

Tell HN: From unpaid intern to full time as a biz guy in a startup - espadagroup

This is in response to WePay's post:<p>http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1202168<p>I hear a lot about intern experiences at startups that seem awesome like the one mention above.  The only problem is I am a business guy and would have been virtually useless trying to learn php to code for the summer.  I want to share some points from my experience of interning as a business guy in a online startup.<p>A quick overview; I started interning in October part time while during my senior year (which is still going on).  Today I just got a full time offer as employee #15 when I graduate.<p>One of the first things I try to say to other business guys who are interested in working at internet startups is to readjust what "business stuff" is to them.  For example I make the assumption that in a small startup business stuff to a hacker is ANYTHING that doesn't involve hacking.  This includes SEM, landing page optimization, analytics, social media marketing, and SEO, in addition to the usual suspects like cold calling and market research.  Luckily this is all the stuff I like and/or have experience in and for an early stage startup the former stuff will a lot of times hold more weight.  Here is a list of some stuff I did for the startup:<p>Landing page optimization on feature pages
50% of the design/features of an iphone app
Researched cross selling and upselling optimization points
Data collection
Analyze SEM campaigns
Pro forma cashflow models for new features<p>As you can tell there's a range, that basically includes everything except coding.  I hope this helps any other business guys trying to break into the startup world.  I consider myself very very lucky.
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ScottWhigham
Sorry - maybe I'm just cranky this morning but I'm trying to figure out the
point of this post. Are you doling out advice - is that why you posted this as
a separate thread instead of as a reply in the original thread? I can't help
but think this is yet another one of the recent, "Look at how awesome I am!"
posts - that's how it comes across to me.

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espadagroup
We'll I've read plenty of posts about business guys trying to get in on
startups and I've talked to a lot of other guys in that position. I believe
there was a recent thread here that tried to partner people for startups and
almost every entry read as "I am business guy looking for a technical
partner/startup". This is my attempt to shed whatever light I may on the
subject and if the post feels a little overly "Go me" it's probably because I
feel pretty "Go me" :)

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PhilWright
You need to careful you don't become labelled as the inhouse SEO/SEM expert.
Once labelled like that it might be hard to get the chance to develop other
business skills that are needed to broaden out your skill set.

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espadagroup
Yeah I did think of that, though I honestly respect and trust these guys and
believe they are investing in my knowledge and potential as well in the hopes
that they've gotten a good deal.

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pascalchristian
Wow congratulations! That's quite an archivement. What kind of business
degree/major did you actually took?

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espadagroup
I'm an economics and bio major, ha I like to joke that I got this job through
everything I did in between and after classes. The startup never even asked my
GPA.

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pjharrin
Any suggestions on landing the internship with a startup?

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espadagroup
As a business person, the number one thing I think is realizing that to a
programmer for the most part business is EVERYTHING other than coding, which
includes all the stuff I put above, and it's that stuff that isn't taught in
most business schools but what startups want.

