Thanks everyone for welcoming the interns into our community.
Call to Action
If you haven’t already, please sign up to host a master class and/or be a buddy/mentor. Master classes are designed to be short sessions (30-60 mins) run by community members for interns which focus on increasing their understanding in key areas (e.g. social media strategy, search engine optimization, etc.). The buddy scheme is designed to offer interns a structured opportunity to meet and interact with individuals from across the Coop. We will match you with one intern for the duration of their six week program. We encourage all buddies to meet once a week with their matched interns. Matching will be based on time zone. You know you want to be a buddy.
Re-introducing the interns
Building upon their intros on the Aug 2 Index Coop Weekly Planning Call, see the responses from their successful applications for What would you like to achieve at the Index Coop?
Aziz Jalel in BD Aziz#2139
My background is in Computer Science and Business Development, and I’d love to work in either of those fields. I could leverage the skills I’ve learned throughout the years, whether related to building my own products or interning at other companies, to make an impact on what Index Coop is building. Whether that’d be coming up with new ways to onboard people who have never touched crypto but still want to get some exposure or developing new features that would appeal to crypto investors, problem-solving and brainstorming is something I love to do and practice regularly. I’m sure that with all the great minds working at Index, there is a way to leverage the products you’re building and reach a whole new audience.
Bobby in BD bbbydll#5342
We are at a period in economic history when forward-thinking financial institutions are exploring DeFi, forward-thinking artists are experimenting with NFTs, and forward-thinking online communities are exploring DAOs. Yet, despite these exciting narratives, we still find ourselves in a late stage Web2, pre-Web3 environment. Yes, we have seen the early signs of the commercialization and acceptance of DeFi, but we have yet to experience the convergence of Web3, DeFi, NFTs, DAOs, and the Metaverse. Going forward, I will continue offering the same advice I’ve always given to my friends and family, except working at Index Coop would allow me to play a role in the creation of new products that lay at the center of Web3 and that push the boundaries to provide more opportunities for retail and institutional investors to get exposure to the space. Exploring the tokenization of real estate yields, real-world asset-backed securities, raising debt financing to fund Index’s expansion into property ownership, and developing the world’s first decentralized on-chain trading desk are some of the ideas that have been floating in my mind regarding a potential role at Index. In addition, I have a large network of Gen-Z investment bankers and wall street connections— I would do my best to serve as an intermediary between Index and the newest cohort of TradFi, building relationships and extending Index Coop’s influence into traditional markets.
Alekhya in Growth Alks#4778
During the Internship, I plan to:
• Identify how to best apply my skills in digital and growth marketing, GTM strategy, product marketing and management, customer development, data analysis, sales and cross functional leadership for IC’s growth.
• Contribute to the growth and/ or product/ product marketing teams to help them successfully launch user centric products thus ensuring IC’s market leadership, eco-system scaling and growth across the ARRR funnel.
• Further my understanding of the following aspects of IC and DeFi in general:
-The market, ecosystem and partners such as investors, methodologists, other DAOs etc.
-KPIs and drivers in terms of business, product and marketing, competitive landscape and other strengths and weaknesses
-Functional working of the index products (components, weights assigned, rebalancing, smart contracts etc.)
• Gain good understanding of DAOs, how they work and operate around governance and consensus and specifically about IC -how it is structured, work dynamics of the WGs especially in the product and growth groups and its metagovernance
Post internship, I plan to:
• Become an expert in DeFi especially in the indices domain. I plan to develop strong understanding of technical aspects in terms of engineering and finance such as
-How smart contracts and rebalancing works. The engineering effort/ constraints for their development
-Fund design and how that affects the potential for intrinsic and extrinsic productivity
-Ease of integration by partners and composability
• As per Defi pulse Index, currently the TVL of Index Coop is only 2.4% of the entire DeFi TVL and less than 2% of wallets use some form of DeFi. Hence there is a huge scope for wider adoption of indices and IC being a market leader can lead this. I look forward to becoming a regular contributor for Index Coop in growth and/ or product/ product marketing teams and help IC fulfil its potential and gain wider adoption
Liam Taylor in POC ql#5855
If offered an internship position, I would hope to achieve a successful 6 weeks where I contributed valuable content and proved myself as a valuable asset to the IC. I would hope this could lead to involvement with the contributor programme and eventually a community methodologist position.
Specifically there are three undertakings I have been considering:
• Proposing/contributing to a methodology for a scaling solution index (Layer 2s, rollups, sidechains etc.)
• Contributing audio content. Either to existing podcast feeds such as DFC and AG’s ‘View from the Nest’ and ‘MetaPortal Podcast’, Crypto Texan’s ‘Conversations with the Coop’ or something new altogether. I manage two podcast feeds currently (unrelated to this sector), and have good experience editing in audacity and using hosting services.
• Producing written content, specifically deep dives. In particular I would like to contribute research for projects currently represented in, and potential additions to, the MVI index. A deep dive on Animoca Brands is a piece of written content I would like to contribute.
I would like to engage with all the self-study materials and be active in the related discussion. It would be fantastic to feel part of a group where everyone is developing and learning together. I have found it quite difficult to find my social niche in the space to date. I believe this internship is an excellent opportunity to be part of a supportive group filled with camaraderie and enthusiasm.
Shivansh Yadav in Engineering Shivansh#4085
At the Index Coop Internship, I want to experience how large scale defi products work and I would like to know how collaboration takes place at different departments while building a defi product. Since I have a lot of smart contract development experience in Solidity and SmartPy, I would love to work on the smart contracts side of things since I am really excited to work on codebase of real life defi products that are being used by millions of users. Even though the stipend is also very lucrative, the main reason I am applying at this internship is the mentorship and support I will get from the experienced builders in the community. I am not tunneling my outcome just limited to 6 weeks of internship but I am envisioning my progress for the long term within the community to be a better contributor.
Michael Chan in Analytics mkc306#8611
I would like to learn more about how DeFi works from experts in the field, as well as improve my smart contract development skills. I would also like to make more connections with people to go to for advice and mentorship in this rapidly expanding space. Furthermore, I would love to ship real-world code used by users, whether it’s internal data tooling for analytics, dashboard for Index Coop product holders, or code for smart contracts. As someone who loves building and has worked in tech for the past 5 years, I am jumping at any opportunity to build in DeFi and I hope this internship is the first step of my journey in this space.
Selection process
You may be wondering how we went about the selection process for this Index Coop internship. At the outset of this program, we committed ourselves to running a fully open program for all ages, genders and geographies.
As such, all applications were vetted and final selection was made without consideration for any demographic factors.
Our approach to candidate selection
- Responses to Q1, Q2 and Q3 were each vetted by a different member of the internship team, with a score out of 150 awarded to each applicant based on: Communication, Creativity and Initiative and Evidence led insights.
- Applicants with a score above a certain threshold were then re-reviewed by two members of the internship team. This review included both Q1-Q3 and your Working Group specific responses.
- Based on the score from this second review, a final decision was then made on which candidates to shortlist for each respective Working Group.
- Working Group core team members were then provided the shortlist of candidates for their respective team. They then made their final selection based on the standard, and Working Group specific questions.
- The top applicants were offered the position
Thanks again for welcoming the interns into our community.