Finding New York Startups To Intern at During your Stern MBA

Ideally, you’re already keeping a pulse on the startup industry at large, with more awareness in industries you’re focused on. That will make things a lot easier. Let this guide help you operationalize your search by showing you places to source startup opportunities to add to your target list.

Create your target list

What is a target list?

This is a list of companies you’re interested in and going to consider recruiting at. It’s what you make it — but at minimum it is a place to record and track your progress. Here’s a screenshot as an example. Note that not all of these companies are startups — your search is unique to you!

Start building out that list

VC Portfolios

These are incredibly underutilized. Identify Venture Capital firms you find interesting and look at their portfolios to find companies. Oftentimes these firms have their own job posting platforms and talent communities for all of their portfolio companies. They often send out newsletters that include their job postings, so keep your eye out for that, too.

Some ones to highlight as a starting point.

• Founder Collective
• First Round Capital
• Lerer Hippeau
• Obvious
• a16z
• Harlem Capital
• FirstMark
• Primary VC

Communities

• Gen-Z VCs
• Ladies Get Paid
• NYU Entrepreneurial Network

Newsletters

• OneJob: A curated newsletter highlighting amazing jobs. Mostly focused on full-time, but you’ll hear about amazing companies.
• Accelerated: VC and Startup news, see internships and roles at the bottom.
• StrictlyVC: Excellent source of recent fundraising which will tell you who is about to hire a ton of new employees.
• ExitUp: Specific roles organized by industry across the country.
• Confluence.VC: Get an overview of happenings in VC with some highlighted roles.
• Sourcery: Weekly list of dozens of deals that occurred that week.
• Axios Pro Rata: The best high-level overview of activity in the industry. If you read just one newsletter, read Pro Rata.
• Fortune’s Term Sheet: similar to Pro Rata. You’ll see many of the same deals covered.
• CB Insights: often tongue-in-cheek but always insightful, CB Insights is especially good at covering entire industries with its deep dives.
• Ben Thompson’s Stratechery covers broad topics beyond VC, but his thoughtful analysis will be valuable as you learn to conduct your own analysis or want to do a deep dive on an industry he covers
• AVC: Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures shares thoughts and news in a regular newsletter.
• Tom Tunguz of RedPoint writes a blog and newsletter that focuses on SaaS startups, data analysis, data-driven investing, and more.
• Andrew Chen of a16z writes essays on growth at early stage startups and other topics.
• Both Sides of the Table: Perspectives — often tactical — from entrepreneur-turned-VC Mark Suster.
• Paul Graham: Essays and blog posts from Paul Graham, founder of Y Combinator, on early stage startups and investing.

Websites

• LinkedIn, obviously
• Built in NYC
• Angel List
• Girls in Tech
• Power to Fly
• John Gannon
• Contra

Lists

• Global venture studios — learn more on venture studios in this post
• Inc top 5000 Startups
• LinkedIn top 50 Startups 2020
• Flatiron School

Events

• Gary’s Guide, NYC Startup Digest, and This Week in NYC Innovation all offer some version of a weekly digest of tech events and happenings in New York.
• AlleyWatch: covers the New York technology, startup, and entrepreneurial ecosystem.
• NY Tech Meetup holds monthly meetups featuring live demos from tech companies. NYC Bio Meetup holds similar events with a focus on biotech.

Twitter

• @ StartupJobs
• @ AllGrowthJobs
• @ venturetwins
• Follow companies on your target list and VC firms that invest in companies you’re interested in.

Stern Resources

• Use SternWorks to help fund your internship. Talk to the Office of Career Development or Office of Student Engagement about this!
• Look for startup roles in Career Account.
• Talk to Career Coaches about SternWorks!
• Speak with Alumni.
• Look in that long spreadsheet of where Alumni went over the past 10 years.

Next steps from here

1. Prioritize and rank your target list.
2. Identify the top 5 you will focus 75% of your time on, the rest will get 25% of your time.
3. Network your way into conversations with these companies.
4. Prepare to network and deliver an ask to startups. They’re often more willing to bring you on once they know the value you will offer. Make it specific, clear, and relevant to their business.
5. Go, go go!