The networkSHT 14 · EMBER
What
Ember is.
A private directory of the people building things at Purdue: founders, builders, mentors, investors, and the organizations that run programs. Built by students, for students.
Who sees what
Ember is not public, and you set your own level.
- The open internet
- Nothing
- Ember is not on the public web and search engines cannot index it. Someone who is not signed in gets nothing at all, not a limited version.
- A Purdue student
- What you choose to show
- Any student signed in with a Purdue address can see the people and companies that chose to be visible at this level. This is the level that makes Ember useful to students looking for a cofounder or someone who has solved the problem they are stuck on.
- Partner organizations
- More, if you allow it
- Staff and students at the Purdue entrepreneurship organizations we work with, each added individually by The Anvil. They are the people who run programs, make introductions, and know which investor actually writes checks at your stage.
- The Anvil team
- Everything
- We maintain the directory, so we can see what is in it. That is the cost of having someone review entries rather than publishing whatever gets typed into a form.
You decide what is shown
Every person and company in Ember carries its own visibility setting, and it belongs to the person it describes. You can be visible to every Purdue student, only to partner organizations, or listed with no audience at all while you work on something quietly. You can change it whenever you want, and you can ask us to remove you entirely.
Introductions are made, not scraped
Your contact details are not a field that other people browse. Nobody finds you in Ember and emails you out of the blue. When someone wants to reach you, the introduction is made by an organization, which means you find out who is asking and why before anything reaches your inbox, and you can say no.
It is for finding people, not for being found by everyone
Ember exists so a founder in one corner of campus can find the person who has already solved their problem: a cofounder, a mentor, someone who has raised the round they are about to raise, an organization running the program they should apply to. It is a small, deliberate network, and the restrictions above are what let it stay one.
Being in it is not being funded by it
Ember can put you in front of people who help with fundraising and connections. It is not an application, it does not guarantee anything, and nobody in it is obliged to help you. We are students building a network, not a fund.
Nothing appears automatically
Ticking the box on an event form is a request, not a publication. The Anvil reviews every entry before a profile exists, at the visibility level you asked for. If we are not sure what you meant, we will email you rather than guess.
What we cannot promise
We cannot promise confidentiality. Ember is seen by real people at several organizations, and once someone has read something we cannot unread it for them. The visibility settings decide who gets to look; they are not a guarantee about what those people do afterwards. If something genuinely cannot be shared, do not put it in a directory.
Joining
Tick the box, or email us.
Most people join by ticking the Ember box when they register for one of our events. You can also just ask. Either way somebody on our team will talk to you before anything is created, and you pick your visibility level then.
Leaving is the same, in reverse: email TheAnvil@purdue.edu and we will take you out. We will not ask you why.