Today a new software engineer joins the blist team. Like a couple of other recent hires Matt joins us from Amazon. But more interestingly Matt is a graduate of Harvey Mudd College in southern California. Three of our software engineers are Mudders. The school of just 700 students has only 9 majors and produces only about 125 graduates per year. So how can a startup in Seattle have a quarter of its employees and half of its engineering team from a tiny university more than 1,000 miles away?

It’s deliberate.

Sure, like Stanford, MIT, CMU and UW, Mudd is a fantastic university producing some of the finest engineers, scientists and mathematicians in the country.

But more importantly, by assembling teams with deep connections beyond work you have a greater chance of creating a bond and chemistry that produces phenomenal results at work.

If you aren’t familiar with Mudd, I highly encourage you to peruse what Harvey Mudd stands for. Oh and by the way, do you see that bearded young man taking a self-portrait in the photo roll on Mudd’s home page? That’s Jonathan. He’s a recent Mudd graduate now earning his PhD at UW. He’ll be joining us next week.