The startup running virtual internships on M&A, venture capital, and consulting
Imagine being able to complete internships at KPMG, Deloitte, King & Wood Mallesons, and ANZ Bank - all in one summer break.
InsideSherpa’s “virtual internships” offer just that. From an internship on advising clients in an M&A transaction to a venture capital module for conducting due diligence on startups, InsideSherpa is democratising core skills. It’s also helping students fast-track their dream job based on their virtual internship performance. With “edtech” startups like InsideSherpa reinventing the way we learn, we sat down with Pasha Rayan, the 28-year-old co-founder to hear about the startup’s mission to bring career opportunities to the world.
What was the spark for InsideSherpa?
Prior to founding InsideSherpa, I was helping people on the side with career advice. Tom, my co-founder, was doing this too independently. I think both of us felt lucky to have awesome careers straight out of university, given we had little career guidance growing up (Tom grew up in Wagga Wagga, and I grew up in a single parent home). I think this was our way of paying it forward to the next generation.
Over time I think we realised there should be a scalable way to achieve this for every student.
Initially, we created a mentorship marketplace, connecting students with professionals in top firms with career advice and interview prep.
In the process of scaling this, we discovered there was a larger problem as we tried to help students looking at what careers they could have after uni or school. There was a big knowledge gap for students, many didn’t know much about companies or jobs that suited their degree — there were lots of students who didn’t know what a Deloitte or a KPMG was. This fed into InsideSherpa.
We realised students couldn’t grasp the opportunities they couldn’t see. There’s so much talent in the world but most talented people didn’t know what was available to them.
So how do virtual internships solve the gap in career opportunities?
We’re trying to solve this gap by becoming a place where students can discover, upskill, and learn whatever they want. Conversely, companies come to the platform to find the best person for the job based on how someone completes the virtual internship. We want to show the world that there are amazing people to hire regardless of whether they have a fancy degree, connections, or industry background.
Would you classify yourselves as a type of edtech? What does edtech mean to you?
Edtech over the last 10 years has been narrowly classified as technology that helps schools and students get stuff done. The next wave of edtech will see companies rethink how we can actually teach and upskill people substantially, with technology as a powerful lever.
We see ourselves not necessarily like other edtech products (e.g. Khan Academy) because we work with large corporates, helping them increase the talent pool to recruit from by upskilling people. Through us, companies can engage with people they couldn’t reach without InsideSherpa’s platform — it’s not quite edtech in the form of Mathletics or DuoLingo.
We are part of a different wave helping career-minded people learn and achieve upward mobility.
Looking at the bigger picture, would you say universities are an indirect competitor? After all, unis also try to open career opportunities…
Universities and schools aren’t competitors. For the most part, we complement unis and actually partner with schools and unis to help them help their students find the opportunities they may not normally be aware of and to upskill students in remote or disadvantaged areas.
What career advice do you stick by?
I think career advice is very person specific. For myself, the career advice I live by is to always push myself to the next level, aiming to be the best that I can be.
There really is no upper threshold or boundary as to what you can innovate on. In our Y Combinator batch, there were companies creating flying jet packs, container ships, re-thinking what it means to be a remote worker or even finding better ways to identify genetic diseases.
Outside of Australia where would you want to live and why?
I would love to live in Silicon Valley. It’s amazing to be surrounded by people who are incredibly smart, hard-working, and long-term optimistic all at once. While I’m still young it seems like a great place to learn, in some impactful measure, how to improve the world. I find that exciting especially after my 4 months there earlier this year for Y Combinator.
This piece was written by Clinton Chan of Textbook Ventures — we organise startup events, write newsletters and cater exciting activities for student entrepreneurs across NSW (sign up to our weekly newsletter and check out our Facebook to stay in the loop!)
