Journal 1
This summer, I am working with Hinge Networks, a Boston area start-up that is developing a cloud-based enterprise software platform. The platform will help energy efficiency program managers streamline the administrative burden in running their programs. My main responsibilities for the summer are to oversee the build-out of the corporate financial systems and reporting processes, and assist with fundraising.
I am currently on week three of the internship, and working remotely in a start-up environment has been a significantly different experience from working in the more formal corporate setting that I am used to. The thing that first struck me was the amount of available resources I had at my fingertips that allowed me to work remotely with ease. With advances in internet communications and cloud computing, technologies like Skype, Dropbox, and Google Apps, have replaced the more traditional and expensive office infrastructure which included video conferencing, VPN (virtual private network), and mail servers.
The second thing that has been a significant change is the fluidity of my day-to-day responsibilities. It is tough to outline my formal scope of work for the summer because I am required to take on a lot of different roles. Since I have started at Hinge, my tasks have ranged from reconciling accounting transactions, to building the corporate financial model, to developing an employee stock option program for our team in India. Also, with such a lean team, my contributions have a visible and immediate impact. The analysis I have done and the tools I have built have already been incorporated into day-to-day business operations and our corporate strategy.
Over the next few weeks, the team is focused on gaining traction with potential customers and closing out an external round of seed financing. So far, it has been a great experience and I look forward to helping the business grow over the course of the summer.
Journal 2
Since my last entry, I turned my attention to using the tools I constructed in the first few weeks to identify and monitor relevant financial and operational benchmarks. We had our first official quarterly close and I constructed our first management reporting package that included a brief narrative detailing quarter-to-quarter changes in the key benchmarks as well as drivers of those changes.
During this time, I also started the necessary steps to get the business ready for a round of financing. This involved compiling market and industry-sizing data to get an understanding of the current venture capital financing environment, assembling relevant comparable company metrics to support valuation, building the virtual data room, and laying out initial indicative terms for the financing round.
So far, the experience has been very rewarding and I have had the opportunity to spearhead a wide array of corporate finance initiatives at Hinge. The CEO has been great in giving me a lot of latitude in how I build the finance organization and it has been satisfying to see the direct impact of my efforts.
During the rest of my time here, my main focus will be to further the institutionalization of these finance processes as well as make some material headway in the fundraising process.
