Aaron Mercurio ’13

At Core Innovation Capital (Core), I supported the two managing partners across all aspects of work at the fund.  Much of my work involved generating new investment theses and deal prospecting, in order to find deals that fit into our space and mission. The fund itself is impact-focused and, as such, any investment we make must fit both specific and more loosely defined impact criteria to be considered. Specifically, at least 30% of the clients’ our end products or services served must be Low-to-Moderate Income (there are some rare exceptions for B2B companies). Broadly, companies must also generally be of common vision and mind with our goals, which are to provide low-cost, great service products to the financially unbanked and under-banked consumers in the United States. Our nonprofit strategic partner, CFS,I also vets potential investments, and the CEO of CFSI, Jennifer Tescher, is on our investment committee and must sign off on our investments. Therefore, I would say all of my work either directly or indirectly affected our fund’s mission.

Much of what I did at Core included financial modeling and due-diligence efforts, which I did some of at my previous job but definitely practiced and finessed in school. I also think having time to talk with colleagues about their previous work experiences and the industries they have worked in gave me some insight into speaking with entrepreneurs without coming across as ‘too junior’ or inexperienced. This proved invaluable in supporting my firm and its brand in talking with prospective investments.

That said, I would posit that future MBA prospects shouldn’t be overly concerned that some of the core classes required in their first-year at Columbia (or other schools) don’t directly apply to their internship. Part of the benefit of a two-year MBA program is to give you a well-rounded dose of classes and industry exposure to help you think about what you want your career post-MBA to look like. The internship serves the same role. You have an entire second year of elective courses to focus and specialize with classes that will help you moving forward.

I also found it difficult to ‘reset’. What I mean is, it was very challenging to go from an environment before the MBA program where I was a rock-star and my boss inherently trusted me to get things done and represent our firm, to a relatively inexperienced first-time investor associate intern at a small venture capital fund. The firm didn’t have great processes for on-boarding and training, and there was no real way to ‘establish’ myself as useful and creative and able to handle a variety of responsibilities. It simply took time, and, quite honestly, the best thing I did was starting the internship part-time in the spring, as it allowed me to prove myself a bit more early on. By the time full-time summer rolled around, I had a head start.

I found it difficult to stay busy enough, particularly early on. I think this phenomenon is typical of the experience for anyone working at extremely small and unstructured internships. Some days I would end my work by 4pm or so, and my boss was big on a 9am-6pm day, so I would sit around and try to kill time. I finished everything I was assigned and would ask for more work, but I didn’t really structure my questions in a productive way initially. Over time, I learned to ask for more tasks that were open-ended, where I could put more effort into them as time went on. That improved my experience tremendously.

I learned that I really like the space that I am in, which is financial services / financial technology.  It is a sector I hope to stay working in after school.  I also learned a lot about goals, my aspirations and myself personally. I never saw myself as a social-enterprise or impact investing person coming into the MBA program. I sort of fell into this role; I took the position before I even knew that it would be applicable for the Social Enterprise Summer Fellowship and was happy to hear that I could support CBS and our program, and earn some extra money at the same time. But as the summer progressed, I saw how incredibly satisfying and fulfilling it is to work with people who recognize the major problems that exist in our world, in terms of financial inclusion or otherwise. I would love to find a way to work in this space again, although I doubt my next career experience will be impact-focused.

I also learned that I thrive in a non-corporate culture without a lot of bureaucracy, which is very important to find out early on in my career.  I am motivated by being able to excel and exceed expectations, and thus need to continue to find roles and jobs where I can build my own path to success. Eventually I think I will try to start my own company, and I owe that realization to my time at Core and working with my boss, Arjan, and the other entrepreneurs I’ve worked with this summer (including several from prior classes at CBS). 

Lastly, I realized how critical maintaining your network is to achieving success no matter what career you’re in.  Leveraging my network to help me find new deals in this job helped me gain rapport and trust with my boss, and also allowed me to make life easier when it came to doing a lot of research and reports for diligence on our companies.  I believe it is probably the most critical resource a person can bring with them, even to their first post-MBA career.