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Garrett Lord- BUILT HANDSHAKE TO HELP. HIS LINKEDIN FOR COLLEGE KIDS HAS RAISED MORE THAN $400 MILLION AND SIGNED UP 1,400 SCHOOLS WITH 12 MILLION STUDENTS. BUT CAN IT SURVIVE IF COMPANIES START FIRING, NOT HIRING?

- KRISTIN STOLLER

For the computer science major from Michigan Technological University, located in the small Upper Peninsula town of Houghton, a job at the CIA-backed company was a ticket to the big leagues. Sweet gigs at VC-backed software unicorns, complete with high salaries and equity grants, were sure to follow.

Days after arriving at Palantir's Washington, D.C., office in May 2012, though, the 6-foot-1 Midwesterner had serious self-doubts. The 15 other interns seemed to hail from a different universe. They all attended brand-name schools and spent much of their time chatting about their high-end research projects or bragging about upcoming European vacations. Lord's only trip out of the U.S. was to nearby Canada for a hockey tournament when he was a young teen.

"I remember calling my dad and he said, 'You might not be smarter than them, but I do know one thing: You're not going to blow this opportunity, and you will work harder than them," Lord, now 33, recalls. Rather than retreat, he decided he was "gonna crush it" and prove he could "hang with all these kids."

Crush it he did. He won the company's annual hackathon and gained the respect of Palantir higher-ups, who, he says, were shocked that someone so smart and talented came from such a little-known school. They offered him a referral bonus $5,000 per hired engineer-to bring in other talented students from Michigan Tech.

That's when the light bulb lit up: What if Lord could create software to connect talenthungry companies to the thousands of students across the country at lower-profile schools like Michigan Tech? "There are talented students everywhere. And what Zip code you grew up in shouldn't define the career outcome you have after college," he says. "At Michigan Tech, we weren't seen."