My Summer Internship Experience at Button
I am truly amazed by the scope of experience and knowledge I was fortunate enough to gain during my time as a Revenue Operations Intern at Button. Over the course of the summer, I completed impactful work with individuals on various teams, went out to coffee with leaders in the mobile commerce industry, and learned valuable skills that I am certain will empower me to take on new challenges as I move forward in life and in my professional career.
One of the most rewarding aspects of my internship at Button was the opportunity to witness firsthand what it means for a company to invest in its people. Prior to my internship, I read about Button’s well-recognized culture and the unique values ingrained in Button’s DNA, including to “Grow Individually and Organizationally.” Throughout my internship, I observed Button’s employees embody this value and I believe the emphasis on personal and organizational growth at Button made each aspect of my summer experience all the more special.
Kicking Off the Internship:
Ten weeks, a typical internship length, is a relatively short time when considering all that must occur to get started on meaningful projects. This includes completing onboarding processes, learning necessary tools and skills, and building an understanding of how one’s role fits into a company’s structure and objectives. As an intern, these prerequisites can be daunting, and I am extremely grateful that Button made my onboarding experience engaging, effective, and fun.
I spent my first day meeting people on my team, setting up my computer, and learning about Button’s culture and history. During this time, another one of Button’s core values — to provide Omotenashi — instantly became clear. People knew my name before I met them and my desk was organized with welcome messages and awesome swag before I arrived; I immediately felt at home. Prior to my arrival, my mentor built me a comprehensive resource guide and helped organize meetings for me with individuals across the company to learn about Button’s core technologies and business processes. Toward the end of the day, I met with my mentor to review this guide and build a plan of action to maximize my experience this summer. My mentor’s thorough preparation helped me get up to speed efficiently and empowered me to start small-scale projects during my first week.
My first week at Button was primarily spent learning about Button’s products, culture, technology, and business operations. During my second week, my mentor guided me through a revenue-specific onboarding process that included learning about Button’s sales processes, roles within the Revenue Team, internal revenue tools, forecasting methods, and much more. It was then that I realized the sheer investment of time people at Button take to teach and learn from each other. Early on, it became clear to me that Button’s employees act as a team, and that Button’s cultural infrastructure empowers people on this team to grow individually. In turn, this individual growth enables Button to grow organizationally in a genuine way.
My Primary Projects:
For Button’s Revenue Team to function efficiently and effectively, it is critical that it maintains a clear understanding of Button’s brand and publisher partners. During the first month of my internship, I supported the Revenue Team by researching hundreds of potential brand and publisher prospects and built an updated and cohesive knowledge-base of these companies and their apps’ user metrics. My mentor then taught me how to push this information into Button’s Salesforce system for everyone on the Revenue Team to benefit from. This solution helped streamline and optimize Button’s account planning and outreach processes and taught me a great deal about the mobile commerce industry.
I also had the opportunity to take on a business development role by conducting outreach to target customers. As part of this role, my mentor introduced me to a variety of tools used to pinpoint valuable contacts at target companies and worked with me to develop personalized outreach campaigns directed at these contacts. Once the infrastructure was in place, I began my outreach and generated some very promising leads. Throughout this project, I greatly appreciated the trust my mentor placed in me, as an intern, to achieve something of this scale. Engaging with real customers pushed me out of my comfort zone, empowered me to develop new ways of thinking, and enabled me to experience new forms of interaction.
Favorite Moments from the Summer:
- The Revenue Operations team offsite: As many teams at Button regularly do, my team spent a day at an offsite office in Brooklyn to develop key objectives for the quarter, brainstorm solutions to various challenges, and develop our strengths as a team. After spending the morning mapping out our ideas, targets, and solutions, we went to lunch and to Beat the Bomb, an immersive team-building activity in which we had to defuse a paint bomb.
- Escape Room with the other interns: On National Intern Appreciation Day, Button took the interns to an escape room, then to lunch with Button’s leadership, and got us cupcakes when we returned to the office.
- Breakfast with Button’s CEO: Every so often, Button organizes a breakfast for new hires with Mike Jaconi, our CEO, in the restaurant that acted as Button’s first headquarters. It was fascinating to hear about how Button was born, how it developed, and where Mike believes it is headed. It was also inspiring to hear Mike discuss how critical Button’s employees and culture are to the success of the company.
- Talk-os: Every Tuesday, while we feast on a delicious taco lunch, anyone can present a topic of their choice to anyone who is interested in listening. Talk-os are a fascinating and fun way to bring people together to learn something new over yummy food.
- Interaction Styles workshop: Button’s Executive Coach in Residence, Julia Mallory, leads incredible professional development workshops. I was fortunate enough to have the chance to attend one in which she taught us about interaction styles and how recognizing these styles is critical to good communication in the workplace.
Looking Forward:
I feel extremely lucky to have had the opportunity to intern at Button and I am very proud of the work I accomplished during my time here. Through countless learning opportunities, hands-on mentorship, impactful work, and a phenomenal culture, I am confident that I am heading back to school far more knowledgeable about mobile commerce, with many more useful skills, and with a much stronger network than I had at the start of the summer. I can hardly wait to see what the future holds so that I can put all of this to good use.
Interested in an internship at Button? Check out Button’s Careers page to see our open positions.
