My High School Intern Experience in San Francisco

I had always dreamed of going to San Francisco as a kid. It was the place every entrepreneur wanted to be.

In May of 2016, I was determined to find an internship in Silicon Valley. I emailed dozens and dozens of tech CEO’s trying to convince them that my teenage entrepreneurial perspective would be unique and valuable to them, but I didn’t get a single response.

Luckily, Stefan Stokic, a fellow young entrepreneur and friend of mine, saw Cory Levy’s tweet looking for high school interns and put it in Slack chat before Cory deleted it.

Cory Levy is the co-founder of After School, a private social network for teenagers. This opportunity was perfect for me; I knew my experiences as a young entrepreneur and a teenager in high school would be perfect for After School.

Making the First Move

I first heard about After School from my friends and saw Cory featured on the show Follow the Leader on CNBC. I liked how After School was different than other social networks, and it was a relatively small company growing very quickly. Cory was a very successful young entrepreneur who also from Texas, so I was eager to learn from him in a growing startup environment.

They were also catering a product specifically to millions of teenagers across the world, which was unique and something I wanted to be part of.

San Francisco isn’t exactly cheap. I was worried about whether I would be able to afford to live there as a summer intern.

Luckily, After School set up an air mattress in a spare office (fortunately they also had a shower in the office).

Yes, I did sleep on an air mattress. But I wouldn’t have traded it for a king size bed in a nice hotel. I was staying in downtown San Francisco for free interning at a great startup; I didn’t have much to complain about.

Adjusting to Highs and Lows

My first week in San Francisco was somewhat miserable though. Not only was I completely alone without any family or friends for the first time in my life, but as I would walk outside all I heard was people talking about startups; it was too much for me.

Everyone in San Francisco was doing the same thing I was doing, and they were working really hard to beat me at it. I became so minuscule, and I got really discouraged.

Getting started at After School quickly lifted me back up. I didn’t know what to expect on the first day. I had come in with so many opinions and suggestions thinking that they don’t know how best to cater to teens, but boy was I wrong.

I spent several hours with the co-founders on my first day, and realized that they knew exactly what they were doing.

Although it didn’t hit me at first, every pixel of that app is designed specifically for a high school teenager. They’ve captured teen attention without advertising to them. They know we communicate in short bursts. They know we like GIFS…lots of GIFS. They allow teens in the app to make their own conclusions. They empower teens, especially with their mock election in 2016 where teens chose Trump over Hillary.

Taking Responsibility

Once I got my first few assignments, I was amazed by how they treated me and how much responsibility they gave me. Whether testing and giving input on a new feature, helping write communications points, or any other task, there was rarely a day where I was bored nor a day where I felt like they were just giving busy work.

There’s even text for their partnership campaigns inside of the After School App that’s written by me and seen by millions; that’s pretty amazing for a high school intern.

Before my internship, I had never seen bullying on After School, but I’d read a few news stories about some bullying incidents on the app. I was interested to see how they handled this. What I saw is that they devote a lot of resources to preventing bullying.

In the office, I sat next to a software engineer whose sole job is to build moderation software for After School. He was applying advanced linguistics and software programming skills to build, run, and improve ways to automatically detect bullying. Next to him were two lead moderators, who managed dozens of human moderators who review every post in real-time, block posts, and review any posts reported to see whether they should have been blocked. This was a side of the app that no teen thinks about, but it’s important in keeping the app free of predators and bullies.

A Family that Hustles Together

Interning at After School also taught me how important the team of a company is to its success. They’re remarkable people. I’ve received some of the best advice from After School’s co-founders. I was constantly amazed at how hard they worked and how well they got along.

They’re also very fun to be around. I remember the team-building events I was there for, like company ping pong and game night, although I wish I was there for the time they went go-karting. The friendships I’ve built with Cory and Jeff Collins — Vice President of Communications and Partnerships, Daniel Bishop — Senior Computational Linguist, and Dmitry Perkin — Head of Recruiting, are ones that I will value forever.

I’ll never forget the amazing moments I spent with that team. There was one night where I was laughing until tears came out of my eyes playing VR games with a software engineer who used to work at Apple — how often can you say that at the age of 17? Another night I was installing a projector in After School’s conference room and the drill fell from the top of the ladder and hit Dmitry in the face. Although it could have blinded him, we were both rolling over in laughter.

After this internship, I’ll forever be an advocate of After School. To this day I’m jumping on interviews boasting about how great they are. I truly wish every single one of them the best and can’t wait to see them become one of the great social media giants.