Internship Description
Andrea Quintanilla ’25 worked with Another Come Up, a mission-driven SaaS startup leveraging AI to reduce excess inventory waste in the fashion, beauty, and retail sectors. The company’s platform enables brands to optimize distribution and minimize the destruction of unsold goods. Quintanilla focused on getting the B2B software — which allows excess inventory from apparel and beauty brands to find a new life through either donations, recycling or sales at discount stores — ready for public launch by reviewing the public website and software and getting them ready for client use, setting up efficient product management flows to streamline the work amongst the different departments, and securing data compliance for long-term partnership with enterprise clients.
During my summer at Another Come Up, Inc., I prepared the company’s B2B software platform for public launch. The platform enables fashion and beauty brands to redeploy excess inventory through donations, recycling, or sales to discount stores, addressing the $740 billion excess inventory crisis while reducing waste and expanding access to affordable goods for underserved communities. I reviewed the public website and user interface to ensure readiness for client use, established product‑management workflows to coordinate work across departments, and worked with counsel to secure data‑compliance policies that would support long‑term partnerships with enterprise clients. By creating clear plans, documentation, and processes, I streamlined the launch and helped position the company for scalable growth.
This role allowed me to apply my Columbia MBA coursework in product management, strategy, and user research. I leveraged frameworks for stakeholder analysis and prioritization to balance features with limited resources. A course on innovation taught me to conduct user interviews that uncover true pain points and inform solution design. Experience with cross‑functional teams helped me translate client feedback into practical development roadmaps.
Balancing feasibility and urgency was a constant challenge. Clients’ pain points were clear, but our engineering capacity was finite. Prioritizing enhancements required engaging diverse stakeholders and making hard trade‑offs. Establishing data‑management policies without existing precedent also demanded careful judgement and buy‑in across teams.
This hands‑on start‑up experience deepened my understanding of how technology can drive sustainability. As a woman in tech, working in a female‑founded company with a predominantly female engineering team was inspiring. The transparency and mentorship I experienced reinforced my desire to build inclusive, mission‑driven workplaces. I leave the internship with stronger leadership skills and a clearer vision for pursuing tech‑enabled sustainability solutions.