In 2008, I interned at Slide, Inc and it was one of the most valuable summers of my life. I went from college hacker interested in starting a company to learning deeply about product design and what it was like to work on a team.
That summer I was fortunate enough to work with an awesome PM, Adora (who taught me the essentials of product development) and Max Levchin. I am still not sure why Max ended up working so closely on the product we working on. Our product was new and had the least business value of all the things Slide was working on but it was still exciting. If I had to say, I think he just liked that we worked so hard on it.
At Slide, I was determined to work hard. I wanted to know if hard work paid off so I worked from 10am to 12am. It did: Slide offered me a full-time but I declined.
At the end of the summer I had huge takeaways:
- I knew I wanted to start a company. Immediately.
- I knew grad school didn't matter out in California
- I didn't realize it at the time but I grew a huge network of fellow Slide people ("Slide" mafia). Some of these people are my closest friends now.
- I learned so much about product, working with others, and how real companies "do it."
- I learned smaller things like: git, python, vim, etc.
- I could've never built Mixpanel without having been at Slide first.
If you're looking for a similar experience to my own, Mixpanel can provide this. Apply for an internship: http://mixpanel.com/internships/ or [email protected]
Sincerely,
Suhail Doshi
Founder