I'll be talking all about my experience at a startup.
I wasn't located in New York City,
but I was located in Silicon Valley.
I have a pop quiz--
anybody here except for Kameel, can you
tell me where the Silicon Valley ends?
No, not you-- I know you know.
Yes?
San Fransisco.
Yes.
Does anybody want to elaborate on that?
It also goes Santa Clara [INAUDIBLE]..
Yes.
So I didn't know this either.
I thought Silicon Valley was maybe Stanford
in the middle [INAUDIBLE].
But it's currently expanding.
It starts in San Francisco-- kind of skips
the towns in between, and then you
go into the suburbs, which is called the South Bay, which
is Palo Alto, which is where Stanford is located.
And then you mentioned there's also San Matea, San Bruno,
and it goes off into San Jose.
And that's really important because I, personally,
found location was one of the most important things for me
as an internship.
Some people don't value it as much, but where
you are, the kind of people--
the weather is fantastic there, so I highly recommend it.
So that's where I was located, and I
think it gives a lot of context into what
my experience was as a whole.
My startup was called Osmo, and it
is a fantastic tech-ed startup, located
in Palo Alto, California.
And what is Osmo?
I'll just briefly introduce you.
This is what Osmo is-- it's an iPad toy where
you're able to use the [INAUDIBLE]
our founders invented.
And basically, you play off the screen.
Kids from the age of three all up to high school--
they're able to use the puzzle pieces to redefine
their learning and playing experience.
And I found Osmo because I love kids, I love education--
I'm not an education major, but ever since I was young,
I had a passion for children and improving the way they learn.
And here's a question-- how do you get to work at a startup?
If you go to any startup website,
chances are they don't have a careers page,
or they won't have an internship page.
You go to a big company and they'll have an entire process.
But for some of them, it's just, hello at osmo.com,
or hello at [INAUDIBLE].
So what do you do?
You just do it-- you take initiative,
you write an email to them, and chances are
they're not going to hate you.
I guarantee you they'll be more than happy to hear
about an enthusiastic undergrad who's really
interested about the startup.
And even they don't have an internship program, if you just
let them know you're so passionate, they'll definitely
remember you, because chances are, they have a small team.
Who knows-- your email might even
make it to the CEO, which is what happened in my case.
So what I did is I asked to grab coffee--
they grabbed coffee with me.
They loved my passion for Osmo, and a week later, they
said join the team, we want you for the summer.
And what do you do at a startup?
So you saw the long stats and lists--
what that had is very similar to mine--
you do everything.
Now, if you're an engineer, you might
have a more specific task.
But even as an engineer or coder at a startup,
you do more things--
maybe you deliver mobile, web--
whereas at a big company, you would just
have one sole project to work for two to three months.
At a startup, you do a lot.
Here's what I did--
I'm not going to read through them.
However, I am going to say that it was challenging,
but also so much fun learning about all these different skill
sets, especially because we're not all one sided people-- it's
not like I can only write an essay,
or I can only code-- there's a lot of things I love to do
and I want to learn to do.
So it really extends your capacity,
and you grow as a person professionally,
and academically as well because you're learning a lot
of skills-- like, I learned how to wireframe and design--
things that aren't offered at Mount Holyoke,
but I got to learn over the summer.
So here's the first challenge I had-- was trust me, I'm right.
You work with brilliant people, but sometimes, the bad thing
about brilliant people is that they know they're brilliant,
and they're very confident in their solutions
and what they've done so far.
A lot of what I struggled with--
I spoke with the teachers, and the schools, and the moms
firsthand about the product, whereas the engineers,
they didn't get that customer service experience.
So when there's bug in a feature--
when something needs to be changed, I go to the engineer--
I'm like convincing him--
you need to change this.
And he's like, it's perfect the way it is-- like, I made this--
I know the best.
You really have to sit them down--
ask them to see you eye to eye.
Even though I might be way younger than you,
that I really understand the user, and we need this change.
And chances are, they'll respect you,
and if you're able to really assert yourself,
they'll believe in your knowledge
and do what you asked for.
And my second challenge was asserting my authority.
So here's the thing--
I don't know about you guys, but if I have to ask someone,
especially if that person's older--
maybe it's a professor or exec--
I take a lot of time.
I'm taking 30 minutes at my desk--
like, can I ask him now, or like, is she busy--
I don't want to be annoying.
That was the biggest challenge.
It would take me, sometimes, an hour just to ask a question,
and nobody had any idea that I was like this.
So learning that was so much this internal reflection--
and asked myself why am I so self-conscious,
whereas x person can just go up and ask,
hey, Melissa, can I ask you something,
even though Melissa is working.
How come she's able to do that, but I'm not able to do that.
And I'm still working on it, but I really encourage you guys,
if you see yourself doing this at work,
don't just glaze over--
like, oh, it's because I'm not good enough.
Really ask yourself why am I having such a hard time asking
questions-- raising my voice?
And then unpack it--
is it because of how I was brought up?
[LAUGHTER]
That's a good philosophy-- gender studies
may be discussed.
Nah-- I'm just letting you guys know.
And it's really valuable--
I'm still working on it--
I'm hoping that I'll work on it every year in my internships,
and also, of course, at Mount Holyoke.
The pros and cons of a startup.
There is this illusion that startups
are really great and amazing--
they really are, so I'll start with the pros.
The food is fantastic, usually.
I have some friends who intern at some non-startup place,
and you have to pay for your own lunch, or it's not enough,
or it's not good.
But I was lucky enough to have really great food--
of course, it's paid for.
And even dinner-- if you work overtime,
they will pay for food.
And you think, oh, that's not a big deal,
but when you're working a new place for two to three months,
and you pay, let's say $10 to $8 a meal every day,
that's a lot of money, and you want
to save as much as you can if your a broke college student
like me.
The salary is pretty great--
I did not need Lynk funding for my Osmo internship even though
I was a non-engineering position--
I was more on the marketing and products side.
I also had to sustain myself, and some startups
offer even more.
The range is quite large-- it depends what [INAUDIBLE]
are in the [INAUDIBLE].
But I like to say still try it out--
if salary is a concern for you, startup
might be a great answer for that.
It's a relaxed environment--
I think I already told you guys-- we did yoga.
I played video games for an hour every day
for lunch break with the engineers--
they could not care less--
as long as you get your work done, they trusted you.
Flexibility-- so I didn't have normal work hours.
Usually, I'd come in maybe between 10:00 and 11:00 AM--
I'm not a morning person-- they totally understood--
and I left when I wanted to.
I had a small project update and I got it
done early-- that's fine-- you did your work,
and you were efficient-- they let me go early before 3:00.
But if I wanted to stay late, that was fine.
Sometimes, I'd even ask them a week before-- like, hey,
my friends visiting, can I take one day off
to go to San Fransisco-- they're like, yeah, have fun.
I would get a text from my manager--
it'd be like are you enjoying San Francisco?
It's really great, and that's something hard to find.
Some people enjoy that, some people don't.
But for me, that was really important
because I'm not a strict, constructed schedule
type of person.
Skills and exposure-- so like you saw,
I learned a lot about design, product--
speaking with engineers-- and you get exposed
to so many different fields.
That's the umbrella of our panel is that you work
with so many different fields--
marketing, design, product-- with exec,
managing-- it's so valuable, again,
because we're not one-sided people-- especially
as liberal arts students, I feel like we each have
a lot of skills and places that we can learn,
and build our capacity up.
Also respect-- half the time, they didn't even think of me
as an intern--
they regarded me as the same level employee,
and I really valued that.
For cons, there isn't a formal internship program,
so things can get a little bit messy--
like, am I doing this, or this--
what do you want me to do?
Gender diversity-- this is an issue
the tech industry is trying to work on.
Engineers alone, it's less than 20% female,
and at a startup like mine where engineers are really important,
we had 25 people-- of them, five were women--
20 were male.
It is something they're working on--
it is definitely challenging, especially if all the females
are mostly in HR and PR-- it perpetuates the stereotype
of all women in the tech industry.
But I personally think I want to be a risk-taker--
I want to see it--
I want to be exposed to it-- learn it the hard way.
So for me, I learned a lot about the cons,
but also it helped me grow as a woman in tech.
And reputation prestige-- some startups don't
get to make it to Google or Facebook,
so at times, it's hard to talk with your recruiters
for other positions-- like, oh, what is Osmo?
But as long as you own it, and you're
able to tell them Osmo is great, I learned about all this,
they'll usually be like, wow, Osmo seems like a great place.
But some places, they might be like,
oh, we don't know what that is, so therefore we're
going to discredit it.
So that's something you want to balance out.
That is basically my summer at Osmo.
That's me and my team, and our adorable dog, Lupin.
If you have any questions-- there
are Osmo internships available during winter and mid-summer.
There should be an email-- if you're curious,
I'd be more than happy to answer questions.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]