My name is Phillip, and this summer I’ve had the wonderful opportunity to intern with the Marketing Department here at TrackMaven. Located in Thomas Circle in Washington, D.C., TrackMaven is a high-growth SaaS company dedicated to making the lives of marketers easier, more productive, and more effective.
With the recent successes of many big-name tech startups, many career-minded undergrads are gravitating away from more traditional, “old guard” organizations in the hopes of working for cutting-edge tech startups.
The perks of working in a startup — from the casual, fun office environments to the opportunities for rapid career growth — certainly appeal to college students. But most internship-seeking undergrads don’t really have an idea of what working in a startup is like.
To shed some light on this experience, my fellow interns and I would like to share the 8 big things we’ve learned and observed during our summer as TrackMaven interns!
1. Your definition of a startup will completely change.
As an avid fan of HBO, I pictured a startup as something similar to the hit T.V series Silicon Valley: a small office with a bunch of people crowded around computers coding furiously.
My fellow interns agreed and also pointed out that they expected a few nap pods to be lying around as well. While TrackMaven currently has no nap pods — the company just moved into a new office with 4 times as much space this summer — my fellow interns and I were amazed at how organized and efficient a successful startup feels. In fact, there is always a business dashboard front and center that showcases how far we the team is away from hitting quarterly goal. At TrackMaven, everything is rooted in data!
2. Wow, that’s a lot of technology!
While all my fellow interns came to TrackMaven with some basic knowledge of our tasks for summer, we truly went in with an open mind. My personal philosophy was to become a sponge and try to absorb as much knowledge as I could. What we did not expect was the multitude of technologies TrackMaven uses in order to make life easier in the office.
From HipChat, a team chat platform built specifically for business communication, to Greenhouse, our recruiting software, there always seemed to be a better way of getting things done.
The hard part? Memorizing all the passwords required to login. Thankfully, we even have a password-managing app…
3. Does anyone have Rosetta Stone for startups?
While every industry has its own jargon, when I first sat down for a company-wide meeting at TrackMaven, I realized I had no idea what the CEO was talking about. While I knew that SEO was Search Engine Optimization and CX stood for customer success, I had no ideas what ARR possibly meant, let alone OKR, MBO, and PLP?!
Not to mention each intern’s department had their own lingo as well! While everything seemed like Greek to me and my fellow interns in the beginning, thanks to our superb training and the TrackMaven Marketing Dictionary, we all felt bilingual by the end of the summer.
4. Being more open and transparent isn’t just a myth.
As an intern for a larger company, your exposure is often limited to working with your direct team. Odds are slim that you’ll get to meet the CEO, and company-wide meetings are almost impossible for an intern to experience due to the sheer size. But here at TrackMaven, it’s all about having a “we culture, not a me culture.”
For example, TrackMaven CEO Allen Gannett gives a weekly update and Q&A with the whole company where anyone can address problems and concerns (including the interns).
TrackMaven CEO Allen Gannett presenting to the team the biannual company-wide offsite.
This weekly presentation includes a high-level review of each team’s key metrics, highlights, lowlights, initiatives, and shoutouts to fellow Mavens from the previous week. Talk about being transparent…
5. Mavens take their work — and their silliness — very seriously.
At TrackMaven, time is extremely valuable, and every team member is critical — even the interns. Having the ability to work on projects that directly impact users was something that was a common experience in every single department. For an intern, setting up a customer account or rolling out your first blog post first could be scary, but being given the chance do so and learning to take responsibility as an intern was a rewarding experience.
Even better, while the work could be daunting at times, the support stuff was incredible. Never were any of us afraid to ask questions (there were plenty!), and we always felt appreciated for the work we did. To make things better, everyone was excited to come to work — and hanging out with the office dog Maven the Corgi didn’t hurt!
Maven the Corgi is the real dog behind the company mascot. You can usually find him wandering the halls in TrackMaven HQ — especially during lunchtime!
In fact, among the interns, the 5 most common words used to describe coming to work were: Dog, Dynamic, Exciting, Free Food, and Upbeat!
6. You’ll get to try out multiple career paths.
As most of us interns aren’t 100% sure of the path we are going to take after college, the ability to have cross-team exposure enabled us to explore more than one single option. A sales intern explained how he got the opportunity to work with TrackMaven’s VP of Finance on segmenting companies by size in order to analyze the company’s business model.
In addition, it was always encouraged to speak to other teams to see if they needed help with anything, and more often than not, you would land another interesting project. As a marketing intern, I was able to understand many roles within the company, which I believe helped me to become a more effective contributor going forward.
7. Effective time management… Learn it!
The interns here at TrackMaven love being busy, and rarely do we say no to work. In fact, we frequently ask for more! Sounds like an amazing trait right? WRONG. While there is always work to be done, no one can effectively manage your schedule except you.
In fact, most of the interns stressed how important it was to keep everyone up to speed with how long things would take. One intern in particular stated that he believed that it was essential to step back for a moment, analyze the current amount of work at hand, and then play “Tetris” with his Google calendar to fit everything in.
8. You’ll make lasting memories
From the company trip to an outdoor adventure park to our tours of NPR and other startups in the Washington, D.C. area, nothing was more rewarding than the feeling of coming to a place where work didn’t feel like work. Everyone in the office has the opportunity to directly contribute to the creation and growth of the business and culture, and make lasting memories while doing so.
Mavens and Maventerns all participated in the summer company-wide offsite at an outdoor adventure park.
My personal favorite? Getting the chance to speak to the CEO at our offsite about how he started his own company and the challenges that he had to overcome.
Interested in an internship or career at TrackMaven? Check out our Careers Page to see our open positions and learn how to apply!