Breaking Into Tech and VC with Tina Jiang

This week, we sat down with Tina Jiang, a Stanford sophomore majoring in Symbolic Systems who is taking Silicon Valley by storm.

After her senior year of high school, Tina interned at PaperFree and Ringly. Since coming to Stanford, she’s been a fellow at Highland Capital Partners, a summer intern at Casper, and VP of External Relations for the startup incubator we co-founded, Cardinal Ventures. Tina is also a venture partner at Contrary Capital, making $50k-$250k investments in Stanford companies.

Tina shared with us her tips for snagging an internship when you don’t have work experience, adding value to a startup team, and figuring out how to allocate your time as a college student.

How did you get interested in startups?

My parents own a small restaurant in Staten Island, and I spent a lot of time there as a kid helping to run the store. That was my first business experience. I also got really into reading about tech and the Forbes 30 Under 30 List. I was excited to learn about people doing impactful things, and thought their journeys were all so interesting. It felt achievable since they were all fairly close to my age.

How did you get your first internships at PaperFree and Ringly?

The first thing to keep in mind is to have reasonable expectations. People often have really high hopes for what a startup internship can be, and it’s good to understand the reality. With that in mind, I went on AngelList and browsed around for startups that had really cool ideas that struck my interest. Having some funding from great investors was a plus, and the qualifications of the CEO and founding team are also usually a good indicator.

I guessed the email addresses of marketing people at a few startups— my tip would be to BCC different versions of their name (first.last, first, firstlast) at the company’s domain, so you don’t have to send the email ten times if you get it wrong. In terms of the actual content of your email, the most important thing is to show you are passionate about the idea and have done some research on the company, especially if you don’t have a lot of work experience. Having a genuine interest in the space is key.

How did you get your internship at Casper?

I was home for spring break in New York and was riding the subways — Casper is famous for their subway ads, and I thought they were really interesting. It seemed like a fun company doing something cool, and I liked how they were making mattresses relatable to a younger audience.

When I got home from my subway ride, I looked up Casper, read some articles about it, and then reached out to the VP of Marketing, who I had never met before. I found out they were running an actual summer internship application process, and they were able to fast-track my interview process because I had reached out to the team and talked to the VP of Marketing. I was only in New York for a few days, so they brought me in to talk with the team and gave me an offer.

What is your advice for adding value to a startup team at a young age?

First of all, don’t underestimate your value. A lot of startups are trying to reach a younger audience, and especially if you are working on the business side, you can really leverage your age and insights to make suggestions about reaching the younger demographic.

Asking questions is really important, because you aren’t going to understand everything but you should still be as engaged as you can. Also, be proactive. A lot of startups don’t have programs in place where you meet with your manager or have lunches with team members, but you can create that for yourself. That’s really helpful in figuring out how you can add value to the team, as well as finding ways for you to get the most out of the internship.

How do you evaluate different offers, for internships or even just for joining student groups?

For startup internships, you need to be excited about the idea behind the company. If you aren’t, it isn’t going to be a good experience. You should also learn about how the team is structured. A lot of the time at startups you might end up doing grunt work, but at Casper I had a lot of autonomy and got to do some really cool work on their podcast advertising platform.

In terms of how to spend your time during the school year, I realized coming into my sophomore year that your time in college is actually super valuable. Freshman year, I was trying out a lot of different things, but I’ve now realized that the keys for me are the community and what I’m getting out of the work. If you aren’t finding something to be valuable to you, stop doing it.

Why did you decide to join the Contrary Capital team?

The Managing Partner of Contrary Capital reached out to me to get my thoughts on the startup ecosystem at Stanford, and we really hit it off on our first call. I’m very interested in the space they are targeting — $50k-250k seed investments — because there’s a big gap between $20k convertible notes and a seed round from an institutional VC. It’s nice to be able to help student founders with a significant amount of capital.

What is your biggest takeaway from your experiences so far in tech and VC?

If you want to get involved with something, don’t be afraid to ask. Most everything I’ve done is because I cold-emailed someone, or approached them at an event and asked to learn more. People are really scared to do that, but the worst that can happen is they say no and you move on to something else.

What’s next for you?

I definitely want to be a founder at some point in my life, but I want it to be an idea that I can dedicate my life to. At Stanford, I want to figure out what industries I can make the biggest difference in and where I should spend my time. I’m definitely interested in building products, and I’m thinking about product management in the future. I would love to get into VC later in life so I can use my experiences to help founders.

Huge thanks to Tina for taking the time to talk with us about her experiences in tech and VC!

We’d love your feedback on this post and other career questions we should cover — you can reach us at justine@crv.com and olivia@crv.com. You can also subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Accelerated, for more tips on finding the perfect job or internship: https://accelerated.carrd.co/