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Internship Experience: What I Learned

CPMS230

From my experience interning at Dive Chat, I learned how a startup operates from the ground up and sustains itself. Along the way, I also learned about how to effectively market a product and communicate in a leadership position.

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Startup Culture & Structure

  • The initial launch requires ‘making noise’ to get potential users and investors’ attention, while a startup’s next phases emphasize fostering sense of community on app and further improving quality of user experience
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  • Turnaround is very short, so team members must be able to adapt quickly to the spontaneity 

    • Restructuring from campus model to cross-university teams

    • Receiving projects on short notice and balancing them with other extracurricular commitments

  • It takes a village to present a final product; marketing and development must be on the same page for companies to deliver on their promises

  • All hands are on deck for testing because if we can’t vet and stand by our own product, who will?

    • Testing beta versions on TestFlight and ExpoClient to ensure that app updates work before they go live

    • Reporting bugs and collaborating with the extremely dedicated development team to iron out technical issues

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Mindset & Transferable Skills​

  • Be open to change: the beauty of startups is that they enable you to take on different roles and gain multidisciplinary experience without confining you to a single function

  • Know your limit and when to say no

    • Experiencing full arc of interviewing for position to being promoted to staying through restructures to leaving

  • Build a rapport with teammates and potential users through empathy

    • Adopting a customer-centric approach and delivering features users want to see 

    • Suggesting changes to company based on feedback received

    • Offering positive reinforcement to maintain morale in an online environment

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