Founder Feedback gives you insights from the startup trenches.
In a story posted by Patrick Chandler, Co-Founder & Signal Processing Engineer at Hykso (Company Graduated of the Montreal Founder Institute), describes the "ins and outs" of an university intern in the process of becoming a co-founder in a startup, and some lessons he learned along the way. The post, "Something Found: An Inside Look at Founder Institute’s First Internship Program", from Linkedin, has been republished below with permission.
"I was a lucky individual, who happened upon a Facebook post one day, through a friend of a friend, that asked a simple question: Would you like to work for a Founder Institute startup?. This post brought me to a depth of searches into Founder Institute, as well as an exploration of what the heck “startup accelerators” were?".
After deciding to apply to work for a Founder Institute startup, my focus shifted towards the 12 or so companies that were described in the application. Many of them had little to no online presence and so I went into these type of “Interviews” with the Founder Institute startups, almost blind. Luckily for me, I love meeting new people and so I booked a time slot with nearly every company (the program had a very strict time limit for quick networking sessions/interviews). When I wasn’t scheduled to meet with a company, I would find an open table and begin talking to the entrepreneurs and learning about their aspirations and ideas. This is where the story of how I met my startup begins.
At every session with a new company, I would assess what kind of intern they were looking for, and play that part…until I met the founder of Hykso. I immediately connected with what they were doing and saw that their ideas were right up the alley of my passions (physics of sports and analysing data from real-world scenarios) and I felt the team’s energy immediately. I knew right after the interview with them that I would go to any length to get on that team (even traveling back home to my parents place to find a presentable suit for my second interview).
After nailing the second interview (while biting my tongue to hide this massive excited smile that kept creeping onto my face whenever the CEO, Khalil Zahar, would talk about what the team was doing and what I could be helping them accomplish) and almost immediately receiving a response that they want me on the team, I was ready to dive into this company. However, the team did not start me out working on the product, or the app, they immediately began educating me on startup methodologies (Lean Startup, Business Model Canvas, etc…) by sending me links to talks, books and then finally getting me to take a week long online course in “How to Build a Startup” on udacity.com.
The Hykso team did something amazing in my first few weeks working for them, and that was educating me and challenging me on almost every single aspect of a startup. They challenged me with assignments such as designing business model canvases for the company, researching all of our competitors and documenting what makes our company different and unique from them. After the second week with Hykso, I felt that I was on a level of understanding the companies’ goals and values, similar to that of a CEO.
Then after this massive education into the world of startups, I started working on critical areas of the product, and this involved working closely with every single member of the now five-person team. I felt like I was a vital part of a close group. Every single member accepted me as an equal in this project. After the many product sprint assignments from the Founder Institute, the whole team had become phenomenal at working together and communicating effectively with each other.
The team was always very open about discussions involving salary, equity in the company and our social situations (getting the support of our family and friends was key). These open lines of communication were always friendly, and there were no secrets or hidden agendas behind what was being discussed.
However, not everything was sunshine and rainbows for the Founder Institute startup interns:
- Some of the interns that happened to be working in the same co-working space as myself seemed unhappy with their employment at some of the Founder Institute startups. Some interns felt that they were being hired as short term, cheap workers, and this made them feel overused, underpaid and disposable. Similarly, some of the negative feelings were due to the way discussions on position, salary and equity in the company were handled. This may have been the cause of some anger or resentment.
- Another key reason is that as interns, you expect to learn about how to run a successful startup. Some did not feel they received a substantial level of education into startup methodologies, which I had the chance to have at Hykso. Finally, one of the main reason you want to work for a startup is having an impact. But the implementation of a highly structured and complicated hierarchy within a small startup made some interns feel insignificant compared to the founders.
- I believe every single problem brought up were mostly caused by poor communication. These situations can easily be solved with something as simple as positive reinforcement and being transparent about salary, position, and equity , which can go a very long way in keeping the interns happy.
I think this internship program is an incredibly important tool in the education of Founder Institute startups because the integration of an intern into the team will test the startups ability to handle human resources properly. And we all know that the right people in a team make the difference between success and failure in the startup world.
This internship program was a first experience between a University and Founder Institute. But as a student who is dreaming about changing the world, I believe these partnerships between Universities and Founder Institute chapters around the world could become one of the most attractive resources for hungry students who want to get involved with promising and revolutionary Startups. On the other hand, this program is a great test for the FI startups to make sure they can handle expanding their team and playing well with others.
With all of that said, I want to thank Sergio Escobar and LP Maurice, directors of Founder Institute Montreal, and the McGill Dobson Entrepreneurship Centre for this initiative. I not only got to learn things that I would have never learned in my mechanical engineering program, but it brought me the opportunity to go from an intern to a co-founder in one heck of a team called Hykso!
Hykso is shaping the future of combat sports by merging wearable technology and athletes to create actionable metrics specifically made for fighting. Hykso is a Graduate of the Montreal Founder Institute. Follow Hykso on Twitter at @hyksoinc.
