This fall, the yearly Tech Trek that Bowdoin’s Career Planning office organizes for students included stops at Tamr, Google, CoachUp and MassChallenge. Along the way, the Bowdoin group met up with several alumni who founded a few of these enterprises.

The day started with a stop at Tamr, where students chatted with with Andy Palmer ’88, Tamr’s co-founder and CEO, as well as with employees Nathan Merritt ’11, Rory Kramer ’11 and Sam Roberts ’14. Tamr helps companies take advantage of internal and external data for better analytics and decision making.

Palmer discussed the benefits of working for a start-up as well as how attitude, specifically the willingness to tackle any project, is important when beginning a first job. Sean Marsh ’95,co-founder and general partner of Point Judith Capital, joined the tour at this point and accompanied the group for the whole day.

From there the Bowdoin students headed to Google in Kendall Square. This visit was facilitated by Mike Daoust ’92, who is the global head of Chrome for Business at Google. Students were treated to a tour of Google’s facility and wide variety of creative workspaces. They also heard from a representative from Google’s campus recruiting arm who described the company’s application processes for internships and jobs.

Next stop was Eze Software, where students heard from the director of the Eze Software Group, Peter Adams ’95, as well as from recent graduates Raya Gabry ’10, Jun Choi ’15, Jason Immerman ’10 and Bobby Kaminski ’14. The company provides global investment technology to support the front, middle and back offices.

They then moved on to CoachUp where founder and CEO Jordan Fliegel ’08 gave a passionate overview about why he believes coaching is important and how coaches positively influenced him in his journey from Bowdoin to playing professional basketball in Jerusalem to founding CoachUp. Fliegel’s startup connects athletes with private coaches.

The last stop was MassChallenge, which runs an accelerator program and competition for promising startup companies. Founder and CEO John Harthorne ’95 explained his story and the events that gave birth to MassChallenge and his vision for the company. Robby Bitting ’11 and Fhiwa Ndou ’13 answered questions from students. Sara Holby ’08, founder of Ajiri Tea, was also present and told her story. Ajiri Tea Company was recently named a MassChallenge Winner.