College students and Neo win big in $1.3B MosaicML deal
Monday’s $1.3B acquisition of MosaicML by Databricks was a payday not just for its founders and investors, but also for the Neo Scholars who took a bold leap to join the company early. This also validates our investment strategy of betting on people: after having introduced multiple stellar candidates to MosaicML since 2021, we invested in the company in 2022. We align our incentives with the students we mentor, and we celebrate when they succeed.
Avery Lamp (MIT 2021) joined MosaicML when it was a seed-stage startup. He worked on early versions of their cloud product, building an orchestrator and tooling to make running ML jobs easy.
Mihir Patel joined MosaicML as a research engineer in early 2022 while studying CS at Stanford. Today as one of the company’s public voices he tweets about their breakthroughs and posts blogs like ”How We Trained Stable Diffusion for Less than $50k.”
Linden Li (Stanford ‘23) interned at MosaicML last summer and will join full-time in August.
Milo Cress (MIT ‘23) interned at MosaicML last summer and will join full-time in December.
At Neo, we pride ourselves on helping startups build legendary technical teams, and we help top CS students maximize their potential by joining (or starting) awesome startups. We introduced each of these exceptional candidates to MosaicML through our recruiting platform and events.
“I knew I wanted to join a startup coming out of college, and Neo was by far the best way to connect with great startups building amazing things,” said Mihir Patel. “I also received so much phenomenal advice in considering offers and evaluating options, which was absolutely invaluable.”
“Neo has systematically introduced us to America’s strongest CS students, some of whom have become core contributors of our team,” said Naveen Rao, CEO of MosaicML. “Beyond funding, they’ve been a partner to recruit key talent, and I’m always impressed by anyone I meet through Neo.”
Since 2014, I’ve spent my career convincing students to join startups. At Dropbox and Sentry, I recall countless conversations with students who hesitated to take the “riskier” path. Their hearts wanted to join a startup, but parents and peers warned them of the downsides. My goal since then has been to help students muster the courage to aim higher, bet on themselves, and push the edge of their capabilities.
The Neo Scholars who joined MosaicML made much more than money. Their impact and personal growth from this experience will transform their lives and inspire others. This also applies to all the Neo Scholars who are making an impact at other startups, including Vanta, now a $1.6B unicorn, Watershed, a leader in carbon accounting, and Scale, now a 7.3B juggernaut.
These students share a common trait: a bold willingness to bet on themselves. If you’re a CS undergrad eager to bet on yourself, apply now to become a Neo Scholar and accelerate your startup journey! (Applications close this Friday, June 30th.)