

SnapBite: My YC S12 Intern Story - pwingo
http://startupquant.blogspot.com/2012/10/snapbite-or-how-one-becomes-adult.html

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tomasien
I walked that line with an intern this summer, bringing him onto a startup in
the same space when we were probably going to fail by summer's end.

Here's how I mitigated it:

1\. Helped get him paid by a grant from a program at his school. 2\. Was
upfront and honest about the challenges. 3\. Made sure we at least had
something people wanted before bringing him on.

At the end of the summer, despite doing a lot of frustrating things, he's
counted the experience as a massive win and a great experience.

I'm not saying these founders were anything less than forthcoming, it's hard
to know what's going to happen, but I think it's important to only sell the
dream when you have some reason to believe you can deliver it.

~~~
tomasien
Apparently Arjun totally accounted for the "Sold the dream" problem in his
post, so I'll call him legit on all counts.
[http://argumentum.posterous.com/blog-hn-my-
ycombinator-s12-s...](http://argumentum.posterous.com/blog-hn-my-
ycombinator-s12-story)

~~~
pwingo
Yes, he was very forthcoming. He and I are on really good terms. I decided to
write the blog at that moment because I knew Arjun was also writing his, and I
thought it would be really neat to see two interweaving sides of one story.

