Rahgeer/Assembly F

PAKISTAN

RAHGEER/ASSEMBLY F

Ambre Bertrand, St Edmund Hall, MEng Engineering Science, Third Year Undergraduate, Remote working

Work Projects

The internship was completed at a start-up company called Assembly F. Their team is based in Pakistan, therefore due to travel restrictions at the time, I had to complete the internship from home. They provide a platform that delivers live workshops and talks online to their growing community of entrepreneurs, start-up founders and investors. Given that the company was still at very early stages, my role started off quite general and ended up spanning a range of different areas.

I began by researching current competitors and existing platforms that we could inspire ourselves from, which then led me to focus on the User Journey & User Experience and how the process of becoming a member and navigating the platform could be optimised. This included ideas on how to format the website, how we interact with our new users, how to improve email communications etc.

As I carried on down this route, I realised that actively involving our members and making them feel valued would be crucial to our success. Therefore, I set up a mailing pipeline, which did not exist before. The email campaigns would alert them of new events being posted on the platform, prompts to update their profile, reminders to join events, collect feedback on events they attended, etc. The campaigns and templates were created on Mailchimp, with the added help of Typeform to collect feedback information.

I also coded a tool in Python which enabled us to download and effectively explore our database, helping us better understand user and event stats. My work itself was fairly individual, but I did liaise quite a bit throughout the project with the other members of the team especially Naseh and Waleed (the technical team), Narmeen (another intern working on host acquisition) and Shah (the founder and CEO), to make sure that our goals and ideas aligned well.

I really feel like I did contribute something meaningful to the company whilst building strong collaborative relationships with my colleagues which is everything I could have hoped for.

Daily Life

This was my very first remote internship! Thankfully, given that I'd spent the past term working through the end of my university year remotely, I'd already gotten to grips with the odd and new routines that come with working from home.

The main challenge was finding that routine that worked well and doing my best to stick to it from Monday to Friday, trying as much as possible to not deviate from what a "normal" day at work would be like. My morning shower and breakfast were certainly not excluded from that, after which I booted up my laptop and started my day around 09:00. I tried to break up the day as much as possible, with a regular 10-15 minute coffee break around 11:00 then an hour off for lunch around 13:00. I'd usually then make myself some tea around 16:00 and sip it at my desk as I finished off my day, usually closing my emails for the day anytime between 17:00 and 18:00.

Lasting Impressions

Working at Assembly F was an incredibly interesting and educational experience, on many levels. As an engineer by background, it was both challenging and mind-opening to gain some exposure on aspects of work I have never really been involved in before such as User Experience, Product Development, Marketing etc. It was rewarding to see the product come together as a whole rather than be focused on a specific, more technical task and in that sense provided me with a much broader and better understanding of working in a small start-up and making sure that the customer needs are well understood and catered for after all, that's why the business exists in the first place.

Aside from the insight and skills gained into these new areas, it was also a very new and fresh experience to be working not only with a team from a different culture but also doing so remotely. I feel like those barriers were very quickly breached and it really did feel like we were all on the same page, with the same values and working towards a common goal together which was a very rewarding feeling. Overall, I believe that I have gained invaluable insight into the world of start-ups and entrepreneurship, working on a product from its very early beginnings, and I am very much hoping to take these skills and awareness on board

with me wherever my career leads me next - I am now certainly considering working in a start-up firm more than I was before my internship!

What advice would you give to future interns?

I would absolutely recommend this internship to anyone interested in working on a handson, rewarding project and gain insight into the world of tech, start-ups and entrepreneurship. It was a real pleasure to work with such a receptive and constructive team (albeit remotely) and being able to delve into multiple aspects of the company over such a short period of time was a unique and very valuable opportunity. If you are unsure of which sector to go into but like the idea of gaining exposure to multiple aspects of a start-up whilst contributing meaningfully to the company and team, then this internship could really be for you!

MSc Biochemistry(Molecular and Cellular), Third Year Undergraduate Student, Remote working

Work Projects

I worked on grant development, securing funding for projects, and technical and vocational education and training (TVET), developing policies and structuring projects. I had a supervisor who would review my work and provide feedback.

Daily Life

I would be very flexible with working hours depending on the work streams I was engaged in, to ensure that I could balance my work with relaxing, preparing for finals, and job hunting.

Lasting Impressions

I did enjoy the experience because I gained insight into the world of Development Consulting as well as social venture projects.

What advice would you give to future interns?

Always remember the audience that you are targeting for any piece of work. Additionally, make sure to structure your work so that you can support your arguments.