Given my experience the last time I interned, it was no surprise I decided to come back to SocialCops. Unlike the first-day jitters when I entered in March 2014, I thought I knew the drill this time around. After all, there’s only so much a place can change in a year, right?

The SocialCops office had moved from the space of a living room to its modestly swanky headquarters in Saket, which was now populated with unfamiliar faces. Yet, in the most trivial ways, the office made me feel at home. The #fail wall, the 3-in-1 coffee, the dart board, the bean bags and, the most pleasant of all, my computer auto-connecting to the wifi. There was something sadistically sweet about that as I saw my fellow interns racking their brains trying to decode the wifi code. So far so good 🙂

My first day in business development

business development

I knew it would be a challenge to shift from my previous role in social media marketing to my new role in business development, but it wasn’t weighing on my head too much. The day went by like a flash, transitioning between meetings and bringing myself up to speed with all that had been going on at SocialCops. Moving from a user-facing to a client-facing profile required a complete understanding of the company’s offerings, so I was juggling time between the data scientists, data parsers, product teams and, rightly so, the business development people.

While that would ideally sound like a first day log, I hadn’t come to the most stupefying part of my day yet. Late in the evening, I was pulled into a room with the sales team.

I thought it was going to be just another meeting, but then I heard, “2 minutes to pitch SocialCops. 1 and a half minutes to pitch our products. Buy or no buy?”

Before I could even process my thoughts let alone calm my nerves, I was pitching before the entire team, the founders and the board, some of whom had pitched to the likes of the late Steve Jobs. Then I, a measly intern, was made to sit on the other side of the table to critique the pitches of my former audience members. While people may sign off with fancy designations, there really are no hierarchies at SocialCops.

And, with that pitching session done, what was anything but a normal first day was a wrap.

My second day in business development

business development The next morning, I felt a lot more confident given the developments from the previous day. I thought to myself, “It’s all going to be downhill from here”. What were the odds of that not happening? As it turns out, very high.

On my second day as an intern, I was writing contract proposals on big data. But it was not for just any company — it was for one whose privilege customer card I hold.

The rest of my first week

The sheer number of times I’ve used the word “but” in what I’ve written so far would tell you that the saying “Expect the unexpected” — as passe the saying may be — is quite befitting for the work environment at SocialCops.

business developmentThe latter half of my week was spent organizing and structuring everything that my brain had stored in my first two days. Getting started with Salesforce (which frankly takes more than a smile), testing all kinds of new softwares that I’ve never heard of, building an incredibly exhaustive client database, working through cold mail and cold call hacks, drafting partnerships proposals and figuring out all the ifs and buts in the process…

My first week was power-packed with unparalleled learning.

Comparing the experience of my first week in 2015 to my first week in 2014 would be as difficult as asking me to compare our world to the fifth dimension. I find this particularly hard to do because what was only a Earth-year-long gap between my two stints with SocialCops was a Martian year in the startup space. How to compare disproportionate time frames for the same world is a question best left unanswered.

Interested in knowing more about internships at SocialCops? These blogs will give you a glimpse into the life of our interns: