Darrell Silver!

Internships are Really Apprenticeships

This sentiment from Mixpanel is spot on. Done right, “internships” are really much more like a productive, paid apprenticeship:

In 2008, I interned at Slide, Inc. and it was one of the most valuable summers of my life. I went from being a college hacker interested in starting a company to learning the intricacies of product design and working with a team.

At Slide, Inc. we stayed up late hacking (because we wanted to), I learned about product from an awesome product manager named Adora, and Max Levchin worked closely on a product that didn’t necessarily have immense amount of business value for Slide.

After my internship, I had huge takeways:

I wanted to start a company.

I knew grad school didn’t matter out in California

I grew a huge network at Slide who became some of my closest friends.

I learned smaller things like: git, python, vim, etc.

I could have never built Mixpanel without having been at Slide first.

Max Levchin ended up investing in our company during the recession - a time when it was hard to raise money.

At Mixpanel, we value our internship program because of this. Last year, we asked our interns to talk about their experiences: http://code.mixpanel.com/2011/11/15/internship-stories/

If you’re looking for similar experience, please apply for an internship by emailing: jobs@mixpanel.com with the subject “Internship”

Sincerely,

Suhail

Founder @ Mixpanel, Inc.

Far too many startups don’t have the resources for an internship program. Mostly, the missing link is a little creativity on what a 20 or 22-year old student can contribute over the course of a single summer. This is a solvable problem. :)

Market forces + jobs + competitiveness + giant corporation = huge win for marriage equality.

Microsoft and others are pushing to legalize gay marriage in Washington, arguing that this inequality makes the state less competitive:

As other states recognize marriage equality, Washington’s employers are at a disadvantage if we cannot offer a similar, inclusive environment to our talented employees, our top recruits and their families.

Win them over with markets – an awesome approach, IMO. While HRC and others are doing their best to push state-by-state adoption of marriage equality, Microsoft may have just found the magic ticket. Can you imagine voting against your state’s largest employers when they tell you how to create more local, high-tech jobs?

I’m excited.

“

Every really good, really experienced CEO that I know shares one important characteristic: they tend to opt for the hard answer to organizational issues. If faced with giving everyone the same bonus to make things easy or sharply rewarding performance and ruffling many feathers, they’ll ruffle the feathers. If given the choice of cutting a popular project today, because it’s not in the long-term plans or you’re keeping it around for morale purposes and to appear consistent, they’ll cut it today. Why? Because they’ve paid the price of management debt and they would rather not do that again.

—

Ben

I’ve definitely made this mistake – and learned from it. At breakfast this morning I just complemented Jack on some tough, decisive and quick decisions he’s made recently at Seat Geek.

Reblogged from BRYCE DOT VC

brycedotvc:

In the book I’m reading,The Talent Code, the author showcases a 1997 study which asked why some kids make massive performance progress when taking piano lessons and some do not.

After looking at a wide range of variables- IQ, aural sensitivity, math skills, rhythm, sensorimotor skills, income level- the researchers stumbled on an answer in a question they’d asked the children before they ever slid their stool to the keyboard.

The question? How long do you think you’ll play your new instrument?

As you can see in the graph above, the correlation between long-term commitment and pace of improvement were eye opening. From the book:

I couldn’t believe my eyes. Progress was not determined by any measurable aptitude or trait, but by a tiny powerful idea the child had before even starting lessons. The differences were staggering. With the same amount of practice the long-term-commitment group outperformed the short-term-commitment group by 400%. The long-term-commitment group with, with a mere 20 minutes of weekly practice, progressed faster than the short-termers who practiced for an hour and a half. When long-term-commitment combined with high levels of practice, skills skyrocketed.

As in piano, entrepreneurship sees its fair share of tourists. Toe dippers, looking for a thrill, occasionally take the plunge yet continue keeping an eye on that safe and inviting shoreline. Inevitably, they all swim back via quick flips, acqihires or giving up once they figure out that being a founder isn’t nearly as cool as they thought it would be.

And I don’t blame them. This startups stuff is hard on every level.

But there are a group of founders with a long-term commitment to practicing the skill of turning small companies into impactful businesses. And they made the decision, before they ever started or joined a company, that the path of entrepreneurship was for them.

This doesn’t mean they’ll never give up on their current idea. Nor, does it mean they won’t work within a large company. It means that the decisions they make and the experiences they accumulate will be feeding that long-term commitment to honing their craft as entrepreneurs.

PS- you can read the whole chapter this graph comes from here.

Reblogged from BRYCE DOT VC

“

Art history majors are so rare they’re lost in the noise. They account for less than 0.2 percent of working adults with college degrees, a number that is probably about right for recent graduates, too. Yet somehow art history has become the go-to example for people bemoaning the state of higher education.

— How Art History Majors Power the U.S. Economy: Virginia Postrel - Bloomberg
I’m an art history major, and proud of it.

Reblogged from Felix