One Day, One Internship » venture capital

OpenView Venture Partners

Willy Franzen — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 14:45:34 +0000

I love featuring startups here. They offer so many exciting internship opportunities for college students, and they’re often representative of the future of our economy. The problem with startups is that they often have trouble generating enough profits to grow quickly in their early and middle stages. That’s why I usually make it a point to mention how much funding a given startup has—so you’ll know that the company is financially sound enough to actually pay your paycheck (if they aren’t taking advantage of unpaid interns, of course). The amount of funding a company has can only tell you so much, but if an investor is willing to put up millions of dollars for some equity in the company, at least you know that you’re not the only one putting a lot of trust in the company’s future. Typically these investors are venture capital funds like Boston, MA based OpenView Venture Partners. They are “an expansion stage venture capital fund, with a focus on high-growth software, internet, and technology-enabled companies.” Expansion stage means that they typically make moderate sized investments (think $4 million to $11 million) in companies that have already established themselves as viable businesses (but need outside money to speed up growth).

Take an OpenView Towards Venture Capital

I’ve mentioned before that venture capital can be an extremely difficult field to get into, but it’s certainly one of the most exciting things that you can do right out of college. One of the cool things about OpenView Venture Partners is that they don’t just focus on making capital investments. They also invest significantly in adding value to their portfolio companies by giving them access to the firm’s resources and talent. If you take a look at OpenView Venture Partner’s portfolio, you probably won’t see many familiar names, but don’t let that dissuade you from getting excited about them (the only one I recommend is ExactTarget). As I prove every day, there are so many amazing companies that you’ve never heard of. If you’d like to consider interning at OpenView Venture Partners, you should note that they don’t seem to post internships on their Jobs page; however, I did come across a posting for a Marketing Intern on Startuply. No word on whether or not the position is paid, but I’d be surprised if a VC firm didn’t pay its interns.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

What do you know about the companies in OpenView Venture Partners’ portfolio?

Union Square Ventures

Willy Franzen — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 16:12:53 +0000

It’s hard to go a week on One Day, One Internship without seeing me mention some company’s venture capital financing. I’m sure that some of you have no idea what I’m talking about, so here’s how it works. Venture capital firms provide investment in (typically early stage) companies to help them grow more quickly. They get a piece of the company, and they provide cash to help the company do things like hire people, buy more servers, or get office space. It’s the reason that you see companies that may not be profitable (yet) spending money. We feature a lot of venture funded companies here, and a number of them including 10gen, Etsy, Meetup, Pinch Media, Twitter, and Zynga are portfolio companies of New York City’s Union Square Ventures. Without money from Union Square these companies may not have been able to add jobs and end up featured on One Day, One Job or One Day, One Internship. Typically Venture Capital is an extremely difficult field to break into, but I just got word that Union Square Ventures is hiring, and I figured we could also take a look at potential internships.

Pursue a New Venture

Union Square Ventures was founded by Fred Wilson, Brad Burnham and Albert Wenger. All of them are accessible through social media, which makes sense since Union Square Ventures is a major player in the Web 2.0 space. If you know anything about the portfolio companies that I mentioned in the first paragraph, you know that Union Square Ventures has an amazing track record. What makes it even more amazing is that they’re doing it in New York City and not the Bay Area (I think this is the only time that NYC is ever considered an underdog). If you want to know more about USV, you should check out their Our Focus page which links to posts from their blog that go into detail about how they work. Their latest job posting is also in the form of a blog post, and you can find it here. There’s no official word on internships from USV, but CrunchBase does list a Summer Intern from last year. If you want to land an internship with USV, your best bet is to use social media to reach out to Fred, Brad, or Albert and pitch them on why you’d be an amazing intern. It’s low probability, but it’s worth a shot.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

Which of USV’s portfolio companies is your favorite?

vSpring Capital

Willy Franzen — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 16:01:38 +0000

I don’t think that we’ve featured any internships in Venture Capital yet, but today that’s going to change. From what I’ve heard, it seems like there just aren’t that many internships in VC to start with, and when there are, they get snapped up almost immediately. That’s why I was pretty interested when I got word that vSpring Capital is now recruiting for their Summer Internship Program. They’re based out of Salt Lake City, UT, and they’ve funded a portfolio of companies that work in the Software, Communications, Internet, and Life Sciences industries. I don’t recognize any of their portfolio companies by name, but some of them look pretty cool, so you should check them out.

Summer Internships with vSpring

vSpring is currently looking for 8-12 MBA or undergraduate business students to intern with them for the summer. Each intern will be placed with a vSpring portfolio company and given a project that the company would likely not be able to complete without the help of interns. Projects will typically be in areas like market research and quantification, competitor analysis, marketing, product and project management, R&D, and finance. Interns will be matched specifically with projects, so you don’t have to worry about getting put on marketing at a software company, when you’d be a much better fit for finance and a life sciences company. Beyond that, it seems that you’ll also get some time at vSpring to get a feel for VC world. These aren’t 100% venture capital internships (since you’re working mostly with the portfolio companies), but they’re probably as close as you’ll get. There’s no word on whether the internships are paid, and you can find all of the details on the internships here. To apply send a resume and cover letter to Dennis Wood at Dennis@vspring.com. We’re assuming that all of the internships will be in the Salt Lake City area, but there’s no definitive word on that.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

Do you want to see more VC internships?