As already mentioned most new investors will want to see a version of your up-to-date cap table before investing. Beyond this, equity management software such as eShares (where I work) allows companies to give investors real-time access to their cap table (after they invest), so investors can check your cap table anytime without having to ping you or your lawyers. Over 80% of companies do this--whether sharing their full cap table or a summarized version.
Ingrid really sorry to hear this. I had to take out loans to help pay for college and found the entire process extremely convoluted and most aid offices quite unhelpful. Ultimately, I think our schools and government should be supporting students who are working hard to supplement loans with their own income, not punishing them by reducing your ability to take out a loan.
You can iterate on the other tests over time. Many A/B tests start with a larger change that may include multiple variables but with that baseline increase, now they can go ahead and test Dog vs Cat vs Human as the image. Or can test a variety of different text sizes and lengths. This seems like a fantastic start, with plenty of room for further iteration and improvement.
Would be really interesting to see what kinds of games/benefits occur in a company that changes gears and embraces more flexible work weeks bringing in older and more experienced workers.
Congrats Tess, Alexey, Alex, and Owen on building such a fantastic resource. I do think that there is significant information asymmetry in this process for most students, especially those from the east coast who are less aware of startup culture and how to break into it, so having all this bay area content in a single location is a massive help!
A few additional points in regards to the comments below:
2. For those discussing locations I generally agree with the authors points that SF, MV, and PA are best given proximity to events. That said we and many of the companies we work with, have had success with interns living in Berkeley. It is an easy BART stop, has lots of college housing which usually means 4-5 in a house and a lower cost, and while some crime does exist, it is avoidable with common sense and precaution. Since most events are during happy hour times, living in Berkeley definitely does not preclude you from participating in a lot of good events.
3. Additional posts I (and I know many interns we have talked to in the Bay) would love to see include:
-How to develop a mentor within a startup?
-How to get the attention of startup founders on social media?
-The importance of an online portfolio.
4. A couple additional tips I would share with students is that you should recognize that companies and founders are always time-crunched, but always interested in quality talent. Following-up with applications multiple times (and on multiple channels like Facebook or Quora) is always a good idea as long as you are non-spammy and enthusiastic. Same is true during an internship, embrace the hectic life-style, stay positive, over-deliver and remember to stay in touch with people (possibly with thank you cards) after the internship ends. Startups come and go so a full-time job is never guaranteed but your network can become even more important. Here are a few more posts along these lines: http://www.internmatch.com/blog/category/mastering-summer-in...
5. Startups are a lot of work but also a lot of fun. Always keep an open mind about your internship, make friends with not just those in your company but students and startup people you meet outside of it and have a great time!
Thanks internproject.io team for such an in-depth knowledge center for interns. Excited to read and learn more about the events and resources you have coming up
Adding to your advice to look in Berkeley, that's especially wise as housing prices drop a lot during the summer since most UC Berkeley students (who rent a huge percentage of the apartments) are away on internships or breaks of their own. In addition to shared houses as you mention, there tend to be lots of summer sublets at cut rates. Assuming you're reasonably close to BART it's very convenient to SF, not at all convenient to South Bay/core Silicon Valley.
I'd be curious if Palo Alto similarly gets cheaper during the summer.
I strongly agree that the try before you buy approach is incredibly important for determining difficult to predict cultural and team fit. That being said while it is essential for early-stage companies to get this right, as pointed out in the comments, it can be difficult to scale and can be inefficient to make-up projects for potential hires, give them access to code, etc.
Some companies have found ways to bake cultural fit into their standard application process to great success. Twilio for example asks all applicants, business or engineering, to build telephony apps using the Twilio API before applying. This self-selects for people who are more willing to do research, be creative, and in general improves the likelihood that they will get along well with the team.
I am a bit biased here, but another path I would definitely advocate for is using interns. This is similar to the contractor approach but with a number of benefits in terms of price, and the fact that a hiring decision is not implicit at the end of the term. We have seen many startups build a pipeline of early hires by taking on multiple interns and seeing who is the best fit over the course of a few months.
