Last 2 weeks

My internship is coming to an end – only 2 more weeks left. I am wrapping up on the implementation of my initiatives, preparing for my final presentation and saying my good-byes.

Since my last post, I have made progress on the implementation of my initiatives, delivering tangible outcomes that will be useful for my team in the future. It has been fun and challenging at the same time – as they say, the devil is in the details! As I wrap up, I am making edits to my final presentation, rehearsing it with my manager and simultaneously, winding down my initiatives.

Last week, we hosted a lunch for bay area Ross interns at Google. It was an opportunity to connect other Rossers to Google and get the networking chain started. I believe Rossers enjoyed it and got a great chance to meet other Googler interns.

As I prepare to go to school, I wanted to highlight some of the learning I took away from this summer –

1.       The summer internship should not be viewed only as a tool to get a full-time offer – it should be viewed as a trial ground for us to understand ourselves – where we see our career going, what should be the ideal role for us for a long-term career.

2.       Delivering on the project is quite important and at the same time, it is also important to keep connected with peers who are interning in other companies to understand and remain connected to the Ross community

3.       Finally, as school is about to start, I think we should all take the perspectives that we have obtained seeing a company function and apply it to the classes we are all about to take – this will close the feedback loop and ensure that the learning we obtained during the summer gets consolidated

8 weeks into internship

As my internship continues, I have started implementation of my initiatives – this past couple of weeks have been quite insightful into how to run effective meetings, get consensus, close feedback loops and tie loose ends. As I continue implementation of my initiatives my final presentation date too has been scheduled and it is in a couple of weeks – this is my moment to shine and get visibility to the senior leaders within my group. I feel great and at the same time, there is a huge adrenaline rush as I begin preparing for the final presentation, creating slides, doing dry-runs. My team mates have been quite supportive and I cannot believe that in less than 4 weeks, my internship would have ended!

On a separate note, the intern group is having a lot of fun – we have been doing several activities, both fun and educational but most importantly, a great way to get immersed in the company’s culture.  Yesterday, we organized a mini-Ross Googler lunch and it was great meeting some Ross alumni who are now working at Google – get to learn about their experiences and get tips on how to do really well in the internship.

On the personal front, evenings have been great – meeting up with friends, going to movies, planning trips – it has just been fantastic! Ross interns in the bay area also have been getting together quite often through events organized at people’s homes – a couple of weeks back we had a potluck at a friend’s place and it was great reconnecting with fellow Rossers who are working in different companies and connecting with interns from other schools. Thanks to all the folks who have hosted events at their places.

As my internship comes to an end, I feel happy to have created impact thus far and I am looking forward to starting school in September.

Half-way through internship

It has been a great 6 weeks at Google. I had a check-in with my host last week on how things were going, my experience thus far.

Google makes it a point to do this to ensure that interns have an opportunity to receive timely inputs. Overall my experience so far has been great. 

I have had a chance to share my interim findings and am now on to my implementation phase. What this really means is interns get an opportunity to do meaningful work and really immerse themselves in the culture of the place. I am beginning to get a hang of how things are done here and am able to navigate my way around.

On the fun side of things, we have quite a lot of intern activities that are going on which gives me a chance to meet other interns. A few of us are going to watch a movie, get dinner in the city and really get to know each other. All the interns have such informal groups. We have frequent sharing sessions with other interns and this also gives an opportunity for all of us to understand or at least get a glimpse of the projects other interns are doing.

I had a chance to meet the OCD Director last week together with an alumnus who is working at Google. We had a great conversation about his perception of Ross.

On a personal front, I bought my new car and it is amazing! I went to the Indian temple nearby and did the necessary ‘Pooja’ (prayers) – this is part of the Indian tradition. Over the last few weeks, I have also had a chance to connect with some of my high-school friends from India who are now working in the Bay area!

A great few weeks I must say! 

Running along!

Since my last post, I have made a lot of progress in my project - I had a chance to interview almost 20 people to gather information about my project...but first, let me start from the beginning.

I enjoyed my first (almost) four weeks - with Google I/O happening, to going out with my team for a fun bowling event, lots of things have transpired over the last few weeks.

Google I/O was clearly the highlight for me - what with sky-divers jumping in with their Google glasses revealing the new Jelly Bean Anrdoid OS, these have been exciting times for us.

On to more serious topics - I defined a clear work-plan for my project after multiple conversations with my team. This helped me establish a good pace and clear targets to achieve every week. I worked off that plan and I am making good progress with my project. I have my usual weekly one on one meetings with my manager and more frequent meetings with the person in my team who is guiding me on day-to-day activities. My manager and the team have been really helpful in giving me the autonomy at the same time providing inputs when I ask for them. In addition, access to people is tremendous. Meeting other interns and exchanging notes with them makes me believe that this situation is not unique to me - all interns have tremendous access and have been receiving great help from their teams.


At this stage, I feel comfortable to start thinking about the solutions for the business challenge that I had been given. Navigating in Google means talking to a lot of people, collaborating and coming up with a solution that is actionable. 


On a more personal front, buying furniture, going out, meeting my friends in the bay area have all been a lot of fun. The weather in the bay area needs no mention - it is fabulous all year round!


More on my next post.

First 2 weeks at Google!

My first two weeks at Google have indeed flown very fast! And the learning curve has been really steep.

The days of orientation were really enjoyable - meeting new interns, interacting with them, learning about Google. I was introduced to the Google way of thinking about things - which was certainly very helpful.

On the second day, my manager came to get me and we had a great conversation about my project, the background and context and what I should achieve at the end of my project. 

Starting day three, I met a lot of people in my team, across teams to understand the situation - my team was super helpful in getting me settled in. Google has a great culture with folks who are passionate about what they do - it was quite amazing to see things move at lightning speed here.

Over the course of the next few days, I absorbed as much information in the context of my project as I could. One of the first few things that I realized was I would have to really plan out my project. I drafted a work-plan and defined what my end product would be and had a fruitful discussion with my manager.

On the fun side of things, we went out on a welcome lunch on Friday of my second week. It was a really nice Mexican place and that was when I saw the really humorous side of my team - they had a great sense of humor. All the things that I had read and understood about Googlers - that they are passionate, have a sense of humor, have a sense of purpose were all getting confirmed.

Settling in San Jose was fun - I had to finalize my apartment, find furniture, go shopping - hectic but fun. Most importantly, I got to connect with all my friends who are in the bay area.

Overall, first two weeks have been a lot of fun, work and learning!

Being a Noogler!

Sunny California, here I come!

I am super excited to be working at Google this summer! The role is exciting and so is the company – I thoroughly enjoyed my interview experience and enjoyed speaking with the ‘Googlers’. In addition, before I started my MBA I had set my mind to focus on switching industries - from management consulting to technology and getting a chance to intern at Google is indeed incredibly exciting.

My role will involve improving processes. With this internship, I hope to create impact within the financial operations group of Google, get to learn about its culture and make a lot of friends. I cannot wait to begin, work hard, make new friends and enjoy the Google cafeteria! I also cannot wait to learn how one of the world's most innovative companies does business! In addition, having completed a very successful MAP project at Microsoft, it will be interesting to compare and contrast the cultures at both these awesome companies! 

I also intend to learn a completely new skill outside of work (true to Google culture) during my internship – this could be anything from learning how to play a new instrument to picking up a new sport.

More to come as the months fly by! Stay tuned!

Amazon: Work Hard, Have Fun, Make History

I can definitely check the first two off the list. Am I making history? Time will tell I guess, but I sure hope so! So my last month at Amazon just began this week. Time really has flown by. I have learned a lot about Amazon through other interns, the frequent speaker series (where Senior VP talk about their teams and careers), and through speaking with Ross alumni at Amazon. It seems that each team has its own sub-culture, but the common theme at Amazon is “casual intensity”.

Intensity: Everyone is very passionate about the customer, their work and their business segment. People work very hard and are very absorbed in their work. People love to get involved in different aspects of the business. For instance, engineers brim with ideas for solving business problems and marketing managers get involved with the technology architecture and bug fixing. I also love the meeting culture here. Meetings longer than 30 minutes are unusual. Attendees focus on the topic at hand and so meetings are very efficient. In fact, efficiency and frugality are also a common theme at Amazon, which contributes to innovation at every step.

Casual: In a nutshell - T-Shirts, Shorts, Sandals, Wii games, and Dogs. The culture at Amazon is very casual. On a sunny day, I often see people play Frisbee or picnic in the parks at work. People come to work in shorts and t-shirts and sandals (and that’s not just on Fridays). Even senior management dresses very casually. We have bi-weekly happy hours at work at the end of Friday that one sub-team puts together. And once in a while we have Happy Hours on other days for no reason except TGIF. There were local brews, dart boards, a Wii game set-up on a big projection screen and a heated discussion about Ninjas vs. Pirates at an impromptu Happy Hour organized by our senior VP just a few days ago. And, I also appreciate how dog friendly the company is. Employees can bring thier dog to work. In fact there is an off-leash dog park on campus, and every reception has a jar of dog cookies. There seems to be one dog for every 6 employees here at Amazon. My floor has gone to the dogs, said a colleague when introduced to two new puppies in the past month.
Here is a hilarious video by Woot, a recent Amazon acquisition that touches upon the company culture:

The last few weeks

The last 10 weeks seem to have flown away. It has been a busy 10 weeks, although I had my fair share of fun activities. The last few weeks are going to be a scramble, to tie up a lot of information processing together into a synchronized deliverable.

I am preparing for a presentation to my entire team in the last week, and that involves a lot of work with meeting the team and getting feedback on my work over the last week. The idea is to build a foundation for your work before you go into your final presentation and building consensus is especially important when working on the strategy team.

Last weekend was a mix of fun and work. On Saturday, four Rossers left early in the morning for Friday Harbor for a whale watching tour. I was blown away by the trip and the experience of being in the middle of the ocean surrounded by a pod of whales was surreal. Sunday however was at work, where I was pulling stuff together for my meetings on Monday. Then again, I was able to fit in breaks from work. Wednesday evening, I went to the IMax in downtown Seattle and was blown away by Inception.
My roommate, who is from Ross and an intern at Microsoft as well had a fantastic experience last week. He was attending the World Partner Conference at Washington DC. It was a fantastic experience where he learnt how crucial partners are for Microsoft’s enterprise offerings, the kind of products partners build on top of Microsoft’s offerings and their expectations from a partner conference. To top it all, he attended a keynote by Bill Clinton.
Speaking of famous speakers, we have had the chance to interact with the CVPs of all of Microsoft’s divisions. Last week is the grand finale, with Steve Ballmer speaking to us. These sessions have been great learning experiences, based on the career experiences of each one of these leaders and hearing about their vision of Microsoft.
This is my last post, and hopefully I will see you all back in AA starting September.

Internship last 3 weeks

So the very creative title says it all, I'm almost done with my internship. These days, I'm working on tying up loose ends and organizing the mass of information generated during the internship. Also, I’m creating a presentation that can effectively sum up 3 months of work in 1 hour and yet not miss the important details. There is still some time to go (about 2.5 weeks) and I’m yet to enter the reflection mode fully, but since this is my last post, I will mention some of the key takeaways from the internship.
On the positive side I have been able to learn about many key aspects of the business. I started with evaluating some broad market segments for the company. And these days I'm creating pricing models which I hope would shortly be the basis for some price negotiations. More importantly, I have identified some channels the company could use to target those particular market segments. Also as short side projects looked at product certifications and some supply chain issues. Now that I think of it that’s a reasonable amount of work for 12 weeks. May be if I had interned for a larger company I might not have got the opportunity to touch so many aspects of the company business.
On the not so positive side, I got some pointers about dealing with investors when you are running a company in its initial stages. And saw some instances of how frustrating it can be some times to have to think continuously about cash flows or be in continuous dread of losing the only advantage that the young company has – intellectual property. Having seen the amount of uncertainty all these can bring to even a well funded early stage company, I could see that there are some definite advantages of being in a larger company.
It has been a great two and a half months and I have learnt quite a lot and I’m pretty sure come full time recruitment it will help me make a well informed choice.
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Fun, work and vistas

In addition to the 30-odd Rossers here, there are over 150 MBA interns in Seattle this summer, from B-Schools all over the U.S. We have a Facebook page and google groups where people have signed up for different activities. It has been great to hang out with them over the weekends for BBQs, Kayaking and Movies. It is not possible to meet over the week, but I make it a point to see other people every weekend, and I got to know a few of them very well.

Amazon organizes a lot of events for its interns. We have weekly happy hours. And one of my favorite parts of the internship is the speaker series. HR invites Senior VPs and VPSs from different divisions to talk to the intern group about their teams, career and the company as a whole. These are very educational, and provide another opportunity to spend time with the rest of the interns. As for networking, I meet a lot of people in relation to my project. And I reach out to people in groups that I find interesting. I found people here very open to talking to interns and happy to make time for us.

I have found the workload to be reasonable for an internship. My days vary quite a bit. I usually meet one or two people per day about my project. I spend several hours writing my findings or recommendations down. I also spend a few hours doing secondary research for my project. Due to the flexibility Amazon employees enjoy, every once in a while I work at the office café or lounge so that the change of scene and beautiful Seattle vistas can inspire me. I am very impressed by how every Amazon building has great views.

The end is near

I am in week 8 of my 12 week internship. While it has been a great experience so far, now is the time to start putting things together so that I am able to deliver a valueable end deliverable. That implies going over your work with relevant folks, stakeholders and otherwise, to get their perspectives on the issues at hand and itearate on the final deliverable based on their feedback. This process does get stressful at times but is a necessary part of delivering a good end-product.

I am currently working on search advertising. Google owns the lions share of the market, and given that this business has strong network effects, competitors find it difficult to gain market share. The network effect in search looks like this: a larger share of search queries leads to advertisers prefering the search engine which gives them a broader audience exposure, which in turn means that users will get more relevant advertisements for their search queries creating a better user experience and thus they will stick to the larger search engine. However with the launch of Bing, and now with the Yahoo deal (scheduled to go live in October), Microsoft will have a fighting chance of gaining query share and advertising spend.

On a related note, Microsoft's communication head put up an interesting blog here: http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2010/06/25/microsoft-by-the-numbers.aspx. It has been analysed by Techcrunch here: http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/26/microsoft-numbers/

Moving onto things which are more fun, the fourth of July weekend was great. Watching Netherlands move into the semis was a perfect start. Saturday was a trip to Mt St Helens, an active volcano about 120 miles south of Seattle. On Sunday, I went Kayaking on Lake Union. All of these trips were with friends from Ross. We closed the weekend with a Microsoft sponsored barbeque and a great fireworks show. Hopefully I will be able to have a few more trips before the close of my internship.

Learning and Unlearning

"Are you having fun ? What did you learn ?" the CEO asked, even before I could start my midway presentation.

I'm more than half way through my internship and often during these 7 weeks I have got the urge to do more analytical 'MBA type' stuff. The need to give business issues the form of a well laid out case and then provide an elegant solution. However, in the real world facts have a way of hiding until right after you have made the decision and then in hindsight they are all there. And more than that, although something like a conjoint analysis might be very valuable and look even better on a report, business needs might be more effectively served by a quick calculation delivered with perfect timing.

Even though picturing yourself making that all convincing strategy argument supported by incontestable facts is very satisfying, but almost never achievable in a real business scenario. As I start the last month of my internship I'm convinced the increased comfort with business ambiguity will help me propose more practical solutions to the problems I'm handling.

I would say the most important learning in this internship has been to know better when to keep the MBA in me reined in and let common sense make the call...and yes it has been fun learning that and more. A bit unsettling, but fun none the less.
Finally, as posting on this blog has also been part of the summer experience, I would use this comment to say something about the blogging assignment. When I opted for this exercise at the onset of summer I felt that this may be useful. But now I’m coming round to the view that it may be better to discontinue this exercise from the next year or make some changes at the very least. Blogging is essentially about free sharing of ideas and the less boundaries we put around it the better. Also in my view in its present form this assignment has been a distraction from what students should primarily be concentrating on - which is their internship. It may be minor but it’s a distraction none the less. More important, the internet is much too powerful a medium to waste on saying something just because you have to meet a word limit. Just my two cents… (390 words)

Great start to NYC summer

New York has always been among the top cities I wanted to live in. It's full of life and color, a tremendous variety of restaurants and the most vibrant art and culture platform that I have seen anywhere. Finally my dream comes true for the summer as I start my internship with IBM. As I absorb my first week of experiencing this fascinating city, I am surprised how quickly it flew by.

My internship at IBM started with a three day onboarding class in Washington D.C. with other MBA interns from Kellogg, Booth, Wharton and Columbia. While the class itself was to familiarize us with the company and the administrative processes, the three days together in D.C. were a great way for the intern batch to bond and build an instant support network in the company.

The first week flew by in a blur as I absorbed training materials and research, and networked with consultants and partners in the Strategy & Transformation practice. The need to network with people cannot be overemphasized in a large consulting organization. Since you do not have a strict reporting heirarchy, finding ways to advance your career is in your own hands. Building a network of peers and mentors can help solve problems on an assignment and help land the engagements you're looking to work on and open opportunities in the company over a longer term.

My project starts in Atlanta next week, and it's expected have a typical Monday through Thursday on-site travel schedule. My work will be focused on organizational alignment and change management at a large multinational corporation. I hope to get exposure to my client's senior leadership and be able to identify additional strategic and operational challenges facing their business. My metric for success in the project would be to creatively solve a significant problem for my client that would result in measurable value to the client. On the weekends, of course, I will be exploring the city and making some good friends.

Full Steam Ahead (MBA, Amazon)

The last two weeks at Amazon have gone by very quickly. I presented my research to 12 technical managers last week and delivered two reports this week. I am certainly kept on my toes and love it. Working with supervisors is interesting, because I have been given so much freedom to run my project. I chat with my manager once or twice a week to bounce my ideas off him. I work closely with two other managers, and I took up a tiny side project for one of them. I also meet weekly with my mentor, who is incredibly helpful when I am stuck on an issue.

My summer project evolved quite a bit in the first two weeks. It was quite exciting to turn a broad business idea and problem into a structured 3-month plan. My MAP project really helped with that. My manager had presented me with a set of projects/issues I could help with, and I thought through them to pick the ones I would work on this Summer. My decision was based on my potential impact on the project, my interests, skills and learning objectives. I communicated these with my manager, and together we came up with a set of goals for me. I broke down those goals into actionable items, and talked to my mentor about what was achievable.

I also learned that setting hard deadlines for myself, and communicating those with the rest of the team helps me focus and push forward on my work. I try to deliver a document every week, so that I time-box myself. Documenting my findings also helps me when a question is asked of me, or when I am trying to drive towards solutions. So it’s a tactic I recommend to everyone. Besides, it improves writing and presentation skills.
Here’s yet another video of Jeff Bezos, this one is more current, from the Princeton graduation:

Seattle - week 5

The last time I blogged, I was still figuring out my project. Well since then, I have finished one of my projects (after spending a few 14 hour days), made presentations and started working on my other projects. Online advertising is an ever evolving field, with new technologies evolving rapidly (compare it to offline advertising, which has been in steady state for decades!) and the strategy group provided a great experience to get an overall view of the business in a few weeks.

Online advertising can be separated into Display advertising and Search advertising. The display advertising space is insanely complex. The current value chain is summarized here http://www.adexchanger.com/pdf/Display-Advertising-Technology-Landscape-2010-05-03.pdf. Being in the strategy group involves thinking through how each segment of the value chain is evolving, and which segments will be able to maintain their margins while other segments might get commoditized. The image above also gives a great idea of the main players in the field.

Search advertising is much more organized. Advertisers primarily bid on keywords in an auction, and the winning advertiser is chosen based on his bid price and the historical probability of the ad being clicked. Its fascinating how such a simple idea is leading to billions of dollars in revenue for Google.

At Seattle, we probably have one of the largest MBA intern communities (between Microsoft, Amazon and Boeing) and the fact that all of us stay in the same apartment complex doesnt hurt. We had a bar crawl before heading to a Mariners game last weekend, which was a lot of fun. What made it special was a few Rossers flew from around the country for the weekend! World cup matches on weekends is becoming a routine, as are boardgames nights and dinners on weekdays.

I am looking forward to the next 7 weeks and hopefully will have interesting stories to tell in my next post. Until then..

Half way mark and lots of talk

As I write this I realize that for a small 20 person company I have done an inordinate amount of talking and writing in the past 5 weeks. Between presentations, phone calls, spreadsheets and emails I must have surely broken my previous record for 5 week word wizardry (posts to this blog count too). And what makes it even more remarkable is the fact that this has been done under a veritable oath of secrecy where you are not supposed to talk about the real thing-the company's technology.

All this writing, talking, spreadsheet trickery and industry report browsing has resulted in huge amount of data. Almost six weeks gone and with the deadline for mid way presentation looming large, I'm at a point where all the data better make some sense. Guess it is high time for some real MBA magic. I better take out all the P's and C's to throw at the data. And muster all the forces that Porter has vested in me to whip this data into shape, for not much time is left.

One thing that I learned from the experience so far is a fair amount of time spent in scoping out the project in the beginning can be the most important factor in how successfully you can execute the assignment. So, although the pressure to show results and please immediately is high in an internship, but spending some time to define the project well might be a good idea.

There is lots of information to organize and models to develop, but there definitely is more clarity now about things that looked impossibly vague at the onset. And although it’s fun to joke about Ps and Cs, quite a bit of that understanding is due to those little lessons from marketing or operations or accounting- the bits that cling to some corner of your mind even after everything else in the class is long forgotten.
I’m reasonably sure that the strategy that will come out of this project will be logical. Is it going to be business class case worthy? Well... that is a different matter.
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Hitting the mid-way mark at Sears

This week has been more challenging than most and I am glad for the weekend. I had my first performance review with my manager. It turns out Sears has an extensive performance appraisal system in place, involving the intern’s input, self-appraisal, manager appraisal and subsequent discussion with manager. I have currently completed two steps in the process and am waiting on a second meeting with my manager this coming Tuesday.

I have been given 4 new projects to complete over the next 5 weeks. One involves process improvement follow-up on my first project. The second is a weekly tracking of our vendor contribution targets for the month, involving following up with the buying team on any discrepancies from forecasted contributions. The third is a capital project request for the replacement of jewelry fixtures at a Kmart store in New York. This is a standard project for finance teams in many companies in many industries and I noticed that it is the first thing on my syllabus for ‘Valuation’ in the coming fall quarter. The last project is potentially the most impactful of all my projects. It involves the circulars / inserts in the papers that Sears and Kmart use as standard marketing strategy to incent customers to buy. There has been a company-wide initiative to reduce costs on these circulars by shifting them from Sundays to Thursdays (cadence change) thereby reducing circulation volume. A reduction in sales has been observed over the same timeframe. My task is to identify if the cadence change is the cause of the reduced sales of if there are other contributing factors. It is a strongly analytical exercise based on available data and should help me apply my problem-solving and analytical skills. It allows me the opportunity to display my strengths in this area to my manager.

I also have the opportunity to share my learnings, findings and showcase my skill-set to upper management through the final intern presentation that is due in 3 weeks. I will be doing a power point presentation for the Finance CFO’s as well as other operating business CFO’s within the company. This high level exposure should be very beneficial for me should I choose to return to work full-time at Sears.

Finally on a front closer to home, I am going to hospital twice a week for regular check-ups and fetal monitoring and so far so good!

Amazon 101

I moved to Seattle-town 2 weeks ago. This city reminds me a bit of my San Francisco, where I lived before school. It’s a beautiful and green town, with an edge to it. It has been fun to meet so many new people at Amazon and other MBA interns. Two weeks into my internship and I already feel like I have learned a ton. I have talked to many people, read more than 20 industry reports, and visited a lot of websites. In fact, I will be doing a presentation in a week to talk about all I have discovered about my project so far. It has been interesting to compare and contrast the culture at Amazon with that of Dolby (my previous gig). Both are laid-back, but in different ways. The dress code at Amazon is very casual. I often see very senior managers in shorts and flip-flops. There are at least 5-6 dogs on the floor I work on. I love that part as breaks are so much more interesting. At the same time, meetings are not as casual as they were at Dolby. People get down to business right away, and raise an eyebrow if a meeting is scheduled for more than 30 mins.

As for my project, it is a classic marketing and strategy project that I get to work on from soup, and 2/3^rd the way to nuts. All the concepts and acronyms (5Cs, 4 Ps, STP, Porters) learned in Strategy and Marketing are rushing back and being deployed in real time. The frameworks have really helped my structure my internship. Over the next few weeks, I will be interfacing with managers in different segments of the company. I look forward to learning even more about the business through those interactions. I will leave you with a video from Ted.com, of Jeff Bezos discussing the analogy between the dot com boom and the gold rush.

Internship: Quarter 1

I completed 3 weeks at Microsoft last Friday. These three weeks have been very exciting. I have been learning the lay of the land of online advertising, which seems to be evolving daily. While its all clubbed together as online advertising, different subverticals have completely different challenges. Paid search ads, diplay ads, mobile ads, Video ads, all have their own unique set of challenges. I have been lucky to get a chance to speak with people within most of these groups, and have been learning a lot.

The tools that come in handy are excel and powerpoint. I highly recommend the Excel courses to the class of 2012. The course covers the basics of excel, and is essential if you have not used Excel extensively in your past life. I also find that my MAP experience was really helpful in preparing me for the internship. I am better prepared for the informational interviews because of MAP.

The rain Gods have not been very kind to us over the past few weeks, and it has rained continuously. However we do get sunny patches once in a while, and this Saturday was one such day. A group of 20 MBAs (interns from all over the country, working for Amazon, Microsoft, Boeing etc) went to Twin Falls, for a early morning hike. It was a lot of fun and we got to meet a ton of great people.

The next few weeks at work are devoted to completing a financial model and developing a framework for search advertisement innovation. As I will describe in the next post, the display advertising space can be very intimidating, and it takes a significant amount of time to wrap your head around some of the concepts. I am looking forward to a ton of learning. Till then, Sayonara..

Quarter one of internship

If the internship was equivalent to a company's financial year, this would be about time I would be reporting the Q1 performance. Yikes!!! what a scary thought. Three weeks...and no sign of the killer insights I'm supposed to deliver at the end of my internship. Three weeks and no economic value added. I'm sure my managerial accounting Prof. would be so disappointed.

However, over the past weeks I have been able to better formulate the questions that I'm seeking answers to and identify the people outside and inside the company who can help me answer them. Initially the problem to be solved didn't seem that difficult. I was confident that either the precision weaponry of Operations or mass destruction capability of corporate strategy would be enough to slay these demons. After all, how big can the problems of a small company be? But I guess the real complexity is in how and where to get the facts that define the problem.

The good thing about interning with an early stage company, I believe is that there is lot of room for contributing your own ideas. At the same time as there is little to no past data that you can base your decisions on, there is constant need to find information from outside sources. And if you are coming from a background where you have worked for large corporations in the past it takes a change of mindset to get used to the new way of getting things done. However, so far I have liked the freedom of being able to not only decide how to execute the project but also to decide the sources that I will use to come to the project conclusions.

So, I spent three weeks understanding the problem and may be formulating a vague strategy to solve it. Does that mean I added any value to the company? Wish there was a way to report that on a quarterly statement.
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