Author: Nathan Parcells

I got involved with InternMatch in a sudden manner. My first few months in Seattle I would revisit the chain of events that brought me here every now and then, sometimes after rolling off my bed (aka futon), or as I would try and call friends back on the East coast after working late only to realize it was 2 am EST. When I finished school at the University of Pennsylvania, I had been accepted to a great law school and was looking forward to attending. I talked with Andrew my friend since 2nd grade and CEO of InternMatch, and he exuded energy and excitement when talking about moving to Seattle and diving into his new company. I decided to come on board and to throw myself fully at the effort, planning on working for InternMatch for just one summer to get a taste of what it takes to be an entrepreneur. However, after three months both the lifestyle and the company had me hooked.

The lifestyle of entrepreneurship is a series of challenges and pushes one to learn quickly or to plummet. Honestly, it makes school feel like child’s play, the amount you can and have to learn in a single day is absolutely mind numbing. The lifestyle can be hectic and stressful, but despite the struggles, the highs are always much greater, as in no other business is it so easy to watch oneself grow (kind of like a personal growth stock ticker). In retrospect I realize I have had a tendency to put myself into similar situations throughout my life, whether it was joining my high school wrestling team as a freshman with no experience or deciding to join my uncle and four other crew members sailing a 50 ft. boat to the tip of the North Eastern Canadian coastline, also with no experience.

I have always been happiest in these situations because they force you to improve yourself both through failure and careful thought.å The first time I tried putting together lunch on a rocking sailboat it was not pretty, and the first time I made a sales call for InternMatch, well it was not too pretty either. But, in both situations there was no getting off the boat, and so the failure becomes a learning experience, and eventually success. This grow or go home environment simply makes me feel alive.

As for InternMatch itself, it got me hooked for two major reasons: one a platform of this type is so badly needed by both students and organizations and two because of a personal experience in my first internship that I took on when I was in high school. I think the first reason is very important; however, for now I would like to share the story of the second. As a senior in high school I got to work as an intern at the National Parks Conservation Association.åOn my first day I was talking to my boss and friend Jim Nations, and he asked me if I knew what I wanted to study in school. I had no idea, but he responded “It does not matter whether you become an environmental activist, or a businessman or a lawyer, what I hope you have at the end of this internship is a passion for the environment and the national parks.” This statement stuck with me because for a long time I struggled trying to reconcile my joy for the outdoors with my own dissonance with the characteristics required to be a devoted environmentalist. For me, my first internship at the NPCA helped me understand and internalize a passion for the environment and to realize that no matter where the job world led me, this fondness of our national parks would be right there beside me. I believe the more students that get involved in more internships with a wider variety of organizations and missions, the better people will be able to connect the dots of the work/life balance that is becoming increasingly important in our society.

Right now as internships have become more pervasive (they are nearly a prerequisite to success in the job world) competition is increasing. However, I see a large benefit in this increased competition as it encourages students (and professionals) to explore a greater diversity of opportunities and new roads off the beaten path.åÊ I see InternMatch as not only a needed platform in connecting capable and skilled students with a diversity of businesses and organizations in need of such help, but also as a facilitator of exploration into new skills and jobs during crucial collegiate years and beyond.

I wanted to start my first ever blog post talking a little bit about who I am and how I came to found InternMatch. I grew up in Bethesda, Maryland amidst the politically charged atmosphere of the Washington DC area. From a young age my passion was sports, and I played soccer obsessively for many years. In high school my focus shifted to rowing, through which I began the process of learning how to regularly push myself physically and mentally to new limits. Rowing, much like entrepreneurship, now was more than an activity or a job; it was a lifestyle.

Anyway, after high school I traveled to New York City to attend college at Columbia University. No longer rowing, I felt a gaping hole where my sense of personal identity had been  the framework provided by rowing in high school defined my goals, habits, how I spent my time, who I spent my time with, and in essence who I was as a person. With that structure missing, and surrounded by one of the most challenging and exhilarating academic environments in the world, I shifted my attention to my studies. I majored in Political Science with a focus on Political Theory and felt immediately compelled by great thinkers such as Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Rousseau, Marx, Mill, Rawls and others who struggled to develop and build on different conceptions of social and political justice.

But I have always been restless in a library and, although my academic studies served to develop and satisfy my growing intellectual curiosity, I felt the need to involve myself in something where I would be both constantly active and regularly faced with new challenges. Around the same time, my father and lifelong promoter of social and political progress introduced me to the concept of Social Entrepreneurship. Social Entrepreneurship is a difficult concept to define, but it refers generally to the idea of creating innovative, sustainable, and scalable solutions to specific social problems. A social enterprise can be a non-profit, for-profit, or hybrid of the two models; the common denominator is coming up with innovative ways to spur social impact that can be developed and implemented on a large scale, hopefully leading to systemic change.

With this framework I found a new lifestyle in which I would dedicate my time and energies.

While a junior at Columbia my friends and peers were starting to consider plans for post-graduation. Time and again, I heard different students say they wanted to volunteer for the Red Cross or the Peace Corps (both do great work). I was surprised, however, by the fact that so many different students with unique interests focused on such a limited number of organizations. I began thinking about how many smaller non-profits out there could benefit dramatically from intelligent, ambitious, and altruistic students with unique skill sets. When I asked students why they selected from such a limited number of organizations, they typically replied that they did not know of many other options. There was a clear gap and a clear need, and thus spawned the initial conception of what would later become InternMatch. I thought at the time that I would create a website that matched students with opportunities to volunteer at non-profit organizations.

After more research and after speaking with more students,  organizations, and people I knew who had worked in the nonprofit sector,  it became apparent that the problem was significantly more complex than  I had initially thought. I learned that one of the traditional  problems with volunteering is that volunteers, regardless of their  high-level skill sets, typically engage in low-level, menial tasks.  Although these tasks are important for non-profits, volunteers tend to  quickly drop out due to dwindling interest. The high dropout rate  among volunteers creates a vicious cycle; organizations cannot risk  delegating real responsibility to volunteers who are going to quit mid  project, which leads to the continued delegation of menial volunteer  tasks, which in turn perpetuates the high dropout rate.

So, I was left with the question of how I could bring students  together with non-profit organizations in a way that helps ensure a  sustained commitment and a mutually beneficial relationship. I realized  that the “internship model” could provide an excellent solution. With  an internship, a student would have a stake in staying on board the  non-profit for the duration of the commitment. Internships are powerful  resume builders, but not if you quit halfway. Internships also provide  students with opportunities to gain real-world experience and at the  same time leverage the skills they have developed in school to directly  impact organizations (so they would be less likely to become bored). Non-profits could bring on interns to redesign or develop a website,  create and run a marketing campaign, conduct important research, help  with accounting, or any number of other tasks that could seriously  impact future success.

With some initial clarity on my idea, it  was time to turn to certain questions of implementation. Would I make  my venture a non-profit or a for-profit? Would I strive to match  students with both non-profits and for-profits? I struggled with both  of those questions for months before I came to any solid conclusions.  As I mentioned before, one central tenet of Social Entrepreneurship is  the notion that your solution should be scalable. In my mind,  scalability requires a financially self-sustaining model. Often,  non-profits are seriously restricted by the myriad unknowns associated  with future donor funding. And often, non-profits that do fantastic  work are forced to scale back or shut down because they lose government  grants or donors decide to go another way. Not only does the non-profit  model make it difficult to predict and manage growth, but it leaves  organizations vulnerable to the threat of destruction irrespective of  the extent to which they generate social impact. There are strong  arguments on the opposing side and certainly many benefits to forming a  non-profit organization, but the above rationale ultimately tipped the  scale in my decision to make InternMatch a for-profit venture.

My  efforts to deal with the question of whether or not to exclusively  serve non-profit organizations coincided nicely with a class I took my  senior year at Columbia on social responsibility in business and  investment communities. Taught by Professor Jack McGourty, a Columbia  dean with a unique interest in engaging with and giving back to the Harlem community. I learned, for the first time, the importance of  small, locally owned businesses in the process of community progress and  economic development. I was also at the point in the development of my  idea where I realized that I could not create an online Platform with  the level of sophistication that I wanted and get away with charging  non-profits a nominal fee without going totally broke. If I included  businesses, I could anticipate much greater total volume, which would in  turn allow me to keep the Platform not only affordable, but  tremendously valuable.

The internship model, becoming a  for-profit company, and working with small and medium sized businesses  who face similar brand and intern outreach issues as non-profits, all  honed InternMatch as a platform and business…

Instead of writing a thesis, I wrote a business plan. I began writing during the summer between my junior and senior year, in a hot and sweaty space rented in Brooklyn. As a Political Science major, I had some serious catching up to do in terms of my business acumen. Benjamin Wald, a longtime close friend and serial entrepreneur, helped keep me motivated and excited in the fledgling idea stage. With my business plan written, and rewritten (many times), I finally got to the point where I was ready to try to raise some seed capital so that I could work on InternMatch fulltime after graduation. I raised the money I needed, packed my bags, and drove cross-country to Seattle.

So that’s the rather lengthy story of how I got my start. Maybe next time I’ll talk about why I chose Seattle and some of the other key people who are now involved in InternMatch.