

Start my Start-up for a required internship - thatusertwo

I'm a college student with a university education, in order to graduate we are required to do a co-op/internship. I want to spend my 4 to 6 weeks getting my start up off the ground. What sorts of things could I do to convince my program administrator to allow me to do this as an alternative?
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HelgeSeetzen
Internships are about learning, so you need to convince your administrator
that you will get a valuable learning experience. "Learning by doing" is a
cliche that probably won't be enough for your administrator. Universities have
a mindset that connects learning directly with teaching (not doing). They
aren't completely wrong on this, in that good learning comes from doing things
properly and teachers can often define "properly" for you.

My recommendation would be to join an accelerators or incubator program. That
gives you the mentors/teachers necessary to satisfy the "learning"
requirements of the university. Alternatively, try to find experienced
partners for your stand-alone venture (sort of arranging your own private
accelerator program).

As a last resort, maybe you can get a traditonal internship in an established
start-up that relates to your space. You could then pitch your project within
that start-up. Who knows, they might pick up on it.

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jeffmould
Agree completely with your response. I can see both sides to the university
theory of teaching, not doing that make the experience valuable. On one side,
with doing your own startup there are no control structures in place on you so
you are often just shooting at moving targets with the goal. The university
likes to see specific learning experiences from the internship. On the other
hand, some internships are nothing more than glorified mailroom people with no
"real" learning being achieved.

I like your advice on going with an incubator or accelerator program to get
started. Another option is if the OP is dead set on doing his/her own startup
as part of the program, would be to go into the administration with a
predefined list of objectives/goals to accomplish within the time period that
are directly related to the degree path. For example, if it is a business
degree, make the goals business oriented, such as incorporation, accounting
structure, etc... If the degree path is programming related, make the goals
such as having an MVP developed or building out the landing page for the site,
etc...

Even interning at an established startup can get turned down if the
administration does not feel the experience is valuable. So the whole point of
the effort would be to prove to them that you will learn/gain more by doing
your own startup.

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thatusertwo
Thanks for the suggestions guys, the course coordinator said he couldn't let
me do it cause then anyone could say that is what they were doing.

