With less than an hour left to go before my eight-week summer internship at BzzAgent is officially over, I now must face the particularly challenging prospect of how to recap my experiences here at the “hive”? I have to also confess that for someone who considers himself to be tech-savvy and is actively riding the Web 2.0 wave, this is my first ever blog post. Bear with me. I hope I’ll get the hang of it.

I’m laughing thinking about how far I’ve come and how much I’ve learned in this eventful (and often crazy) summer. My first day at BzzAgent was Monday, June 18. Thinking that it would take over an hour to get from Cambridge down to the edge of the Boston frontier (the South End), I stepped onto the T in jacket and tie at 6:45 am to promptly arrive at the office thirty minutes later. Great, I thought, I’ll get up there and get started. Wrong. Both elevators were shut off, the emergency stairwell was locked, and the exterior walls looked impossible to scale. I had no choice but to wait for an hour until Sam Clemens (my boss) showed up, grinning quite obviously at my choice of attire. What can I say? I was the overzealous intern playing it safe. (And yes, I did wear jeans for the next four weeks straight to make up for the cardinal sin of wearing a tie at a startup, even if just for an hour and in the lobby of the building).

For the first four weeks, I was relatively inconspicuous here. I had ownership of what turned out to be a critical part of the new Frogpond. My desk was located on the edge of the technology area, which for the most part was deathly quiet while all of the engineers were hard at work creating Frogpond and maintaining the site. Four weeks into my eight-week stint, everything changed. Frogpond was about to launch and the office reached a state of nervous, confused anxiety. All of a sudden, I was invited to more meetings than I had time for and my inbox was flooded with e-mails from people I hadn’t yet met. I loved it.

A new tech hire meant that my desk was moved to the other side of the office. Now I was to be in the hub of activity (and noise). I found myself being twice as productive with the constant “bzzing” of conversations and movement.

Frogpond finally launched and I learned another valuable lesson: when someone doesn’t “own” the process, it is very hard to keep track of all the pieces. One of the best parts about working on Frog was that I got to see firsthand the upsides and the downsides of interdepartmental communication and interaction. From launch until today, I’ve been trying to make sure everyone is on the same page about how we interface with Client Frogs and I’ve come out with one clear conclusion. The unexpected degree of success that the Frogpond has enjoyed up to this point means that it has grown out of management across departmental lines. It is time for a Frog department.

To be honest, I’ve really enjoyed my time at BzzAgent. I can’t imagine that there are better places to work and for someone who is still three years shy of actually entering the workforce, I’m definitely spoiled. The casual environment (again, no ties) lends itself to what seems to be constant creativity. The energy is contagious.

I’ve certainly learned a lot of lessons from my first experience on the inside of a company. I’m not sure that I can express all of these lessons right now, as I’m sure many of them will resonate with me only in retrospect, perhaps months or even years down the road. For now, I can safely say that I’ve accomplished the goals that I set out to accomplish in June. I’ve gotten a bit of perspective on the entrepreneurial experience, been integrally involved in a project that launched and was far more successful than initially expected, and seen how a company functions from the inside. Plus, I got to do things like “take lunch”, “commute”, and “pay taxes”. Not bad for eight weeks.

As far as BzzAgent’s future is concerned, I’m really looking forward to seeing what happens. Only time will tell.

I still think that one of the most valuable entrepreneurship lessons that I can take away from my experience here can be extrapolated from my first hour sitting in the lobby. Playing it safe isn’t that fun. Frankly, I’d rather take some risks and see what happens.

Thanks for reading and a big thank you to everyone at BzzAgent. You’ve really made these two months worthwhile.

With that, I’m out of here for now. I hope they let me keep my bee suit.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 10th, 2007 at 6:39 am and is filed under The Central Hive. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.