What I Learned From My First Internship At A Startup

My experience as an intern at 12Twenty— what I learned, what mistakes I made, and what my favorite parts about the internship were.

gavy
gavy
Aug 22, 2017 · 5 min read

I spent my summer as a marketing intern at 12Twenty — a late stage start-up with around 40 employees that provide career center software for universities. My internship ended last week and I wanted to share my amazing experience there.

My favorite parts about the Internship:

Weekly Coffee & Donuts: Our company uses Slack, which pushes us to meet and get to know other members from other departments. I got to know a lot of my team members! Here’s a compilation of selfies that I took.

Pics or it didn’t happen!

Santa Monica: The weather (sunny 75 degrees during summer!), the Silicon Beach vibes (I joined a lot of tech networking events after work), and the amazing and diverse food in the area (Philz coffee and Sidecar donuts are only a block away!).

3 Valuable Things I Learned:

1. It takes time to earn respect, yet it takes one second to lose it.

Gaining respect as an intern is hard, it takes time and work to earn it. In the middle of the internship, I had the opportunity to propose a new idea (feature) to the Product team. The VP of Product gave me a chance to present it to the whole Product team. I was so excited at the beginning but never put in work to do the research and follow through with my idea. I backed up respectfully last-minute.

The VP of Product was very disappointed with me and lost his respect toward me. Since then I was never given the opportunity again. It was not the situation I wanted to encounter, but there’s no better way to learn than through mistakes. After all, this is an internship: make mistakes, learn from it, and move on.

2. Follow Through.

I can’t express how important is to follow through. Everyone knows that in a startup, you need to be proactive. But from the mistake that I made, I realized that following through is crucial. If you say you want to do it, then do it. Plan it, organize it, do the research on it, and execute it. Do not procrastinate. Until then, your idea does not matter at all.

I was lucky enough to get a chance to lead a project based on my own idea. If you don’t know me yet, I do photography as a side hobby. I realized that our company hasn’t had a team photo in a while, so I suggested to my boss that I bring a camera and set up a quick team photo session to update our photos. I also offered head-shots for team members who wanted to update their profiles. My boss loved the idea and I set up an hour to take them! Here are some photos:

The engineer team or a punk-rock band?
John x Brandon — member of the #HawaiianClothesFriday.
Whole squad.
Sales Team a.k.a the Tiger Team! Rawr!

We had so much fun and I earned much more respect from my peers because of my initiative to organize this photoshoot.

3. Culture is key — it makes or breaks the company.

Luckily at 12Twenty, we have a great working environment because of the awesome team members! Working in a startup can be really stressful, but we try to keep it fun. My bosses and colleagues were very supportive and easy to work with since Day 1. It helps to have a company with great team chemistry — a whole lot of communication, clear direction, and minimal assumptions (they can be deadly). If there’s anything that makes a company thrive, it will be the amazing team members.

Favorite Moment at 12Twenty:

Board game night that turned into beer pong night.

Michael yelling “KOBE!”

I learned a lot as an intern and built some meaningful relationships. If people ask me what’s the best thing about my experience with 12Twenty, it would be the people I worked with. They are awesome.

What’s Next

On the last day of my summer internship, one my colleagues asked me, “What’s next for you Gavy?” I couldn’t answer because I really didn’t know what was next. I had some plans, but plans don’t always work out as planned. So I told him that I’m going to take my summer break. After all, I haven’t had a break this year.

I realized that we are easily caught up with routine — leaving no spare time to reflect on life, learn new things, and rediscover our passions. For some of us, we need to make time for it. And that’s my summer plan — to take a break. To pick up new skills. To watch a whole lot of Dodgers games (I’m a massive Dodgers fan and haven’t had the chance to watch a single game this season). To rediscover my passion for creating, photography, and writing. Lastly and most importantly: to actually rest.

It won’t be too long because I will soon be on my next internship hunt while entering my senior year of college. To my fellow students: I strongly encourage you to gain internship experience. It is a great learning experience and it could be very valuable to launching your career.

‘Til next time. -Gavy

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gavy

Written by

gavy

Aspiring Product Manager. Student by day, creator at night. Photographer on the weekends. Adventurer and latte enthusiast.

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