Editor's Note: If you want more information on any of the internships depicted in this article, either click on the company names which will lead you to their career pages, or reach out to molly@inthecapital.com.
Traditionally, internships have been perceived by college students as nothing more than an unpaid job catering to hopeful future employers. They assume their work day will consist of coffee runs and of course wrestling with the copy machine in addition to the intolerable process of filing paperwork. Clearly they have never been introduced to the startup world, one that treasures their interns as essential, invaluable members of their team.
For a bootstrapped business that relies far too much on each and every one of its employees, interns are a welcomed saving grace. They are given responsibilities top tier industry leaders would never allow 20-somethings to take on, hands-on roles that far exceed any experience a college student could receive elsewhere. When it comes to internships, startups are the way to go.
I myself began here at InTheCapital as an intern and, as you can see, I could not tear myself away from the startup mentality. Having an up close and personal view of a fledgling business prosper into an acquired member of the American City Business Journal family was the making for an internship that could not possibly be replicated. For startups, you can be the part of the momentum, a part of the success, the growth of an idea from start to finish. It's truly an opportunity of a lifetime, one that will allow you to become more self-confident, motivated, and inspired all at the same time.
What we tend to forget about here in the District is the slew of startups that reside in the area, offering up an enticing chance to be a part of something innovative, unique, and ultimately exciting. Universities highlight business leaders like Deloitte and IBM as fine internship prospects, while startups are rarely acknowledged. That ends now.
I have called on the D.C. Tech community and utilized Foster.ly's Internship Match Initiative to bring you 11 D.C. Tech startups looking for interns right now. Jump on the chance to be a part of something completely out of your comfort zone and be a part of the magic that is the startup world. Check out the internships below and let us know how we can help you make your internship dreams come true.
The Startup: DC Linktank makes it easy to share knowledge and build a relationship with local sources. A free subscription can help you find citywide events, organizations, and people engaging in topics that matter to you.
Internship Descriptions:
- Sales Intern - "Your role is to identify organizations that want to get in front of our audience and offer an advertising solution that delivers results. You’ve really got to love talking to people, looking for new leads, cold calling, networking, and build a winning formula."
- Front-End Developer/Designer Intern - "You will collaborate with the products team to define, design, and integrate a user interface that is intuitive and a delight to experience. You will also maintaining the site and iterating where there are opportunities for improvement."
- Product and UX Associate/Intern - "You will immerse yourself in the experiences and opportunities that serve our community and distill that information into a product roadmap. This is your chance to architect a service for one of DC's most powerful networks."
The Startup: Located in Bethesda, Popcorn & Ice Cream provides marketing and consulting services for small businesses. Their focus is placed on the small local businesses and nonprofits and helping them grow with an entrepreneurial spirit.
Internship Description:
- Summer Marketing Intern - "Popcorn & Ice Cream, a small business marketing consultancy located in the Washington, DC metropolitan area, seeks an intern to assist with myriad tasks addressing multiple areas of marketing and communications. Tasks may include, but are not limited to:
- Copywriting: Writing for blogs, webinars, contests, websites, newsletters, and marketing collateral
- Social Media: Managing profiles to include researching, creating and posting content to driving followers/likes
- Events: Researching events and tradeshows in local geographies and across industries
- Market Research: Competitive and market analysis, identifying specific business-to-business target opportunities
- PR: Developing press lists, drafting press releases and pitches"
The Startup: Foodem is a business-to-business online marketplace connecting wholesale food buyers and food distribution companies. Founded in 2009 by a UMD grad, they have created a single platform for food providers and distributers to get the most competitive prices in a fast and efficient way.
Internship Description:
- "Desirable candidate(s) are currently college students or recent graduates, with substantial writing skills, and who love blogging; weekly blog posts are a major part of assigned tasks. These individual(s) will also have a strong interest and background in the inner workings of social media and online marketing, as they will assist the current management team.
- The selected individual(s) will work directly with our current social media specialist, our current PR firm, and will also have the opportunity to learn firsthand different traditional and online marketing strategies used in branding a B2B product.
- If the candidate(s) excels in their performance, growth potential will be available as the company moves to its next rapid stage of growth."
The Startup: Fishbowl Labs consists of a vibrant community of startups working out of the AOL campus in Dulles. They provide free office space and support for talented entrepreneurs to help overcome the challenges inherent in starting a company.
Internship Description:
- "Are you a budding entrepreneur or aspiring venture capitalist? This may be right up your alley. AOL’s Fishbowl Labs is looking for a highly organized, social media-savvy intern to work onsite 7-10 hours/week. This is a great opportunity to enter the DC start-up scene and gain cross-functional exposure to AOL."
- Responsibilities would include: Managing the application pipeline for startups that want to join, streamlining and tracking the onboarding process for new startups, tweeting news from @FishbowlLabs account several times per day and re-tweeting relevant content, updating the Fishbowl Labs website with news from the startups, monitoring and keeping track of DC startup and investment activity, helping to plan and coordinate events like meet-ups and demo days, and facilitating and tracking interactions between Fishbowl startups and AOLers
The Startup: The rapidly growing company has a vision for making parking painless and inexpensive. They allow customers to find and reserve guaranteed parking online in DC. Customers also enjoy exclusive discounts and parking lots, garages, and other popular event venues in the city.
Internship Descriptions:
- Designer (Freelance/Intern) - "As a graphic design intern you will work directly with the CEO to make critical design and branding decisions for the company. You will help redesign the website and build an amazing and easy to use UI. You will also be responsible for helping to design marketing and promotional material. It doesn't matter if you are an experienced professional or still a student, there is still a place for you at Parking Panda. The most important thing is that you impress us with your prior work and your creative vision for our brand."
- Marketing Intern - "The marketing intern should be a college student or recent graduate. In this position you will work closely with the CEO and Marketing Manager to help implement strategic local and digital marketing initiatives. You will have the opportunity to learn SEO, SEM, and local marketing strategies. You will be actively involved in content creation, social media management, and organizing local outreach efforts. You will have the opportunity to contribute to a young and rapidly growing startup and if you impress us this could lead to a full-time position."
The Startup: Connecting neighbors based on common interests, Neighborsations is aiming to create more meaningful offline opportunities. Meet the people on your block by using Neighborsations.
Internship Description:
- Summer Marketing Intern - "As the Marketing intern you will help us develop and execute an excellent marketing strategy alongside the founder. You will work with the rest of the Neighborsations team to establish and execute both offline and online strategies to grow the Neighborsations brand with key partners and acquire new users. You’ll be a key part of the team making everything happen - from local strategic initiatives to larger digital strategies… and you’ll make it look easy. Apply if you want some hands on experience growing a new business and having fun doing it. You’ll have lots of freedom to try new things and learn from successes and failures."
The Startup: It's super simple and visual conference calling. Instead of using a traditional phone number, customers can use a personal or business link to connect with people. Speek allows you to see who's on the call, who's talking, share files, use call controls, and many other features.
Internship Description:
- "We are seeking passionate and hard-working interns for the winter and summer breaks. You will real work and will be an integral part of one of the hottest startups in the DC area.
- There are opportunities for interns in the following areas: marketing, quality assurance/testing, software engineering, general business administration and management, and sales and business development.
- Requirements: organized and responsible, no excuses; passionate about technology and the web; and a great attitude and personality."
The Startup: Their aim is to revolutionize the way restaurants connect with their guests. They help food distributors track and analyze their customers purchases, habits, and preferences to improve guest experience, target marketing, and increase loyalty.
Internship Description:
- For Credit (Unpaid) Sales Assistant Intern - "Venga is a fast paced start-up based in DC developing and selling loyalty software to the restaurant industry. Join our fun, energetic culture as a full time Sales Assistant during the summer of 2013! The Sales Assistant position will be an integral part of our Sales team and our growth. We’re looking for a great researcher (you can find ANYTHING online!) with excellent writing skills. Work closely with the company founders and Account Executives and contribute to our success on a daily basis. You’ll be a part of the conversation, the creativity, and the passion behind what we do. Interns get …"
The Startup: They are an online platform that facilitates authentic relationship building with the revival of face-to-face conversation. The goal is to create encounters where people can connect without agendas. Participants come together over food and drink to share the things we all have in common.
Internship Descriptions:
- Communications Intern - "This position is for students at the senior-year college level or above, recent graduates, graduate students, postgraduates, and mature professionals pursuing further experience in a fast paced, start-up environment. Potential interns should be willing to commit 20 hours per week. If you have obsessive attention to detail, excellent research and writing skills and a positive, go-getter attitude, let’s talk. Motivation, resourcefulness and enthusiasm are musts: much of what we do on the Picnic side is time-sensitive, so organization and time-management skills are essential to maintain efficiency. This internship is unpaid. However, based on performance, this position could become a full-time permanent position.
- Partnerships and Development Intern - "This position is for students at the senior-year college level or above, recent graduates, graduate students, postgraduates, and mature professionals pursuing further experience in a fast paced, start-up environment. Potential interns should be willing to commit 20 hours per week. If you have obsessive attention to detail, excellent research and writing skills and a positive, go-getter attitude, let’s talk. Motivation, resourcefulness and enthusiasm are musts: much of what we do on the Picnic side is time-sensitive, so organization and time-management skills are essential to maintain efficiency. This internship is PAID BASED ON COMMISSION. It could also lead to a full-time permanent position."
The Startup: They provide Interactive Analytics technology that allows analysts to connect to data, explore the data interactively, and share results through collaborative analysis. You provide the data, they provide a way to interact with it.
Internship Description:
- Marketing Intern - "The intern will work with other marketing staff reporting to the Chief Marketing Officer, and will be involved in various online marketing activities designed to promote the Centrifuge brand and products, including local events, social and content marketing and media relations. The role will allow a creative and energetic candidate to take full ownership of several tactical marketing functions, and benefit from a supportive environment. The ideal candidate will acquire invaluable expertise and real-world experiences, and be primed for a full-time marketing role."
The Startup: What you are reading right now...But really, we are an online news publication intent on providing the view from inside D.C., whether that be through pieces on education, startups, politics, technology, innovation, or city life. We are determined to redefine how news is reported today by portraying more easily digestible information for the average Millennial. Also, it is a proven fact that the ITC team is composed of the best people in the city. Just saying.
Internship Descriptions:
- Politics Intern - Can you name the SCOTUS Chief Justice? Do you know who your Senators are? We want you! Help our politics reporter cover all the news at the intersection of politics and technology, whether that means researching, writing, or attending events on the Hill.
- Education Intern (as described by Molly) - I laugh, a lot. This is not an exaggeration. Some describe me as a hyena. If you can handle the occasional giggle and enjoy sarcastic banter, then you’re the one for me. I’m looking for the Joey to my Chandler. My main criteria circulate around great knowledge of D.C. area schools (including Virginia and Maryland), preferably a student ambassador. If you are involved in your university (through student government or a club of sorts), know a great majority of the student body, have connections to your school’s administration, and are fluent in social media, then you are perfect for the job. If you can’t come in, no need to worry, I could always use someone that can telecommute. One other slight thing to mention, I sing and I sing a lot. Get ready for some 90s music jam sessions.
- Tech/City Life Intern (as described by Carl) - I am a one man wolf pack that wants to grow my pack by three. I’m looking for an intern with a zest for technology, an insatiable curiosity for the startup world, and a strong opinion that they wouldn’t mind expressing in the form of bitter online diatribe (just kidding…not really.) Requirements: 1. Ability to write cogent sentences in English (I can train you from there) 2. Ability to not fall apart when meeting CEOs and shaking hands with awesome members of the tech community (if you puke on LivingSocial’s CEO, you’re out) 3. A passion for Disney movies (if you can’t sing Lion King songs with me, don’t bother applying) 4. Most importantly of all, a sense of humor, because I refuse to have a buzzkill on my editorial team. I’m serious, if you don’t laugh at all of my jokes, there will be hell to pay.
- Marketing Intern (as described by Kendrick) - I’m the networking pro in need of a sidekick. If you love social media, enjoy going to events and hobnobbing with the big wigs in the business, then could you be my plus one? If you know multimedia stuff like video editing, that would be cool, but not required.
