members will get exposure to investment partners of BCV and gain exclusive access to entrepreneurial events hosted and sponsored by BCV in Boston, New York, and the SF Bay Area.

"The goal of the StartUp Academy is to create a fertile ground to develop the next generation of entrepreneurs," said Ajay Agarwal, a Managing Director at Bain Capital Ventures. "We are an entrepreneurial-focused firm and this program demonstrates our commitment in developing our portfolio companies and providing them with the opportunity to tap into top talent. This uniquely opens doors for companies to benefit from the high-level energy and 'out of the box thinking' that college students bring to the table.  At the same time, this program offers a unique opportunity for the students to learn and develop key skills in an entrepreneurial, startup environment."

"Bain Capital Venture's StartUp Academy is exactly what Silicon Valley needs," said Josh McFarland, CEO of TellApart. "Finding top students can be difficult, so we're very excited for this program because it will help match TellApart with the best new talent. Some of our best hires have come direct from undergraduate programs, and joining a fast-growing startup like TellApart is the perfect way for students and new graduates to study the entrepreneurial process."