Please rate my application for exceptional Promise
Cc: @Francisca_Chiedu and all
3 LOR:
Letter from CEO of my current company involved in automated design to code conversion (worked a product designer)
Letter from CEO of a Healthcare products focused agency. (CEO is a software engineer, member of Google Developer Expert, and medical Dr)
Letter from my first employer, CEO of a startup studio focused on raising funds for early stage tech startups. Has a very strong public profile (30K followers on LinkedIn)
Personal Statement:
Centred around my passion and efforts for creating digital mental health solutions.
Mandatory Criteria:
MC1 - Cofounder at a Mental health startup based in the UK
Shows analytics dashboard/line graph of a continuous user growth
Shows I am a director
Shows I am directly involved in leading product features both from the engineering and design perspective. ( Designer + Developer)
Shows an invitation to the 3rd and final stage of Techstars London interview. ( Comprises of 3 stages, but didn’t get accepted)
Shows prelim partnerships with NHS via meetings and email screenshot with some NHS trusts in the UK.
MC2
Shows cofounding a crypto payment gateway startup.
Evidence of directorship
Evidence of leading all product design
Evidence of invitation to YCombinator interview.
Evidence of user transaction dashboard
MC3
Key employee involved in a product led startup.
Evidence of contract
Evidence of leading product design
Evidence of leading research that led to a pivot for a new product
Evidence of new pivot (design)
This pivot allowed us raise some funds, yet to be publicly undisclosed. Please what’s a better way to show this as an evidence? – the raise.
OC2-01
Evidence of building an AI mobile app in public.
Link and screenshot of Github code snippet
Link and screenshot of instagram blog that shows the development from idea to deployment over months.
Screenshot of instagram comments showing people willing to learn from the posts.
Screenshot of the Playstore comments of the app and ratings (all positive, about 5 comments)
OC2-02
Evidence of building a flutter package
Screenshot of code snippets and Link of github profile
Project has around 14 stars.
Screenshot of a populous community advising the community members to use the package.
OC3 (5 pieces of unique evidence)
Evidence of architecture and screenshot of my work in various companies along with reference letters to back some – (each doc is unique to a company)
Most of the reference letters here are not signed(but contain contact details) and talk generally about my involvement in the project, but nothing too technically inclined. Does that suffice? @Francisca_Chiedu
Thanks for the response @Afolabi
OC2 is an open-source app, and is meant to demonstrate proof of work outside my day-to-day job. I made sure I specify that it was an open-source app in the document.
The evidence provided for OC3 is not strong enough. You should try and add evidence of contract for the OC3. If theres metrics like user growths, dashboard etc. It will help
Thanks! I have different evidences for OC3, about 5. Do I need to show evidence of contract for all? it drastically reduces the quality of other evidences that I can fit in. Also, can I add a complete screenshot of a reference letter as a means to combine it as part of a single piece of evidence ?
Thanks @Afolabi . I am wary of legibility, so I might as well leave my reference letter as a stand alone document.
For my OC2, Would It suffice to create an evidence that show’s my consistent record of creating and contributing to different open-source projects? all in one document. Because these projects are not very big projects individually, and I would like to make my OC2 stronger by making them a single collective doc/evidence. @Francisca_Chiedu @Chaitanya_Bapat @alexnk @May @Maya @Bubun @goonjanmall @somdipdey @Yusuf_Adebanjo
OC2: I feel this is a just list of activities you did, which may not be strong without quantifiable numbers. I suggest you make sure that there is a positive impact from your GitHub especially, since TN considers this source. For IG, GG Play Store comments, and the app you built publicly seems to be supporting information, which if they are not really strong you may not want to waste a lot of time on it.
OC3: This is mostly about the quantifiable impact you made under your full-time role. A screenshot of your activity may not be very strong. Try to add the project/company report, presentation, email snapshots and etc which demonstrate your involvement and leadership and the impact you did on the project. LOR is mostly just to slightly support the evidence said earlier.
i am not sure how invitation letters to accelerator suggest you are a leader. You need to submit letters of acceptance into the programme not invitation. I also think your evidence are mostly about the products you have built with little about your industry contribution or recognition.
Thanks @alexnk ! Taken note of that. For OC3 especially.
Do you think it is a good idea to compile all my Opensource contributions into a single piece of evidence that demonstrates a continuous contribution to the OSS community? – Just so the evidence is stronger, since that seems to be my weakest evidence? Individually, they are not very significant, but collectively, they look strong.
Thanks @Francisca_Chiedu for the insight. I’ll try to make the necessary changes to the letters that demonstrates leadership.
While for the industry recognition, most of the evidences that I chose (OC2 and OC3) do not explicitly require that? And I mostly don’t have a lot of industry recognition. Any tips on what to substitute that with? or perhaps suitable evidences for industry recognition that you think might be easy for me to get?
Just as an update here, I submitted my application on 5th September, and I was endorsed on the 19th of September. Special thanks to all who commented here, and @alexnk esp, your feed back made a difference.
And for my OC2, I did eventually compile all of my open-source projects as a single evidence, and it seemed to have qualified.
Only challenge I faced was that home office didn’t get back to me until I sent an email just to checkup 3 weeks after my endorsement that I then found out I had been endorsed.
I’m in the UK now too!
Good luck to everyone in the process!
