Nick Singh

2019 Tech &

Career Events
For Bay Area
Summer Interns
A Guide To Making The Most
Out Of Your Summer In Silicon Valley

Learn about all the summer intern open houses, tech talks, and hackathons
sponsored by top-tier tech companies and VC firms.

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What’s inside this guide?

Introduction 3

Why You Should Go To Events  5

How I Got The Nest Labs Internship Interview 5
How I Started The Facebook Interview Process 5
It’s A Small World After All 6

Company Open Houses 7

Background on Company Open Houses 7
How To Get Invited 7
Companies With Intern Open Houses Recently 8
Companies I’m Missing 9
Miscellaneous Company Events  10

Other Events & Resources 11

Venture Capital Firm Sponsored Events 11
Internapalooza 11
Hackathons 12
Meetups 12
University Events 12
Intern Communities 13
Power Of Facebook 13

Conclusion 14

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Chapter 1

Introduction
Ihad the privilege of interning as a Software Engineer at Google’s Nest Labs in the summer
of 2016. That summer, I lived in Palo Alto, worked on a cool internship project, went to
many tech & career events, and made some great friends along the way.

Most importantly, at the end of the summer, I came to the realization that I wanted to live
in the bay area after graduation. This was a significant moment in my life trajectory because
I didn’t always think I’d end up in the bay area.

For context, the summer before, I had interned at Microsoft in Seattle. Between the great
outdoors scene, reasonable cost of living, and excellent work culture at Microsoft I thought
Seattle would be my future home for sure. And then there was always my home-town of
Northern Virginia. With good jobs, reasonable cost of living, and being close to friends and
family, I wasn’t seriously considering Silicon Valley.

But a close mentor of mine convinced me to give the bay area a chance. He said that for
someone with startup interests, young in their tech career, who enjoyed spending time
with like-minded people, SF was THE place to be. I begrudgingly gave up my return
internship offer with Microsoft to play the interview lottery so that I could try to land an
internship that would allow me to try out the bay area.

I’m glad I did it. My mentor was absolutely right.

It clicked to me at the end of my silicon valley summer when I compared all the cool events
I went to in SF - that were uniquely in SF - with the lack of tech/career related events I did
in Seattle and the lack of ecosystem I saw first hand in Northern Virginia.

The events I went to helped me realize how startup & tech centric the bay area was, and
how high the concentration of like-minded people was. And that it was personally the best
place for me to be.

That’s why I’m writing this guide today.

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This guide is for:

1) People who aren’t in the bay area and are curious to learn more about the events
and communities uniquely in the bay area in case they are considering moving out
here

2) People who are fortunate to spend the summer in the bay area and want to
attend similar events to the ones that left such a strong impression on me

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Chapter 2

Why You Should Go To Events

Before I dive into the event specifics, it’s worth answering:
Why should you even go to these events?

It’s worth explaining this implicit assumption just so people who are on the fence can
understand how attending these events can change your life.

Here’s three personal anecdotes.

How I Got The Nest Labs Internship Interview

In the summer of 2015, while I was in Seattle, I came across an open house event on
Facebook from Nest Labs. I filled out the RSVP form even though I wasn’t interning in the
bay area and so couldn’t physically attend the event. I didn’t think much of it.

Then, a month later, I got an email along the lines of: “hey, thanks for RSVPing to our intern
open house this summer. Bummer you couldn’t make it out, but we saw your resume, and
we’d like to interview you.”

Boom - the interview process was started. A few months and a few interviews later, I was
in. All because of an event RSVP (a good resume obviously didn’t hurt either).

How I Got A Facebook Interview

In the summer of 2016, while I was interning at Nest Labs in Palo Alto, a friend of mine
invited me to the Facebook Summer Intern Fest. A week later she also referred me.
I don’t remember the order of events, but generally, I was reached out to because of both
my intern fest attendance and the referral. Fast forward a year later and I started as a new
grad Software Engineer at Facebook.

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It’s A Small World After All

Last anecdote. Silicon Valley is a really, really, small place. The types of people who get
invited and go to the events all kind of know each other. And they keep in touch. I still meet
and see friends who I met initially 3 years ago at parties and coffee shops in SF these days.

For example, a few weeks ago, I had a sales call (for my company’s very niche product) whe-
re the person on the other end (a key PM on the team we were selling to) was a friend I in-
itially met at the Accel Summer Bash. The sales call went a lot more smoother with a friend
on the other end of the line.

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Chapter 3

Company Open Houses

Background on Company Open Houses
Companies have events for interns throughout the summer to showcase their unique cultu-
re and office. Often, there’s a tech talk, and a swag give away. These events usually happen
during the weekday, and are held between early-June and early August, to get the maximum
number of summer interns to attend.

Unfortunately, most of these events are invite only.

How To Get Invited

Many of the company open house events are invite only, and there is no public information
or application page.

Here are some steps to take to get invited:

- Ask a friend who works / interns there about it. They can usually get you on the list.
- Cold email a recruiter and express interest in the company. If you haven’t
cold-emailed recruiters before here are 7 tips I wrote

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The Companies With Intern Open Houses In The

Past Few Years (And Likely Will Have It Again
This Summer)
Since I’m writing this in mid-May, many of the events for this summer aren’t up yet. But
giving you a list of events from years prior is helpful since companies tend to do it every
year:
- Facebook Summer Internfest. Happens every year. Huge event (2,000+ interns).
A current FB intern needs to invite you. No public application or event page.
Photos from the event
- Instart Open House
- Intern Demo Day from Plaid, Eero, Clever, & Shift
- Quora - hosted Q&A with Adam D’Angelo in 2018
- Palantir - hosted quiz night in 2018
- Slack - hosted an intern hackathon in 2018
- Blend - hosted event in 2018. Here is old event page from 2016
- Plaid - hosted event in 2018
- Affirm - hosted event in 2016
- Microsoft (Yammer) Summer Intern Party. Happened in 2016.
Funny news article about the event
- Nylas Intern Open House. Old Facebook event page from 2016
- Lob Summer Intern Fest. Old Facebook event page from 2016
- Pinterest
- Fitbit
- Lyft
- Stripe
- Coursera
- Uber

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Companies I’m Missing

I’m missing companies that may have only started doing intern open houses this year. Your
best bet is to look at Series-C and Series-D startups. They are flush with VC funding, dying
for talent, and okay with hiring interns & new-grads. Here is a list of companies I suspect
might have summer events. Go cold email the recruiter or ask a friend who works at these
companies:
- Coinbase
- Airtable
- Snowflake
- Samsara
- Brex
- DoorDash
- CloudFlare
- Segment
- Opendoor
- Rubrik

Also, keep your eye out on Facebook. Seeing intern friends RSVP to events on FB is an
excellent way of finding the more popular/public events. You can also search ‘open house’
or ‘intern open house’ to find events as the summer progresses.

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Other Miscellaneous Company Events

(Not Exclusively For Interns, But Still Cool)
While not exclusively intern focused, these events are hosted by top-tier tech companies
for the general tech community. These events are still a great way to network with engine-
ers, designers, and PMs. Folks at the companies will love you for showing up, and you can
ask them for referrals later. These events are also a great way to learn.

- Brex & Bolt On Finding Product-Market Fit in FinTech

- Chegg UX Coffee Chat
- Learn about Figma, And Collaboratively Design Something @ Asana HQ
- Machine Learning Tech Talk from VP of ML & AI @ Unity Technologies
- Indiegogo’s Hardware Startup Bootcamp
- Product Vision & Strategy Talk at Optimizely
- Honest Finance & Design @ Affirm
- Tech Talk On Transportation From Lyft’s Design, Product, & Policy Teams
- Healthcare Data Sharing & Analytics Talk From Datavant
- Blockchain Meetup: Blockdaemon, Hyperledger, & Google @ Heavybit
- React Tech Talks @ Sonder HQ

You can find more events on Eventbrite.

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Chapter 4

Other Events & Resources

Events Sponsored By Venture Capital Firms
VC events are usually very well done, with great food, activities, and speakers. You can cold
email the talent / recruiting person at your favorite firms to learn more or find out about
intern open house events occurring at their portfolio companies. Some of the VC events I
went to:

- Greylock Techfair. Super high-quality event but hard to get into. A variety of great
startups attend (e.g Airbnb, Stripe, Coinbase, Flexport, Slack, Thumbtack etc.), and
it’s a really effective way of landing interviews.
- Greylock Hackfest. The best hackathon I have ever attended with the highest cali
ber projects I’ve seen. Many of the things I learned can be found in my 19-page
“Win Hackathons: A How-To Guide”. Happened 2015-2017, but might have been
discontinued since then.
- YC Summer Expo - I attended in 2018. Not meant for interns but they do accept
them. Hearing Justin Kan (Founder of Twitch & Atrium) give a talk was super cool.
- a16z Summer Campfire - Can’t find any public info on it but attended in 2016
- Accel Partners Summer Bash - Can’t find any public info on it but attended in 2016

Folks in summer fellowship programs are usually clued into many more events and are great
people to ask. Some fellowship programs include KPCB Fellows, Pear Fellows, Summer @
Highland Partners, True Ventures Fellows, 8VC Fellows, & Code2040 Fellows.

Internapalooza
Internapalooza is a career fair on steroids, held in AT&T Park. When I attended in 2016, the-
re were thousands of people lined up outside of the stadium waiting to get in even before
the event started. This year it seems they are limiting it to 1,000 people.

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Hackathons
Along with the intern only hackathons sponsored by VC’s and companies, there are some
general open to the public hackathons too.
- Draper University Hackathon. Draper University is an offshoot from the
well-known VC firm, DFJ Capital (Draper-Fisher-Jurvetson)
- DocuSign & Google Cloud Hackathon
- BUIDL SF - Blockchain Hackathon
- AngelHack 2019: Silicon Valley

p.s. before going to a hackathon read my 19-page guide on winning hackathons!

Meetups
Meetups are another great source of events to go to. I’m a big fan of the Mobile Growth SF
Bay Area meetup. You can say hi to me at the next event!

Some other upcoming meetup events:

- How GrowthHackers.com Grew - Talk From Head of Growth
- Spark @ Scale - Data Infra @ Lyft & Uber
- Innovation In Healthcare - Talk From VP of Product at One Medical
- Monetizing Product Experience - Talk from Product Lead at Pandora

University Events
Your university likely has an alumni group/club in the bay area. Here’s the UVA Club of SF
and the Penn Club of SF. Ask your career office or search on Facebook. They often organize
events, and mostly young alumni (only a few years out of school or less) show up.

For UVA folks, here’s a summer networking reception. Here’s a Stanford-Princeton Young
Alumni mixer. Here’s a Stanford-Harvard mixer.

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Other Communities
Some other resources & communities:
- The Real Intern SF - a friend of a friend highly recommends this.
Here’s a list of their upcoming events
- Summer Playbook - a friend started this
- Intern.Community - has groups for NYC & Seattle as well

Power of Facebook

I know Instagram and Snap are all the rage these days and I know I’m biased since I worked
at Facebook and I know I sound cultish still talking about Facebook but I think even in 2019
Facebook is really really good product for people who are new to the bay area because:

- Facebook Marketplace works better than craigslist for finding free furniture
- Facebook groups are a great way to connect to other interns if you work at a big
company. For example, here are the bay area intern groups for Google, Amazon,
Microsoft, & Adobe
- Facebook groups are a great way to find housing. Here are a few groups.
- Facebook events are the best way to find public intern open house events.

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Chapter 5

Conclusion
A heartfelt thanks for reading this and I hope this genuinely helped.

Question For You...

Did I forget your favorite resource or your company’s event? Email me - I’d love to include it!

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