Summer internships offer excellent opportunities for students to get hands-on experience and (sometimes) a little money in a real working environment. But Highland Capital Partners is offering something more: a summer internship that can kick-start your new business.
Highland Capital Partners (HCP) is a venture capital company based in Massachusetts and California that invests in early-stage businesses in the communications, digital media, information technology, health care, and consumer-products industries. This summer, HCP is offering its second "Summer@Highland" program, which offers student entrepreneurs a chance to learn the ropes of building an enterprise using their own business ideas.
HCP offers the internship to students -- graduate or undergraduate -- or recent graduates, either individually or in teams of up to 4 people, for 10 weeks. The teams work out of HCP offices in Lexington, Massachusetts or Menlo Park, California. Teams of 2 or more divide a stipend of $15,000; individual interns (i.e. teams of 1 person) receive $7,500. In addition, HCP offers a staff member who can put interns in touch with HCP's network of investors and client companies.
Applicants need to show HCP a good business idea with at least some movement towards the marketplace. HCP defines a "good" idea as one with the potential to be highly disruptive in its field. The teams must have taken at least the first steps in forming a business, beyond the idea stage. HCP expects interns to have a solid grounding in their marketplace or technology. Interns must also provide testimonials from advisers who share the interns' vision and can attest to the idea's potential.
If, as a result of the internship, interns get their enterprises going and attract other investors, HCP asks the former interns to allow HCP the option of co-investing up to 50% in the same round of financing as the other investors.
If you have an idea with the potential to become the next Google or Facebook, don't delay. Applications close on 22 April.
Hat tip: Institute of International Education
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