Wharton Offers Help For Startup Interns

FINDING A STARTUP WORTH THE PAY CUT

During the school year, Choudhury was searching for internships on AngelList when a Wharton MBA reached out to him.

“He had worked at financial giants like Goldman Sachs and BlackRock, and he had the same experience where he didn’t like the kind of restrictive office culture that all these big institutions had,” Choudhury says. “So when I was talking about this, he understood perfectly and he structured my role so I could get everything I was looking for.”

The company is FinTech Scanner, which focuses on simplifying research in the financial technology area by gathering all relevant information across the web and presenting it in an easily digestible manner. It’s a venture by FinTech Portfolio, a financial technology innovation ecosystem.

“FinTech Portfolio is a group of entrepreneurs sharing skills and resources. It’s a lot like an incubator, but it is unique in that it is fully member-owned,” Choudhury says. “Every member shares ownership in every portfolio company. This incentivizes cooperation and diversifies risk.”

OFFSETTING SOME OF THE COST

Recipients of Startup Internship Awards were notified early in the summer, after they had already started working. Choudhury already had decided to work at FinTech Scanner regardless of whether he would receive one of the awards.

But he’s very glad that he did. All his classmates are earning much more than he is this summer, as most are working in big financial institutions in New York. San Francisco, meanwhile, is the most expensive city he’s ever lived in. “For housing it costs upwards of $1,000 a month, and everyone I know is paying that amount. And then food, travel, everything is expensive,” Choudhury says. “The Startup Award is definitely helping me offset a lot of those costs.”

MORE RESPONSIBILITY THAN HE’S EVER HAD BEFORE

Limited income aside, Choudhury says he is having an excellent experience so far. FinTech Scanner is small, with fewer than 10 employees, mostly engineers. He and one other person are the only ones working on the business end.

“It’s a lot more responsibility than I’ve ever had. I’m learning as I go,” he says. “It’s really hard, but it’s also teaching me things at a much faster pace than I could learn in classes or progressing up the ladder of a big company.”

When Choudhury gets back to Wharton in the fall, Anick says, he’ll be asked to write for the Wharton Entrepreneurship Blog, or perhaps participate on a panel to discuss his experiences. “We ask them to consciously give back to the community, and to their peers who are also interested in the career path,” she says. “It’s nice to see them come back to campus and share their experiences.”