This summer I interned with SolarKal, an organization dedicated to making solar energy more accessible. Over the course of my internship, I worked on several projects. My main project included conducting a competitive marketing analysis. The goal was to determine how our direct and indirect competitors were marketing themselves and acquiring customers, where we stand in comparison, and what we could learn and emulate. This project helped SolarKal define its marketing strategy for the subsequent quarter with the goal to acquire and maintain more commercial real estate clients, which would drive not only more revenue but also more solar projects.

Apart from this competitive analysis, I also produced policy-related marketing collateral and email campaigns that helped SolarKal acquire new customers and upsell existing ones. On the partnerships side, I worked on developing the company’s channel partnerships strategy to build out the referral pipeline and establish connections within the commercial real estate space. All of these projects ultimately tied to SolarKal’s mission to make solar simple and help commercial real estate transition to clean energy.

Throughout the internship, I used a lot of the skills and concepts from my Strategy class, specifically in thinking about the company’s value proposition and how to manage trade offs. For instance, in thinking about how the company should invest its limited marketing time and resources, it was important for me to tie it back to the company’s key revenue driver: acquiring and upselling their key accounts, which are big real estate owners and managers like public REITs. Although there are many potentially effective marketing tactics that SolarKal could pursue, I recommended ones that would specifically help the company drive revenue from their key accounts. I also implemented many learnings from my Marketing and Digital Marketing courses to grow SolarKal’s LinkedIn, email campaigns, and media relations. Beyond my strategy and marketing skills, I built upon my knowledge around climate policy and climate finance, both of which are classes I took last spring semester. I got to see firsthand how changes in local and state policy and programs can incentivize businesses to take action toward clean energy and decarbonization.

One of the challenges I faced was balancing time between projects. I not only had daily deliverables, but also my long-term project on the competitive analysis and work for the channel partnerships department. Building momentum for each of these projects while multitasking was difficult at first, but I managed to become more organized and effective as the internship went on. Another challenge I initially faced was really understanding the company, its business model, and its potential for growth. It took asking many questions, sitting in on cross-department meetings, studying the market, and looking through decks to gain that foundation. Without deeply understanding how SolarKal works, it was hard to proceed with determining our competitors or even figuring out why key accounts were such an important revenue driver. Finally, I also struggled with using a data-driven approach to make recommendations for our marketing strategy. Since many of our competitors’ marketing data is unavailable, I often had to make assumptions or broad judgements to determine what works and doesn’t work. I was able to gain a lot of insights from LinkedIn analytics as well as SolarKal’s own MailChimp analytics, but when it came to our competitors’ marketing-to-sales conversion rates, it was often a black hole.

One of my primary goals this summer was to gain experience at a startup in the climate/clean tech space. SolarKal provided the perfect opportunity to do so. It was extremely valuable working in the office as I got to absorb information naturally through interactions with my colleagues, including the CEO. This experience showed me that I really do enjoy working in a smaller, mission-oriented organization, as I can pinpoint where I’m creating value and driving the company forward. I also got to touch a variety of departments — marketing, sales, partnerships, policy — another aspect of working at a startup that I particularly enjoy.

In terms of function, I learned that although I find marketing interesting, I want to pursue a role that’s a little more business-oriented and client-partner facing. As a next step, I would love to experience a business development or partnerships/sales internship at a startup in the climate/clean tech space.