Make Interns Entrepreneurs

I wanted to write an open letter addressed to my interns and decided to make it an open letter, sharing my perspective on risk taking, especially when it comes to internships and developing entrepreneurs.

In general, I feel that we don’t challenge people enough, especially younger people (kids, students, interns). When you’re young and starting out, the advantage is that you haven’t yet developed many preconceived notions or expectations. This openness makes you more willing to take risks. And this willingness is an advantage. It’s the exact same naive boldness that successful entrepreneurs use when entering new industries or exploring areas where others have previously failed. Once people decide a space or an idea “doesn’t work,” everyone stops going there. But new entrants, especially young ones, can step in without fear of those past failures.

They are young neural nets that haven’t overlearned yet!!

Internships, particularly at a company like ours, offer the perfect environment to take those risks. You’re allowed, even encouraged, to make mistakes. Mistakes lead you to discover new paths and ideas that would otherwise stay unexplored. That’s why it’s crucial for me, as someone mentoring interns, to give you plenty of room to experiment, fail, and learn, while also setting a very high standard for you to reach.

When I opened up internship positions, I didn’t do it because I needed extra help. I did it because creating entrepreneurs is core to our mission at bld.ai. Our entire ecosystem revolves around enabling innovation through entrepreneurial efforts. Our clients buy and build AI solutions from entrepreneurial Silicon Valley scale ups. Our professional service providers in the global south charging $10/hr are themselves entrepreneurs running small professional service firms. Entrepreneurship underpins everything we do.

My goal for you interns isn’t primarily to help you land at a prestigious school, consultancy, or startup. That would be nice, but it’s just a side effect. My real ambition is to help you become entrepreneurs yourselves. And becoming an entrepreneur means something quite different. It means failing repeatedly without giving up until you finally succeed.

The real entrepreneurial impact doesn’t come from the 160 hours spent working each month. Instead, it emerges from those critical 3 or 4 hours when you worked on the most important thing and made a breakthrough. If you “waste” most of your hours trying things that fail but ultimately deliver something outstanding in just a few hours of your entire internship, you’ll have created significant value.

So, continue to take risks. Don’t worry about making clear daily progress. Instead, run experiments and accept daily failures as a necessary step. Ultimately, your internship should culminate in a single notable success, those critical few hours when you really shine and create a genuine difference.

Shoot for the stars, swing for the fences, and embrace the learning along the way.

💚