Undergraduate Blog / Career Development

The power of data

As my internship at MC (startup accelerator) finishes, I can say that the biggest thing I learned is how powerful data can be in business.

When I started my job as the Startup Services Intern at MC, the Startup Services department was in the middle of reinventing how they addressed the needs of 128 startups throughout the summer. Before, they used to do it based on what they thought early-stage companies normally need, but this year we did it based on data.

For the last three months, we gathered data on what each company is going through and what their goals were for this summer. We found that most companies were focused on fundraising, prototyping, selling, developing their business model, or hiring. Therefore, I was assigned to develop a personalized list of recommended MC resources (such as mentors, events, and service providers) that fit specifically the different companies that have each specific goal. It took us 3 months to collect the data and build the list of recommended resources – it had more complexities than expected because it was the first time that the accelerator was implementing this method.

What we did help me learn a lot about a simple concept that is conquering the world of business nowadays: asking customers what they want and using that data to give them exactly that. This is a concept that I will definitely take with me and apply to every business that I work on.