This is in response to WePay's post:<p>http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1202168<p>I hear a lot about intern experiences at startups that seem awesome like the one mention above. The only problem is I am a business guy and would have been virtually useless trying to learn php to code for the summer. I want to share some points from my experience of interning as a business guy in a online startup.<p>A quick overview; I started interning in October part time while during my senior year (which is still going on). Today I just got a full time offer as employee #15 when I graduate.<p>One of the first things I try to say to other business guys who are interested in working at internet startups is to readjust what "business stuff" is to them. For example I make the assumption that in a small startup business stuff to a hacker is ANYTHING that doesn't involve hacking. This includes SEM, landing page optimization, analytics, social media marketing, and SEO, in addition to the usual suspects like cold calling and market research. Luckily this is all the stuff I like and/or have experience in and for an early stage startup the former stuff will a lot of times hold more weight. Here is a list of some stuff I did for the startup:<p>Landing page optimization on feature pages
50% of the design/features of an iphone app
Researched cross selling and upselling optimization points
Data collection
Analyze SEM campaigns
Pro forma cashflow models for new features<p>As you can tell there's a range, that basically includes everything except coding. I hope this helps any other business guys trying to break into the startup world. I consider myself very very lucky.
Sorry - maybe I'm just cranky this morning but I'm trying to figure out the point of this post. Are you doling out advice - is that why you posted this as a separate thread instead of as a reply in the original thread? I can't help but think this is yet another one of the recent, "Look at how awesome I am!" posts - that's how it comes across to me.
You need to careful you don't become labelled as the inhouse SEO/SEM expert. Once labelled like that it might be hard to get the chance to develop other business skills that are needed to broaden out your skill set.