Startup Life The practical guide to interning in startups. 

Startups are not small versions of large companies - Steve Blank 

Start today. Internship in a startup is going to change you. Simply put, you’ll walk back to school a different person. You’ll have the ability to appreciate building products and companies. You have become a maker. This book has been put together to give you an idea of how you can prepare for working in a startup. 

Read. Startups are always experimenting and there are no fixed job descriptions so it requires a certain amount of stamina to master your way around the day-to-day. 

Hacker News news.ycombinator. com TechCrunch techcrunch.com Paul Graham’s Essays paulgraham.com Venture Hacks venturehacks.com Mixergy mixergy.com Signal vs. Noise 37signals.com/svn Best of Y- Combinator Startup Advice goo.gl/5T0P Fred Wilson’s Tutorials avc.com/a_vc Marc Andreessen goo.gl/OqVVd Steve Blank steveblank.com Both Sides of the Table – Mark Suster bothsidesofthetable. com Eric Ries startuplessons- learned.com Stanford eCorner ecorner.stanford.edu Quora quora.com Stack Overflow Stackoverflow.com Lucky you. There is a ton of stuff that you can read in advance. But be warned - none of it will really prepare you to the whirlwind you’re about to experience. Crash course to startups. 

Build Fast and fearless execution is the only thing that counts. Most of the tasks you’ll have little or no experience with. Build something self-initiated and completed during the internship. Learn to solve problems. 

Designers What: Create a custom landing page, a 404 page, t-shirt or sticker design. Show you understand how web is different from print. Where: Coroflot, Drib- ble, Forrst. Example: Netta Mar- shall wants to work for Instagram http://iwannaworkat- instagram.com/ Developers What: Build on the startups API, fill in programming tests, develop analytics dashboard or create a small easter egg game. Show you can build something yourself. Where: GitHub, Bit- bucket Example: David built a site to apply for Valve http://www.david- vanleeuwen.nl/ Business What: Plan an inventive, no-money marketing campaign. Show you can do cus- tomer development or gather a list of poten- tial bloggers to pitch. Demonstrate you understand the role of customer service in a small startup Where: Use Slide- share, Quora, Twitter. Example: 37Signals needs another Jason http://37signalsneed sanotherjason.com/ Tips and tricks for getting going Wanted: talent, enthusiasm and a track record of making things happen. How do you persuade the startup that you’re the one? A couple of tips. 

Experiment In a startup, nobody will hold your hand and tell you what to do - so here are 50 projects for you to tackle. Tell us after the summer how’d it go! 

Make a list of 50 most promis- ing journalists in the field of your startup. For general leads, check http://goo.gl/veIQ8 Find 50 most influential future users and contact them. Business students - learn basics of HTML and CSS. Start compiling a FAQ site of the product. Make screencasts of the new features of the product. Write an interview of an existing customer. Take a look at how 37Signals does it: productblog. 37signals.com/ Make custom 404 pages. Or five. Inspiration from Github: https://github.com/404 Analytics. Dive deep into the numbers. Present what you learned! Organize a Friday evening beers & pizza session for the startup. Document the company culture (photos, examples) and make a slideshow. Upload it to Slide- share. Learn to take product shots. Check out Etsy’s guide: http://goo.gl/5FGQl Plan and take press pictures of all founders. Write a 100, 300 and a 1000 word decsription of your startup in english and finnish. Collect related blogposts that are worth benchmarking. Compile a presskit for your startup. Check out http://goo.gl/4jU7i and http://goo.gl/piBmZ Paper prototype a new interface and try it out to at least 100 customers. Write three actionable items you learned. Do the same with Balsamiq or Mockingbird. Organize an open hackday for all the local developers. Organize a community micro- event for the users. Create a template for a newslet- ter. Make video-interviews of the founders & employees. Learn typography. Try A/B testing something with the website. Clean the pitchdecks. Inspiration from venturehacks.com and noteandpoint.com Find competitors. Plan a viral marketing campaign, measure the results. Find the coolest hackers and projects related to your startup from GitHub. Find the most interesting design- ers from Dribbble and see if they do contract work. 

Build an internal dashboard a la Panic board http://goo.gl/AHDX Do customer support for a day, whatever your main job is. Engage and ask a lot of questions. Put together a lead generation document. Update all the support documents. Learn to handle Google AdWords, banner advertising, text advertising etc. Research potential partners APIs and terms of service. Hack the officespace. Make it something like Zappos or 37Signals http://goo.gl/gks8N Plan a Jobs-section. Make your startup sound cooler than anyone else. Watch at least 10 customers use your product. Communicate your learnings. Retweet relevant Twitter-posts and schedule updates. Gather favour- ites! Scan and organize or those papers. Learn scrum. Design stickers and t-shirts. Make a cheeky robots.txt file. Check out flickr.com/humans.txt and google.com/humans.txt Benchmark the best internal com- munication solutions: Hipchat, Flowdock, Yammer, Basecamp, Google SItes etc. Try out Reinvigorate, Get Satis- faction, UserVoice, Geckoboard and other hip startup tools . Shadow a user for a day to see where the pain points are. Survey people who returned the product or took a trial and didn’t continue. Digg deep into Quora, Digg, Red- dit, Twitter. Identify super-users, twitter-lists, Facebook groups. Write a blogpost on your learning experiences. Make an internal Spotify list. Make a company blog (check out wordpress.com for hosted or tumblr.com or posterous.com). Plan a company summer party. Execute some crazy vision with zero-budget! 

For the most ambitious young people, the corporate ladder is obsolete - Paul Graham 

Meet Last years interns are happy to share their experiences - shoot us an e-mail at [email protected] and we’ll intro- duce you. Also, order Startup Digest Helsinki (thestartupdigest.com) to at- tend some of the best startup events of Helsinki. 

"In a startup you feel that you have something valuable to give. Together the team can achieve amazing results with less resources! And after a while it's harder and harder to leave and get back to your studies." – Lari, Kiosked, 2011 "I've learned that in a start up, words don't count. Actions speak louder than words." – Anni, Flowdock, 2011 “The energy and positive drive at work are simply irresistible. People are super responsive, prompt, efficient and professional, without losing their sense of humor and politeness. There is no hier- archy for the sake of hierarchy. “ – Nelli, Eucalyptus, 2011 “The most influential lesson for me was to let go of planning and asking for permission. In a start- up, you just do stuff. Try something. If it doesn’t work, you try something else. And again and again.” – Tuuti, Grey Area Labs, 2011 What they say? 

Schedule The application period for Startup Life starts January 6th and runs until Feb- ruary 29th. All positions will be filled as soon as there is a fit, so don’t wait too long in apllying. Internships start in mid-May 2012. 

My notes: 

Go, ship! Silicon Valley Helsinki London New York Berlin Moscow St.Petersburg 2010-2012, Startup Life Contact us at [email protected] startuplife.in