What I Did Last Summer
How was that summer internship? We asked rising MBA2s about their experiences, at businesses from big players — Nike, Google, a Big Three auto maker — to one-person startups. Some felt a warm engagement, others a veneer of politeness concealing a cold indifference. Autonomy, much prized by some classmates, discouraged others. And some pursued very different routes. Here are a dozen accounts.
- Big Three Automaker (Stephen Lewis)
- Forward Progress in Politics (Lauren Dachille)
- Kammok (Charlie Olson)
- Dalberg (Sophie Bu)
- Nike (Matt Mullenax)
- Air Force Civilian Advisor (Valerie Rivera)
- Yup (Ines Gramegna)
- Maveron (Madeline Hawes)
- Symantec (Fabian Schvartzman)
- No Internship (Stuart Cornuelle)
- The Anti-Internship (Cameron Lehman)
Stephen Lewis | Big Three Automaker
This summer I interned with one of the ‘‘Big Three’’ American automakers in Detroit. I joined the company’s four-person Strategy and Innovation team, which acts as a think tank and business incubator focused on opportunities 5, 10 and 25 years in the future. Think driverless cars, electric vehicles, ride sharing. I was given almost full autonomy to complete two projects: first, develop a go-to-market strategy for a new class of vehicle, and second, write a perspective on ‘‘the future of mobility’’ in emerging markets. Over the course of the internship, I applied many of the skills I learned in my first year at the GSB, from Wheeler’s consumer decision making to Flynn’s persuasion and presentation.
Both projects were intellectually challenging and required me to work cross-functionally and across geographies — from VC managers in Palo Alto to vehicle engineers in Germany — but I spent most of the summer working on the go-to-market strategy, which began as a recommendation for a simple public reveal of a new product. As I dug into the project, I realized a few small pieces of information were missing. Nothing major — just any sort of customer segmentation, market sizing or financial estimates. I couldn’t believe it. The company had spent two years engineering, designing and testing the product, yet almost zero analysis had been done toward a basic business case.
This speaks to the balance of power at the company. In many cases, decisions are made by engineers because “it’s cool!” Unfortunately, as I discovered first hand, this can lead to over-engineered, tricked-out solutions for nonexistent problems. Case in point: In my final presentation, a director asked me, “Imagine we were to spin this product off as a new business … would you invest?” The dozen other VPs and Directors in the room had their popcorn ready, eager for my answer. When I said no, I could smell my offer letter bursting into flames. Or that may have been the cafeteria next door. TBD.
Size and culture affected both my experience and the company’s daily operations. As a tiny, four-person team of ex-consultants and Silicon Valley techies trying to self-disrupt, our Strategy and Innovation group had the support of the C-suite but often faced resistance from the auto industry lifers who made up most of the 200,000 employees. I recognize that all large companies have some redundancy. Still, I was a bit surprised when, through serendipitous mingling, I discovered another employee working on exactly the same issue as me, in exactly the same function as me — but reporting through a different channel. This happened on more than one occasion. Then there was the inertia that usually accompanies a company of this size. Depending on whom you asked, change was either terrifying or exciting, unnecessary or imperative — typically correlated with the employee’s tenure at the company.
Despite these challenges, everyone shared a love for the company’s products, and automobiles generally. Shared passion was an extremely powerful force. Water-cooler chats revolved around employees’ muscle car restoration projects; extra-office team building events were held at auto shows or races. These events were the high points of my summer experience — particularly the annual employee auto show, which brought in over 2,000 personal vehicles. Not bad for a campus of just 20,000 workers. The most memorable experience by far, though, was a lunch with the CEO, during which a few Stanford undergrad interns and I asked tough questions about the company’s strategy in ride-sharing and electric vehicles.
This internship was an invaluable experience as a means of informing my career path. I learned that work doesn’t have to suck. This summer, I didn’t dread going into the office on Monday morning; I didn’t immediately require a drink when I got home in the evening. If I worked over the weekend, it was because I wanted to, and was genuinely interested in the work. The opportunity to work with cars — the subject of my obsession since age 3 — was fantastic, and provided a blueprint for the rest of my career. In the near-term, I hope to pursue a career in the automotive industry, though probably with a smaller company. In the long-term, wherever my career leads, I plan to maintain some connection to a tangible, personally exciting product.
Lastly, I’d be remiss if I didn’t include a note about Detroit, a.k.a. the Silicon Valley of the 1950s. The picture above — of the Michigan Building — says it all. The place where Henry Ford built his first automobile, 220 Bagley Avenue, was converted to an ornate theater featuring the country’s most popular acts and frequented by the wealthiest patrons; now it is the nation’s most surreal parking garage. Detroit has an incredibly interesting and accessible history into which you can’t help but stumble on your daily commute or a trip to and from your local bar; unfortunately, much of that history is also incredibly sad — plagued for years by an over-reliance on a single industry, racism and segregation, and poor public leadership.
I had a blast exploring Detroit. The prideful, resurgent attitude is infectious, and you can’t help but root for the city. If cool hipster bars alone could bring a city back to life, Detroit would be in good shape; unfortunately, quite a few of its fundamental issues remain.
Lauren Dachille | Forward Progress in Politics
I spent my summer living the high life as “Head of Research and Investment” for a political investment startup launching its first fund (after being rejected by every education-related investing group west, and east, of the Mississippi).
Now, when I say startup, I mean it in the least glamorous sense. I’m not talking sushi lunches and offices masseuses. I spent the summer in my bedroom in Palo Alto on the phone with my CEO (who lives in New York and was my only co-worker), our rent-a-lawyer, and a consultant. Also, did I mention that our company isn’t yet incorporated and therefore doesn’t really exist?
My CEO comes from the political world and has very little investing experience. So I spent a lot of the summer on awkward phone calls with classmates and their contacts, exploring fee structures and retail investing regulatory issues.
About two weeks in, things really got exciting when my CEO decided to take another full-time job. I’m not kidding. A self-identified “Never-Trump Republican,” he felt compelled to take the reins of one of the many 2016 independent Presidential bids, leaving me to basically run his company.
With no mentors, few meaningful deliverables, and way too much time spent waiting for Google Hangout meetings that never happened, I was fairly frustrated. My frustration came to a head when my boss insisted on having a call at 10 am on a Sunday. At 10:15, when he had still not dialed in, I let him know that I would wait until 10:30 and then go about my day. At 10:30 I closed the laptop. He messaged me at 10:31 that he was ready. I told him I was sorry, but he had wasted too much of my time and I was no longer willing to talk. He was less than pleased.
When we touched base the next day he decided, as a solution to our communication problem, that our new call time would be 7 am Eastern, commonly known as 4 am Pacific. For the remaining weeks of my internship, I rolled out of bed at 3:45 am, made my bed for the webcam, threw on a presentable blouse (while keeping on my pajama bottoms), and turned the show over to Zombie Lauren, who spoke for roughly an hour before getting back in bed.
There was also the time my CEO flew me to New York for a week of working sessions, only to tell me he would be available for only an hour the entire week, and I should crash with my parents on Long Island instead of booking a place in the city.
The madness that was my internship put a few things in perspective for me. First, we should appreciate those people in our life who aren’t crazy. Second, the whole summer internship thing isn’t actually as big a deal as I made it out to be. I had a terrible experience yet here I am, alive and still (generally) intelligent and capable. This summer, in fact, I had time to focus on the important things — like exercising and frequenting World Market enough to notice even the smallest changes in inventory. Thank you, GSB and faux summer internship company, for giving me this character-building flash of context about what actually matters.
Charlie Olson | Kammok
This summer I worked at Kammok, a startup in Austin that sells outdoor specialty gear (camping hammocks, sleeping bags, tents, etc.) to the city-to-trail adventurer.
I found the job after a Kammok employee, Haley Robison (GSB ‘14), spoke with my roommate; Haley would become my supervisor. A brilliant and competitive ex-Bainer, Haley knew that I wanted to see the inside of a startup, deepen my exposure to myriad job functions, and work on leadership skills — and put me in a position to succeed by creating an internship that was mutually beneficial for me and for the company.
You may be wondering what you pack for an internship in Austin? The answer, unfortunately, is that science has failed us; clothes airy enough to counter Texas’s summer heat do not exist. So much for the bygone days when I could work through noon and not need a shower. At Kammok, I retired my private equity uniform and any clues linking me to an MBA. Impression was important, and this was no time to be a square. Armed with as much Lululemon as I could wear, I was ready to take on the summer.
In my day-to-day, I was given total autonomy. I was assigned to interesting and pressing workstreams, and was allocated resources when I needed them. I used both hard and soft skills learned this past year and found myself referencing materials from different classes. It was a successful summer: We closed a $1M convertible round, refinanced our debt, began a number of collaboration initiatives, saw the highest monthly sales in company history, and worked to reinvigorate fulfillment processes and the customer experience. We also expanded internationally into Japan. On this, some advice: hire a lawyer! I was tasked with writing our distributor agreement and term sheets. Legalese is not a language that comes naturally; the importance of minutiae is mind-shattering. When writing and editing a 40-page legally binding document in a foreign language, extra eyes become a necessity. Time is better spent doing — well, just about everything else.
A brief shoutout to the Entrepreneurial Summer Program (ESP) for its pay match policy, which made the internship financially competitive, and its message board, which was a great resource for students working through similar problems for the first time. The ESP is one of many ways in which GSB resources can be tremendously additive to the summer experience.
Without using too broad a brush, culture and incentive structures were two of the biggest differences between Kammok and my prior work in the financial services industry. Our founder, Greg McEvilly, is a dreamer, and his optimism and passion are contagious. Employees arrived early — between 7 and 8 — with a noticeable fire in their eyes, and were eager to “Live the Roo Life” (Kammok’s logo is a kangaroo — ensuring a favorable association with Australians, as we often joked). My co-workers toiled to build a business by day and got outside in service of others and self by night. Work/life balance was paramount. “Intangible incentives” were different from any I had seen. Most nights I feel asleep content and fulfilled with the impact of my efforts.
Emotional fulfillment was critical because economic incentives were on a scale different from what I experienced in private equity. As I imagine is the case with many in our class, I have in the past judged myself through standardized metrics including salary, and while monetary stability is very important to me, I found myself willing to sacrifice financial standing for a piece of the future my startup. I embraced the salary-for-equity tradeoff, and over the course of the summer came to the realization that my long-term self-worth will be more closely tied to responsibility and ownership than a strict paycheck and end-of-year reviews.
I would recommend Kammok to anyone for either an internship or a full-time position. Things aren’t perfect — the company struggles with margin structure and demand projections, has difficulty coordinating with overseas suppliers and is still ironing out its omni-channel sales strategy. But Kammok truly is special, and, I believe, on the precipice of tremendous growth.
Net net, 10 weeks is little time, but my internship has shaped my thoughts about future employment, answered a few questions, and created a few others. In order to test another hypothesis, I’d like to work part-time at a VC firm this year, and while there’s some soul-searching to be done, I’m seriously considering joining a startup or running a search fund after graduating from the GSB.
Sophie Bu | Dalberg
I spent the latter half of the summer in Ethiopia, interning with Dalberg, a strategic advisory firm that engages with governments and NGOs to solve pressing issues. I joined the Addis Ababa office in August, the rainy season. The city was cold, muddy, and a bit depressing. The Dalberg office was still new and far from perfect — there no Internet and the power frequently went out. My boss, Jordan, had started at Dalberg only six months prior. Muktar, another member of my team originally from Somalia, joined several months after Jordan after living in Italy and the US. I was employee number 3.
Though our team was small, we worked on big projects. My first project, assigned to me immediately after my arrival, was to complete a policy brief on how to improve access to land — due in 10 days. The project was in support of the Ethiopian Investment Commission (EIC), whose mission is to improve Ethiopia’s investment environment. The project had two components: first, clarify Ethiopia’s fiscal policies to attract direct foreign investment, and second, build a framework for responsible investing for said foreign investors. Part of the project involved interviewing firms already investing Ethiopia, and I was impressed with the list. These companies were not just trying to take advantage of low labor costs. They were trying to meet domestic demand and claim first-mover advantages. I was thrilled to help these companies overcome the hurdles of expansion; I could feel the excitement.
On other projects, I did everything from brainstorming to arranging office furniture, but the best part of the experience was the people I met, because of the heart — people truly had passion to make the world a better place and have a positive impact. This has made me think critically about how I want to live my life. It is so easy to lose perspective and forget what really matters, but in Addis Ababa, I took time to sip fine tomoca and to pause, to think about my next move. I came to realize that I could have a bigger impact and have a truly meaningful life in a less developed country. It truly was a blessing.
A favorite memory was a retreat to the Amboseli National Park in Nairobi with 40 colleagues, a conference involving (predictably) presentations and brainstorms and idea pitches and (unpredictably) ex-consultants, ex-engineers, and ex-avocado street vendors. Two pitches in particular stuck out. First was one to open the office for pro-bono work on Saturdays and provide both space and consulting services to troubled Kenyan startups. Second was one to create an internal 1:1 shadowing program to nurture local talent. The Dalberg partners were very supportive and committees to handle the projects were formed immediately. It was inspiring, different, and beautiful.
Even though I lost my phone — along with my precious photos — three days before leaving Ethiopia, I loved the summer. It was life on the other side — and I say, the less developed, the better. I felt that the work I did was actually useful, something I have not been able to say before. As a hopeless romantic, I was convinced I want to take the path less traveled, follow what I believe, and change the world while finding inner peace along the way.
Matt Mullenax | Nike
A day in the life at Nike:
After my routine morning workout or jog through downtown Portland, I took the Maxx (Portland’s public transit) to Nike’s campus in Beaverton. The walk from the station to Nike was breathtaking and surrounded by a 1.5-mile running loop used by everyone from morning walkers to Olympic hopefuls. Nike’s buildings were named after famous athletes: Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Pete Sampras, and John McEnroe, which is where my team was located and where the Nike Executive Team (NET) sat.
After grabbing breakfast, I began my workday. My 10-person team — Global Strategic Planning — was the CEO’s strategic right-hand. Collectively, we worked on projects ranging from supply-chain innovation to geo-based retail footprint, with exposure to professional league sponsorships and the Lebron James contract. The one consistency among our group was the high level of interaction with senior leadership. While I spent part of my time on my summer-long project assessing niche opportunities in the footwear space, the latter half of the summer was dedicated to a high-profile sports marketing opportunity into which I was pulled. I cannot give too many details, but working the project team — which consisted of the CFO, President, Head of Sports Marketing, Head of Corporate Development, and others — offered a unique glimpse into the exciting potential as a full-time employee.
Some of the morning I spent catching up on email and preparing materials (financial model adjustments, editing decks) while others were meeting heavy. Lunch proved to be the reliable opportunity to leave the building and walk across campus to one of the numerous lunch options that the campus offers. In the afternoon most meetings were held; I usually attended two or three a day, which increased substantially during the sports marketing transaction. One of my big takeaways from the summer was the level of buy-in required to navigate such a large organization with so many stakeholders — each deck had to incorporate and encapsulate so many varying perspectives. Oftentimes meetings were not as productive as some of my colleagues seemed to think, and that was an area of frustration for me.
After meetings, I regrouped with the small GSP team and devised work plans for the following day. Half of the time, I worked from home in the evening, but did my best to bifurcate the two.
At Nike, I had a tremendously positive experience. I had a strong supervisor and the intern program was solid, particularly in providing exposure to senior executives with traditions like MBA Mondays, where leaders met with the 60+ MBA interns to discuss career paths, life at Nike, etc. I had a great deal of autonomy with my MBA project, though there was perhaps less with full-time employees and their workstreams, given the size of the company. I thought the combination of my small, nimble group within the larger company was ideal. Nike also has a friendly, work/life-balanced culture with reasonable hours.
I’ve wanted to work at Nike for a long time and this summer did not disappoint. I learned a great detail about global organizational structure and how management works at a large organization. While I’m still contemplating whether Nike makes sense for me full-time, I have a much clearer perspective on what such a career would entail. The tremendous culture, employee perks and the support of a leading global organization are counterbalanced by the managing woes associated with navigating a 60,000+ employee juggernaut. Nonetheless, I feel very grateful for the opportunity to work alongside such great people and unpack the subtleties of a true corporate experience.
Valerie Rivera | Air Force Civilian Advisor
This summer, instead of a traditional internship, I spent five weeks in steamy Augusta, Ga., fulfilling my annual Air Force reserve duty obligation. As my classmates jetted off to consulting gigs and other exciting adventures, I questioned my decision. Would my break be as valuable an experience as that of my classmates?
Having left active duty a year ago to begin my studies at the GSB, I knew it would be surreal to put the uniform back on. But first, I would have to find it in the hoarder’s lair known as our storage unit. I brought my son with me in the event that the search ended with my body under an avalanche of plastic bins. I found the uniform without a hitch — and when I tried it on, I didn’t look any different from the day I left. The last year had been transformative, but thankfully left no physical trace.
When I arrived in Augusta, it was like walking into an oven — over 100 degrees with humidity to match. Highways, billboards, fast food restaurants and motels dotted the landscape. This was an army town, nothing like Silicon Valley. Still, I was excited for what could be — largely because my Air Force boss was incredible. He’s the kind of leader you read about in books — intense, brilliant, and willing to take a stand. Instead of treating me like an interchangeable piece of machinery, he promised that I could work on a project more suited to my strengths — and that’s why he paired me up with a civilian named Donny.
Like me, Donny had started as a linguist in the Air Force, but decades later he was stepping into a new role as the chief of a “workforce support” organization within the government, responsible for everything from hiring employees to workplace safety.
A few notes about how awesome Donny was:
- He was humble. I’ve seen others strut with a new title, building a façade of perfection around themselves — but Donny acknowledged that his position would stretch him, and asked for help. He expected to learn and grow.
- He guarded against unconscious bias. In a radical example, Donny knew that people would treat me differently as an enlisted airman, so he coordinated with my boss to let me wear civilian clothes instead of my uniform. Then he introduced me to everyone as his consultant from Stanford!
- He listened critically. Donny had a knack for not only empathizing with people, but uncovering the meaning in their words and, often, the question behind the question. I didn’t realize how frequently people felt misunderstood until I saw what it looked like to be truly heard.
My assignment was to help Donny get his new organization working toward a common goal — solving people issues. As you can imagine, the government tends to be a tad “process-oriented” — and people often absorb the brunt of these painfully rigid and ill-designed systems.
This meant challenging the established rules and procedures when they didn’t make sense. Instead of passively accepting the status quo, we wanted employees to advocate for solutions that would benefit both people and organization.
For example, data scientists received premium pay, but not if they were teaching these valuable computer science skills to others in the company. The organization desperately needed instructors, yet the prospect of taking a pay cut to fill this role dissuaded even the most willing of candidates.
A new name and org chart wouldn’t get us there — we needed to reset the culture. This involved analyzing the organization’s purpose, behaviors, norms, and values. Which barriers could we remove? What processes should be tweaked, and how? Were the incentives aligned to the goals? How would we communicate and inspire Donny’s employees to adopt a new mindset? There couldn’t have been a better test for my dream of starting my own culture consulting firm, and I quickly set to work pulling together a plan.
Drawing from John Kotter’s philosophy on change management, we started by creating a sense of urgency, making the gap between what is and what could be as big as possible. We built trust and understanding among the leadership team by getting members to share their hopes and motivations. Then, we used design thinking to dream up a compelling vision for the organization. My methods were a bit foreign to this crew of government bureaucrats, but they were all good sports. The difference between our first meeting and our last was stark — instead of individuals aiming to preserve their interests, we had a true leadership team working together for the collective good.
While I’d done similar work during my last two years in the Air Force, this was different. Before, I’d had the benefit of time and deep personal relationships to draw on as I worked to change an organization. Swooping in from outside with only a few short weeks to make an impact was harder than I’d expected. I had to meet with dozens of people, asked probing questions, rapidly assessed issues, and constantly adjusted my planning as I gathered new information.
The jury’s still out on what will happen now that I’m back at school, but I no longer wonder whether my “internship” was a good choice. This experience opened my eyes to the positive realities of consulting and will help drive my decisions as I consider life after the GSB.
Ines Gramegna | Yup
Being a city girl, I was thrilled to leave the suburban houses (read: mansions) and family cars of Palo Alto for an internship in San Francisco. I had the fortune of being offered an internship in SOMA at Yup Tutoring, an Edtech startup offering online, on-demand tutoring for highschool students.
Yup gave me a strange combination of first impressions. I found the name “Yup” obscure; it left more than one classmate puzzled. While it did have a kind of finality that pleased me, its lack of descriptiveness concerned me. I also had reservations about the culture — strikingly honest and forward, with an edge of aggression — which I experienced firsthand during my interview. (After a coffee chat with the CEO, I was invited to sit it on a meeting in which my future colleagues spoke fervently and animatedly over one another. I came out feeling oddly pumped, yet a little on edge.) That said, I was confident about the niche they had found in the market: they championed a “learning” rather than a “cheating” mentality, something that rang true to my passion for education. It was with this balance of impressions that I started the internship.
Given my innate curiosity and inability to choose, the CEO placed me firmly in two departments: Business Development and Operations. I had three main tasks: first, create a quality assurance system for tutors; second, analyze the flow of activities within the Operations department; third, look into business development outreach to schools.
I loved my responsibilities. I got to launch their first school-targeted advertisement, I rated first-time tutors on their effectiveness and the quality of their teaching, and I managed to uncover operational inefficiencies that had gone unnoticed. More importantly, I was blown away with the ingenuity, the courage and the maturity of my colleagues. These were young entrepreneurs, many under 30, with a thirst for success, a yearning to prove themselves. It really pushed me to rethink the kind of risks that I was taking not just career-wise but also on an everyday basis. Was I really pushing myself the way these guys obviously were?
On the last day of my internship, as I walked back to my apartment, I played certain scenes from the past eight weeks in my head. My internship had not revolutionized my technical skills, but it had certainly disproved several of my assumptions about edtech and startups in general.
Assumption #1: Strategic decisions are always reasoned. For some reason, I had always assumed that startups made reasoned decisions after eliminating all other possibilities. At Yup, decisions were backed by intuition and experimentation — the way in which many companies stumble on the “next big thing.” Note to self — if I want to start a company, get my gut checked.
Assumption #2: Startups are always risky. All right, there’s some truth to this one — but this summer I was surprised to see how much VC money can “de-lean” a startup. Yup was fairly small, with limited resources — but we had weekly outings, innumerable snacks in the office, and a prime location in SOMA! I suppose when your competition is offering an in-house cafeteria, a playground, and day care, you must have some benefits…
Assumption #3: Engineering departments are mostly internally focused. Not always. In our case, and in at least two other startups I know, engineering time was often focused on customer-facing features. This made me curious about how engineering time was prioritized, and whether there were short- versus long-term tradeoffs. When did you need to choose internal engineering over customer-facing engineering hours?
Assumption #4: Culture is always intentional. At Yup, where the male to female ratio was 6 to 1, aggressive debate was the currency. Although the CEO was aware of the combative culture, it had been left unattended for so long that I wondered whether it could ever be changed. I was reminded of my HR for Startups class: “You cannot ignore culture. Even if you do not intentionally design culture, that is culture in itself. So choose carefully.” Choose carefully indeed…
As I finished my walk, I realized that I had learned quite a bit about startups. But what, I wondered, had I learned about myself?
What struck me most was how happy I was to put my creativity to use. With a strong passion for dancing and music, I have, in the past, often found myself stifled by the rules, procedures and attached strings of corporate environments. At Yup, I was given free rein to design processes, launch advertising campaigns, and reformulate how we thought about tutor assessment. This freedom to create gave me a sense of elation I normally only feel when dancing and running!
Perhaps most surprising, I had found freedom to create and elation in a male-dominated environment. Perhaps I liked some of the banter and the heated debate more than I cared to admit — but I had also found allies less inclined to that style of communication with whom I had connected. More pondering needed on this one.
The question “What do I do next?” still loomed, though, imposing and elusive. Was I any closer to knowing what I wanted from my MBA2 year and from my career post-GSB? In the spirit of self-compassion, I had to admit that I was — even if I hadn’t gotten a magical, simple answer. First, I vowed to explore the Edtech sector more enthusiastically and systematically, meeting with leaders and innovators in the space. Second, I wanted to implement some of the decision-making process I had seen at Yup. Third, I wanted to listen to my gut more at the GSB, to follow my intuition when reason was no longer helpful. But most importantly, I realized that I will have a place and a part in the innovation of education. I do not know how or where — but I will.
Madeline Hawes | Maveron
I spent the summer working at a Maveron, a VC firm in San Francisco. I supported the firm’s relatively small, five-person investment team, which focuses on identifying and investing in companies that they hope will become breakout consumer brands.
The goal coming into the summer was to learn what Venture Capital was all about, whether or not it could be a career for me, and to get more structured in my thinking about the startup world in case I should choose to take that route following business school.
I spent about 50% of my time working on research — analyzing today’s top consumer brands and determining how/why they were able to scale — and the other 50% of my time engaged in more traditional VC work — sourcing and due diligence on prospective portfolio investments.
The most fascinating the part of the summer by far was meeting with the founders of our portfolio companies. In a pitch meeting, you’re not just trying to understand the product and the viability of the business, but the viability of the person who’s pitching. What drives them? Can they attract and keep a team of smart folks around them? What are their weak spots? Are they self-aware? I found that the most important questions were about how well the founders knew their user. Did the founders know their consumers well, or were they designing around a vague and hypothetical user? There were many characters, but all of the founders had something driving them and it was exciting to try and dig into what that was.
The summer met or exceeded expectations in most ways. The sourcing and due diligence processes were fun and interesting, involving anything from analyzing financial statements to assessing product viability — and assessing product viability could mean anything from online research to cold calling target customers to testing the app/widget/product myself. I investigated blockchain technology, the VR/AR landscape and online legal services. I had a large amount of flexibility and discretion over how I spent my time, and there were many days when it genuinely didn’t feel like a job.
Here are my takeaways:
- Swag. If you meet with consumer companies that produce physical things like ladies workout clothes or some sort of running monitor, YOU CAN ASK FOR FREE SWAG! Because you’re a VC and you need to try it to know if you want to invest. But be warned. On the software side, free swag can sometimes mean laborious beta testing of stuff that doesn’t quite work. Or apps that are already free, but all seem to be targeting 13-year-olds.
- Diversity (or lack thereof). One of the pleasant surprises of the summer was the way that my team handled diversity and inclusion. I say “surprise” because when I think of diversity and inclusion in the context of VC, my first thoughts are of “pattern matching” — when experienced partners look for particular backgrounds or patterns in their startups and founding teams — a practice that is considered a valuable skill by many VCs but one that can also lead to systematic exclusion of certain demographics of entrepreneurs. I was pleased to find that my team not only encouraged individual team members’ to contribute based on their individual interests, identities, and areas of difference, but also explicitly made a point to try and reflect diverse perspectives in the company’s hiring, sourcing, due diligence, and investment processes. I remember one member of the investment team very openly pointing out the homogeneity of socio-economic backgrounds of the members of our team. Mayvenn, the hair extension startup that recently raised a $10mm series A from A16Z, was cited as an example of a great opportunity that could easily have been missed if the investment team had been comprised of all white men from wealthy backgrounds. In order to rectify this problem, my team is currently looking to hire someone that will increase the group’s socioeconomic diversity.
- Women (or lack thereof). While this was not as true on the team that I worked with, the world of VC can indeed feel like a bit of a boys club — particularly some of the demo days. This was uncomfortable, but I’m hopeful that the industry is moving in the right direction gender diversity.
- For summer associates looking to secure a full time offer at the end of the summer, the most important way to add value is to source your own deals. This cut into the time you spend on your other responsibilities, but it is a key value-add — possibly the only relevant value-add for someone who is coming in without unique operating experience or product expertise.
- VC was as exciting as I thought it would be. I loved the constant learning about new industries as much as I thought I would. I can finally keep up with these fancy Silicon Valley start up conversations (thank goodness). It was a great way to learn about what types of companies resonate with me, which will be very important if I decide to join an early stage company. I learned not only the types of products I would want to work with, but I also learned what I would look for in a founding team. From a product perspective, I gravitate towards Fintech but with a Millennial slant, but I also found I was very interested in some of our retail brands (one of the companies on which we did due diligence sold ladies athletic gear, like Lululemon with a 90’s flavor). Regarding teams, I learned that I don’t mind founders who are difficult — as long as they can find and retain a team of talented people.
- The common wisdom about getting some operating experience before working in VC certainly felt true for me, and for this reason, VC probably won’t be my first stop after the GSB. My desire to have more expertise — be it operational, product, or industry — prior to sitting down with entrepreneurs and founders will probably never go away, but I do think at least some experience in an operating role would serve me (or anyone) well in terms of credibility and value-add. I felt this need most acutely in my conversations with more experienced founders.
One of the questions that I tried to answer throughout the summer was what it meant to be not just a good VC, but an excellent VC. From what I can tell, it requires operations-level involvement in more than one big success story, a lot of networking, a lot of patience, and maybe even more luck. From this perspective, while I loved my summer and the team, it would seem a little unwise to try to start in VC at 25 (especially if I’m aiming for that “excellent” bucket). I’m not sure exactly what my next steps will be, but I do know that I’m inspired by creative work, that I like having ownership of that creative work, and that I’m moved my social impact. With those interests and my positive summer experience in VC, my next move may come out of left field.
Fabian Schvartzman | Symantec
This summer I interned at Symantec, and by far my biggest contribution was enlarging the two-person Enterprise Security Product Strategy group by 50 percent.
Normally, this group works on ideating new products, deciding in which products to invest, and looking for interesting M&A targets. Cool, right? Well, this summer, things went a little differently. In early 2016, the company received a $500 million investment from Silverlake, the result of which was the implementation of a large cost-cutting initiative. If that wasn’t enough, the day before I started, Symantec announced the purchase of Blue Coat — another large cybersecurity company. Contrary to expectations, Blue Coat replaced all of Symantec’s C-suite executives; Symantec got a new CEO, COO, CMO, CIO and every other type of C. My tiny group suddenly found itself dealing with things like product simplification and headcount optimization, both huge parts of the new cost-savings initiative. I worked on building a P&L for the company’s products in order to get a better understanding of which were performing well and which were not. I then met with the leadership of each product family group, showed them my analyses, and tried to get them to commit to cost-cutting initiatives — including how many employees to lay off.
At first, these conversations were horrible. My team and I were deciding the destinies of entire families. With time, however, I got used to the work, and realized that the relatively small number of layoffs were actually critical if the company wanted to survive and continue to employ and support the remaining thousands of employees and their families.
Coming to the GSB as an international student, and never having done an internship, I didn’t know what to expect. I have had significant work experience and have always imagined myself in important, impactful roles. This summer, I kept in mind our school’s mantra of “Change Lives, Change Organizations, Change the World” — so it was a little disappointing that the biggest change I did this summer was to an Excel spreadsheet.
All in all, though, the summer was not a total wash. I gained exposure to the business side of a large firm (having always been on the engineering side) and met a cool group of people. I also confirmed what I had suspected beforehand: after graduation, I want to work in tech, probably in strategy or business development. But I also want to reconsider starting my own company, so in my second year at the GSB I will focus more on entrepreneurship and strategy courses.
Stuart Cornuelle | No Internship
“People will think you’re a fuck-up or have a trust fund.” A professor told me that last April. We were talking about summer internships and the fact that I didn’t have one.
Every GSB student gets an internship. Most get two. The ones who don’t apparently are fuck-ups or have trust funds. I didn’t have an internship. Or a trust fund.
For a time this was distressing. It felt like confirmation that Stanford made a mistake on me. I knew this would come up in every conversation for 12 months. People ask.
My friends all had their tickets punched: product at Google; joining a startup; doing VC. I was sliding toward a summer of which to be ashamed. I’d done a few half-hearted interviews but they went nowhere.
That may have been in part because I didn’t want an internship. One hiring manager noticed, and accused me of as much. I wanted to want an internship; we’re supposed to want them. But I wanted to take classes instead. We’ll be working forever and are at Stanford almost no time at all. It seemed like an obvious choice. Not a common one, though, and the prospect of tripping on the GSB catwalk unnerved me.
I’m running out of words. I did summer school and loved it. CS and statistics. This was the right choice for me. The professor had been right: “People will think you’re a fuck-up or have a trust fund,” he’d said. “But who cares?”
Cameron Lehman | The Anti-Internship
I can’t not write. I’m at the point where talent or lack thereof is irrelevant.
This summer I forewent an internship. I spent Winter and Spring quarters writing creative fiction; I jumped into June intent on doing more of same. I purchased an outbound ticket to Ireland (June 4) and a return ticket from Vienna (September 23). I paid for a three-month unlimited Eurail pass with vague notions of Some Like It Hot train rides across Europe. I was primed for a plaza-sitting, gin-drinking, Hemingway-in-Spain summer. Max Artz wanted me to grow a man bun.
Then, reality.
It turns out taking a train across Europe does not involve Marilyn Monroe sneaking into your bunk cabin with a flask of whisky. Instead of finding my creative muse, I felt compelled to be a tourist. Because I hadn’t done any planning prior, I spent my time reserving Airbnb’s and combing Lonely Planet. I was hemorrhaging money, and I wasn’t writing. Sitting in a stifling train station in Zagreb, I made a snap decision — and booked the next flight back to the States. After just four weeks abroad, I was on my parents’ couch in St. Louis, shoveling down apple pie and cinnamon ice cream.
What had happened?
I’m a creature of habit. I like vigorous exercise and sweatpants. At school, I knew when I would work out, the precise time of day at which I’d don pants with an elastic waistband. Abroad, I eliminated those constants and my mind wasn’t free to write. I had over-pivoted. In St. Louis, however, with my routine restored, I immediately felt better. I began reading a novel and writing a short story a week.
The net net of my summer is that I want to write professionally. I can’t not write. I’m at the point where talent or lack thereof is irrelevant. As part of this pursuit, I eagerly agreed to edit this publication, nondisclosure — a post which, so far, has included the curation of these MBA internship accounts.
If I can find any parallels between these varied experiences, it’s that if you draw even one conclusion — check one box, confirm or reject even one hypothesis — the summer will have been worth it. MBA1s, take note.
Your friend and mine —
Cameron
