the reality of the unsexy entrepreneur: a narrative analysis of my summer internship at robocopp
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ROBOCOPPROBOCOPPROBOCOPPROBOCOPP
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY FOR UGIS W157
The Reality of the Unsexy EntrepreneurA Narrative Analysis of My Summer Internship at ROBOCOPP
by Chanakya Varma
CONTEXT ROBOCOPP is an Oakland based startup concerned with leveraging technology to create personal safety products that are effective, affordable and intuitive. To find out more about the company and their product, log on to robocopp.com. The exclusive right to the logo used on the front lies only with ROBOCOPP and prior seekers of permission. The following paper is a reflective narrative required as a part of my final project for the course Experiential Learning: Context, Self-Reflection and Professional (UGIS W157) offered by the University of California, Berkeley, during the Summer 2016 session.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I would like take this moment to thank Sam Mansen, Dr Shubhankar Basu and everyone else at ROBOCOPP for giving me the opportunity to intern with them this summer. It has been a fantastic learning opportunity, and I will treasure my experiences for the rest of my life.
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Chanakya Varma
Professor Joel F. Clark
UGIS W157
11 August 2016
The Reality of the Unsexy Entrepreneur
I was born on the internet. My parents married and conceived me during the eve of the dot-com
bubble, and the global nature of my father’s career growth ensured that I spent a fair amount of my
childhood in different countries, at the heart of their developing software economies. I learned to use a
computer before I could run, and I could draw better on MS Paint than I could in real life. I was raised as
a minimal viable product and rather than being put to bed to tales of dragon-slaying heroes, I listened to
those of garage start-ups. When I said the alphabet, ‘A for Apple’ referred to a certain group of rebels in
Palo Alto, not the innocuous fruit. My family wasn’t religious, but I grew to worship the makers and hustlers
of the magical era that was the Internet Age. I wasn’t just born on the internet; I was born for the internet.
Having surrounded myself with these tales of wonder and miracle, there began to grow a
subconscious feeling of complacency within me; guarantee, even. The peril of living inside flashy stories
and glistening tech parks, as I would later find out, would fail to prepare me for a reality that was far harsher
and more arduous than I could even begin to imagine. But until the day the ball actually dropped, I grew
up fairly optimistic and opportunities, constantly trying to iterate and innovate my daily interactions with
the world, just like my heroes did. My acceptance to UC Berkeley almost certainly guaranteed a hands-on
experience right in the Mecca of entrepreneurship, and by the time I had secured an internship at a tech
startup in Oakland, I was convinced that the wheels were in motion, and a face on TIME’s Person of the
Year was mine to lose.
Today, five days after I have finished the first chapter of my professional life, I look back and laugh
at my naivety. Nothing in the world could have prepared me for the storm that these two months were, and
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perhaps, it was this sense of misguided optimism that actually kept me sane. This paper is a reflective
analysis of how my expectations of my professional self, a daily job, startup culture and adult life were torn
apart, thrown around, and finally remolded to something I’m truly proud of. This paper is segmented into
five main parts, which, excluding this introduction, deal with the themes of my personal growth,
institutional truths, professional conduct, roles of leadership, and is concluded by an afterthought.
A. REDEFINING MYSELF AS A PROFESSIONAL
The Dunning-Kruger effect is a popularly quoted psychological phenomenon, and it essentially states
that the unskilled and incompetent suffer from a complex of illusionary superiority, and mistakenly assess
their ability to be much higher than it really was (Kruger and Justin, 1999). What makes this more interesting
than perhaps obvious is that the Dunning-Kruger effect is anosognosiac in nature, or as film director Errol
Morris succinctly summarizes, “If you're incompetent, you can’t know you’re incompetent.…the skills you
need to produce a right answer are exactly the skills you need to recognize what a right answer is.” (Morris,
2010). Underneath the humor and the irony of this effect, lies a fairly accurate description of my personal
growth during the past two months.
Coming into this internship, I identified myself as a fairly competent and well-rounded individual,
who prided himself on being above average at a lot of things, but not quite a master of any. I didn’t
necessarily see this as a concern at the moment; I had hustled my way through school by juggling my talents
and I felt that my apparent “diversity in proficiency” would offer a distinct edge to what I could offer as an
employee. I walked in with a beginner’s mindset, but made the mistake of throwing around high-level
concepts without knowing what they fully entailed, and more importantly, how they were implemented at
the grassroots level. As a consequence, my deliverables and goals entailed results that were based on a
complicated series of hypotheticals and potential learning. I had unwittingly set myself on a steep learning
curve that involved almost overnight mastery of video production and data analytics! Perhaps I was fortunate
enough that an unexpected sales order offered me a week long cushion, but my first lesson in the workplace
was that competence was essential, and versatility was only an add-on at best.
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My second set of takeaways was a result of my role and responsibilities at ROBOCOPP. I was, by
designation, a Business Development Intern, but three bullet points on a LinkedIn job listing could have
in no way prepared me for the multitude of activities I would immerse myself in. As I came to learn, a non-
engineering role at an early stage tech startup entails almost everything else. From drip down marketing
campaigns to customer segmentation, from data mining to creative direction, and from package designing
to actually “shipping” the packages the post office, I contributed to everything flashy, and unflashy at
ROBOCOPP. This was, although unexpected, a completely desirable outcome - I’m yet to declare to my
major, and it is not a list of untaken prerequisite classes that is stopping me. Owing to the way I have been
brought up and exposed to the world, I see an instant appeal in a variety of professional responsibilities,
often in completely unrelated departments. However, as I have now come to realize, my expectations of
these roles were grounded in magazine articles and TED talks. Data science, for example, was a professional
discipline that had began to garner my interest, and staying up to date with the latest relevant articles on
Entreprenuer.com gave me a certain thrill that I wanted to be a part of. However, when I actually did spend
hours perusing through numbers and data entries, trying to find the proverbial ‘signal in the noise’1, did I
realize that data-science wasn’t as sexy as the Harvard Business Review made it to be (Davenport and Patil,
2012). And I say this while fully understanding the caveat: a test drive in Google Analytics on a limited
sample size from a year-old startup is nowhere close to the cutting edge predictive machine learning that
folks at Facebook and LinkedIn are researching, but - and this for me is an important but - this eliminates
a certain approach to data science for me. As I spent more time researching data-science, I have come to
note that while research teams are comprised of statisticians, data miners, engineers, they also consist of
social scientists, anthropologists and psychologists. This tells me that if a number heavy path doesn’t excite
me, I could explore a humanities-based approach to it, and perhaps, concentrate my education on how the
1 Reference to Nate Silver’s breakthrough book, ‘The Signal and the Noise’. Silver’s brilliant work brilliantly ties together years of seemingly inconsequential data with real world events, shows how even acts of horror like terrorism can be as attractive as a game of cards. I highly recommend this book for any curious mind.
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digital age is affecting social interaction. Generalizing this example, my biggest personal takeaway from this
internship was understanding that: (a) there were many ways to get to a certain space of research and work,
and (b) I didn’t have to take the most obvious and direct path.
B. FINDING SUBSTANCE IN A PARTY ENVIRONMENT
Coming into the Bay as an excited 17-year-old, I had heard (and briefly even witnessed) the magical
chaos of the fabled start-up culture. From bottomless RedBull cans to foosball tables sprawled across color-
coded floors, to a reckless amount of pizza expenditure, it felt like a place I could call home. I was enthralled
by this complete rejection of anything in a suit and tie and was impatiently wanting to be a part of this “I’m
CEO, Bitch.” debauchery2. There was a part of me that knew that Hollywood’s portrayal was more on the
dramatic side, but at the same time, I knew that there was a different kind of buzz startups had that our
friends on Wall Street weren’t known to harbor, and I wanted to feel it first hand.
I’m glad that we studied the four frames of leadership - especially the structural and symbolic
frames - during the beginning of the course because it allowed me to objectively classify the various elements
of my job into neat little elements (Bolman and Deal, 1997). While I did run the risk of over-analyzing and
dissecting the culture at ROBOCOPP, I feel that I struck the right balance of going with the flow and
critically questioning my workday.
My first takeaway was something I was glad to have validated as true: a startup’s commitment to
inclusion over a commitment to hierarchy. Underneath all the “open doors” policies and unlimited paid
vacations that Yelp and Twitter boast lies an overarching respect for ideas and opinions, regardless of the
source. After spending just a few days in the bootstrapped office space at ROBOCOPP, I learned the value
of this philosophy, and more importantly, how it’s not something that can be retrofitted once a startup
scaled up. As the co-founder of ROBOCOPP (and my boss), Sam Mansen took it upon himself to ensure
inclusivity in almost every internal process in ROBOCOPP - physical or digital. Whether it be encouraging
2 While well documented in media and popular culture, Mark Zuckerberg's business card circa 2009 still sends adrenaline pumping through anyone who reads about it - for the better or for the worse. https://techcrunch.com/2011/06/25/im-ceo-bitch/
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cross company messaging boards instead of isolated departmental communication, or calling upon members
from all “departments” for all sales and design meetings, there was a deliberate attempt at ensuring that all
employees didn’t just respect their colleagues, but also celebrated their achievements and collaborated to
overcome each other’s obstacles. And while this setup didn’t allow for any award-winning ideas to take
shape (yet!), it did allow for a more holistic decision making process, one that not only enriched
ROBOCOPP and its products, but also our learnings as interns.
While this was comforting and left a warm fuzzy feeling in me, my second takeaway was a lot more
brutal and took my quite some time to digest and appreciate. As I had mentioned in the introduction, one
of my biggest fascinations with startups was their valuation, and so I necessarily equated the funding they
received as an indicator of success. When I started working, ROBOCOPP didn’t have the most flattering
of valuations, and (in retrospect, this may have been above my pay grade) I persistently bombarded Sam
with questions on funding, equity and raising money. Interning at a startup while they were undergoing
Series A funding would have been a dream come true for this eighteen-year-old, and so, my initial work
and effort was largely anticipative of an unexpected visit down to the mahogany-laden offices of venture
capitalists down in the Valley. I spent hours looking at Kickstarter campaigns trying to incorporate
minimalist design elements in my reports and sketches, and worked hard to describe my weekly reports in
startup jargon, (not realizing that those words didn’t really mean anything tangible3). When I finally refused
to take an incomplete answer as to why Sam didn’t have raising money on the top of ROBOCOPP’s priority
list, he replied with what I think would be a very important lesson for my professional future: “There’s no
better source of funding than revenue.” That hit me hard - finding customers and packing boxes was not
sexy. There was nothing flashy about worrying about “menial” tasks like customer feedback and retention.
And no movie would ever spend their production budget on a dramatic sequence showing two guys scrolling
3 Josh Horowitz discusses a beautiful startup tragedy in his article, talking about how startups fall prey to buzzwords that fail to explain what the real purpose or process involved entails. A fascinating read, for both cynics and fans alike. http://qz.com/697558/internet-startups-cant-explain-what-they-do-because-theyre-addicted-to-meaningless-jargon/
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through an Excel sheet, graphing weekly sales trends. But all of this behind-the-scenes work was as, if not
more, important. The industry “disrupting” idea that made the front page of newspapers was supported by
hours of boring, tedious and frustrating grunt work. As the adage goes, it takes ten years to become an
overnight success, and as my entrepreneur fantasies crumbled in the most beautiful of ways - like a house
of cards falling apart - I understood, for the first time, the reality of the unsexy entrepreneur.
C. DRESS CODES FOR ACCOMPLISHMENT
At this point of time, I began to understand the complexity of the character of the entrepreneur
and why they resorted to the craziness they did. Perhaps as a result of the rollercoaster lives they lead, the
usual definition of professionalism’ goes out the window, and in walks in its skimpy, hoodie-wearing cousin
named delivery. As I learned very quickly, diplomacy was not a trait necessarily valued in the startup
boardroom, especially if it got in the way of execution. For every “rule” a startup broke, its commitment to
delivery and completion of tasks only grew stronger. I saw tempers flare, voices be raised and ideas be shot
down, all in the name of net productivity. I’d like to draw attention to two main observations of this
workplace’s culture, and what sets startup professionalism different from the type practiced in conventional
9to5 jobs: the first being dedication to completion, and the second being the personal detachment from
the workplace. These two tend to work in synergy, so I’d like to talk about the second trend first for context.
Some call it the Valley’s thick skin, whereas others just shake their head condemning “these
millennials”, it’s no secret that what you bring to the table in a startup is not reflective of you as a person,
or your personal stances on anything. The simplest example of this would be that if someone’s idea were to
be shot down at a brainstorming session, it would be purely because that idea lacked substance and shouldn’t
be interpreted as a personal attack on that person, their designation, or anything else they stood for. This
‘nothing personal, just business’ approach is an interesting paradigm shift, especially since I come from India,
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where the professional culture is still recovering from years of colonial hierarchism, and ardently reeks of a
culture of absolute superiority in the workplace4.
Given this ‘opinion is absolute’ philosophy that runs deep in startups, it is easy to see how this
commitment to be treated and heard as an equal can be misused. To this effect, startup culture runs the
ultimate - and the simplest - system of checks and balance: completion of task. Everything an employee
requests, whether it be help, an extension, a leave or a reason for company expenditure, is seen as
contributive to productivity as long as the task is completed within the deadline, and exceeds satisfactory
requirements. While one may argue that this is blanket statement, essentially encapsulating the basic
responsibility of any employee, the leash at startups is far longer. While I didn’t receive the glittering perks
Facebook or Google offered at ROBOCOPP, I still enjoyed a far greater share of freedom and autonomy
than I had ever received in any previous internships. Trust, and the assurance of completion was valued
above all, and while this might initially seem a bit overwhelming, it is empowering over time, and does
bring out the best out of team members. This is not to say that I was the perfect employee all the time.
With great power does indeed come great responsibility, and when I did slip up, I did have to face the
music. This sense of a liability, however, I think, has been formative. While I did commit mistakes aplenty,
I believe I have walked out a calmer, more sensible and more consistent person. If anything, being at the
absolute helm of my responsibility for two months has completed my metamorphosis from a fascinated
schoolboy to a more pragmatic lad, and hopefully prepared me to dive deeper into professional waters.
D. PERPETUATING LEADERSHIP
As I was nearing the business end of my internship, I was not only in a position to understand how
and why startups worked the way it did, but also had some objective reasoning as to how leaders and team
members could help build working environments conducive to innovation, creativity and productivity. In
4 In most parts of India, the liberality of the startup culture is yet take flight. Superiors in work often enjoy, and exploit, and overarching dominance over their subordinates, and as a result, opinion repression runs high.
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the past two months, I have seen instances of leadership in a variety of different situations - from my bosses,
my colleagues and my fellow interns in other departments. I have come to learn, understand and truly
appreciate the fact that being a leader isn’t restricted to any designation. Everyone has circumstances that
call upon them to lead in the workplace, and it is only by being cognizant of these opportunities can we
truly work succeed as a team.
Before I talk about the style of leadership I would like to propagate, I’d like to spend some time
discussing what, in my opinion, comprises the make of a leader. It’s important to start by defining what the
role of the leader is, and in the workplace of a young startup, it is to set shared expectations for a team and
drive them together to that goal. A leader must understand people, and empathize with their emotions,
fears, and dreams. They must not only possess the tactical aptitude and professional experience to approach
a problem from various perspectives, but also have the humility and gusto to create an environment
welcoming to new ideas, especially from young members of a team. They are inspirational, charming, and
most importantly, pragmatic. A leader, as I have come to believe, will not allow emotions to cloud their
judgment, and would never make decisions without considering both qualitative and quantitative aspects
of the evidence at hand.
But perhaps the most important trait a leader can possess is accurately defined by the adage, ‘a leader
is someone who creates leaders’. What separates a leader from a boss, or even an adept manager, is the ability
to scout and hone talent of the people he works with. They don’t sugarcoat the flaws of their coworkers,
but at the same time, they treat development with respect, not with condescension. Their work ethic isn’t
selfish, since they invest in the progress of their members with the vision of a collaborative synergy, and not
the possibility of them being replaced or their authority compromised.
I reflect upon these specific traits not because some how-to leadership manual says so, but because
I have seen these in play, and the positive effect they can catalyze. I firmly believe that my mentors at
ROBOCOPP, Sam Mansen and Dr. Shubhankar Basu, have indeed been a creative force in my adolescent
life. This internship has seen me develop from a curious and enthusiastic freshman in a new country, to a
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slightly older, calmer and resourceful young professional who has learned to utilize his cross-cultural
upbringing and harness it to the best of his ways. I’ve learned that the success of a business can perhaps be
measured by its bottom line, but the effectiveness of a leader is perhaps judged better by how many interns
and employees they have changed for the better. I strongly believe that my progress - professionally and
socially - is not unique at ROBOCOPP, for every intern grew in their own way. All of us interns connected
with the energy at ROBOCOPP to form a holistic ecosystem around us that nurtured a certain symbiotic
growth. In my eyes, that’s the truest metric of real leadership: a personal connection. And thus, that’s
perhaps the approach to leadership I want to adopt - a relationship that is stripped away from any and all
conventional management jargon, unnecessary diagrams and step-by-step guides but rather focuses on what
leadership is truly about: creating other leaders.
E. MOVING FORWARD BY LOOKING BEHIND
Today, as I enroll in my classes for the Fall, I can’t help but think how each decision I make isn’t
bound in a vacuum. There are long lasting consequences to every adult commitment I make, but this isn’t
necessarily a bad thing. Everything I’ve done at ROBOCOPP this summer, from my breakthrough ideas
to some of those poorly completed reports, has taught me something about the world I am stepping into.
Working at a startup excited me, distressed me, disappointed me, destroyed me almost, and finally, rebuilt
me. I’m not as excited as a ‘kid in a candy store’ about startups as I was a few years ago, but fairy tales aren’t
meant to carry into adulthood.
I’ve learned a lot about myself and an industry that I never knew existed. I never did accept the
truth at face value: I questioned and probed everything I was offered, and took it upon myself to take an
unsatisfactory answer home as my mental homework and study it. There are numerous times when I have
been thought in silence on the 51B bus home from Oakland, putting myself in Sam’s shoes and questioning
why he chose to accept a proposal of mine that I wasn’t satisfied with, or on the contrary, reject a suggestion
of mine that I was extremely proud of! I haven’t found all the answers I seek, but I’ve come to realize that
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this enterprising world isn’t black or white, and there does lie a fuzzy space of intuition, feeling and
rationale in between.
My second lesson has been a more literal interpretation of these ‘shades of gray’ I talk about.
Inspired by Sam and a series of similarly hipster CEOs, I have adopted my own personal uniform: a long-
sleeved charcoal gray t-shirt. Despite the initial laughter and looks of disappointment that my close friends
and family have wore, I have lasted almost a month in this regalia and don’t show signs of going back to
color. I’m yet to conclude if this has positively (or negatively) affected my net productivity, but I do feel
some comfort in having a sense of constancy in - what I learned to be - is an otherwise changing world.
My last and final learning has been one of humility. It is easy to be carried away by these newspaper
headlines and throw around “disruption” and “billions” as though those words mean nothing. I understand
that every startup doesn’t become a Facebook or a Google, but that doesn't mean that a lack of a million-
dollar valuation dismisses the effort, passion, and commitment that has gone into building it. I’ve learned
that for every flashy Kickstarter campaign that goes viral, there are 99 more startups that are quietly working,
trying to change the lives of their customers, one at a time. Working in the personal safety industry taught
me that there are real world problems that need to be solved - problems that are messy, complicated, and
often, not even completely known. There is a struggle, but when these startups succeed there is a certain
feeling of hope and optimism that washes over you.
Just the other day, when I casually glanced at ROBOCOPP’s profile on Crunchbase, it revealed a
private equity funding that placed ROBOCOPP at 12.5-million-dollar valuation. In the past, I would have
casually dismissed this number and frowned upon at a half-hearted effort at seeking funding. But today,
having worked and contributed a small part to what ROBOCOPP is and can be, I realize the true
significance of the number. ROBOCOPP’s valuation isn’t for the eventual IPO, or a part of an exit strategy.
ROBOCOPP’S 12.5-million-dollar valuation signifies 12.5 million more dollars toward a safer America.
None of the money raised will be spent on chrome pandas, but instead, on real people and their problems,
and that gives me a sense of satisfaction and tranquility that my boisterous self would have never appreciate
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a year ago. A lot has changed about me in the past few months, I have grown quieter, thoughtful, a lot less
colorful, but perhaps the biggest of changes is reflected by the fact that I no longer enamored by unicorns
anymore, but by real animals instead5.
5 Once again, startup journalism has produced a cultural reference that we can first laugh at, and then silently applaud its brilliance (https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Unicorn_(finance)).
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Citations and Works Referenced
Bolman, Lee G., and Terrence E. Deal (2008).. “Reframing Organizations: Artistry, Choice, and
Leadership. 4th ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2008.
Davenport, Patil: Thomas, D.J. (2012). "Data Scientist: The Sexiest Job Of The 21St Century".
Harvard Business Review. N. p., 2012. Web. 11 Aug. 2016. Kruger, Justin; Dunning, David (1999). "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in
Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments". Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology. 77 (6): 1121–34.
Morris, Errol. (2010) "The Anosognosic's Dilemma: Something's Wrong But You'll Never Know
What It Is (Part 1)". Opinionator. N. p., 1277. Web. 10 Aug. 2016. Silver, Nate (2015). “The Signal and the Noise: Why so Many Predictions Fail--but Some Don't.”
Penguin Books, 2015.
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