I've had extensive experience in this market (i.e I've spoken to >1000 student developers) and I think this is the right approach. From a students perspective

I've had extensive experience in this market (i.e I've spoken to >1000 student developers) and I think this is the right approach. From a students perspective most students have close to no-idea what kind of company they want to work for when they graduate and often have a very limited concept of the reality of what working at different companies would involve. From a startups perspective it's very hard to target students, a typical serious recruitment campaign would cost 6-7 figures to run and is really only an option for companies who are hiring a large number of candidates (as you can ammortize the costs of having presence at careers fairs, etc.) - I would imagine Google spends in the millions if not tens of millions in student recruitment every year. Most startups aren't Facebook or DropBox. Look at First Round's portfolio page, chances are that as someone who's familiar with the startup scene you still won't recognize most of their consumer facing startups let alone their b2b startups. Most students will never have heard of these startups. Even if a student cares about the domain of the startup they probably still won't have heard of the startup. You can't be the candidate's first choice if they've never heard of you. But once you've got their CV and you've decided that you want to go after them you can sell them on your company and make it their first choice. I'm also willing to bet that most startups would rather hire a stellar engineer with average passion about the domain (but cares about the tech) over someone with stellar passion and average talent.