This document provides guidance for interning at startups. It emphasizes that startups are different than large companies and interning will change interns. It includes tips for preparing like reading about startups and building portfolio projects. The document lists 50 experimental projects interns can tackle and provides schedules of internship application periods. It also shares advice from past interns about learning to take action and work without strict hierarchies in startups.

1. Startup Life
The practical guide to interning in startups.

2. Startups
are not
small
versions
of large
companies
- Steve Blank

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. Crash course to startups.
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.
Hacker News Best of Y- Combinator Eric Ries
news.ycombinator. Startup Advice startuplessons-
com goo.gl/5T0P learned.com
TechCrunch Fred Wilson’s Tutorials Stanford eCorner
techcrunch.com avc.com/a_vc ecorner.stanford.edu
Paul Graham’s Marc Andreessen Quora
Essays goo.gl/OqVVd quora.com
paulgraham.com
Steve Blank Stack Overflow
Venture Hacks steveblank.com Stackoverflow.com
venturehacks.com
Both Sides of the
Mixergy Table – Mark Suster
mixergy.com bothsidesofthetable.
Signal vs. Noise com
37signals.com/svn

6. 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.

7. 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.
Designers Developers Business
What: Create a What: Build on the What: Plan an
custom landing page, startups API, fill in inventive, no-money
a 404 page, t-shirt or programming tests, marketing campaign.
sticker design. Show develop analytics Show you can do cus-
you understand how dashboard or create tomer development or
web is different from a small easter egg gather a list of poten-
print. game. Show you tial bloggers to pitch.
can build something Demonstrate you
Where: Coroflot, Drib- yourself. understand the role of
ble, Forrst. customer service in a
Where: GitHub, Bit- small startup
Example: Netta Mar- bucket
shall wants to work for Where: Use Slide-
Instagram Example: David built a share, Quora, Twitter.
http://iwannaworkat- site to apply for Valve
instagram.com/ http://www.david- Example: 37Signals
vanleeuwen.nl/ needs another Jason
http://37signalsneed
sanotherjason.com/

8. 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!

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

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

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

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

13. What they say?
"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

14. 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.

15. My notes:

16. Go, ship!
Silicon Valley
Helsinki
London
New York
Berlin
Moscow
St.Petersburg
2010-2012, Startup Life
Contact us at team@startuplife.in
startuplife.in