By, Shivani Tripathi
Anubhav Rao (Marshall, ‘21) spent his spring as a Product Marketing Intern at Kaapi, where he worked on a variety of PMM projects. During the internship, Anubhav’s prior work experience and his first-year MBA learnings helped him upskill for this role. In this interview, Anubhav shared his experience as a Product Marketing Intern at Kaapi and his approach to succeeding in an MBA Internship.
Shivani: Tell us about your pre-MBA background and why did you choose USC Marshall?
Prior to my MBA, I did my undergrad in Computer Science. And then, I started my professional journey as an early-key employee at a new age media startup. My key area of focus was to help start the business development team from scratch – this included working on positioning and messaging plus leading the entire chain from client acquisition to client servicing. This was a really cross-functional role that taught me about the importance of customer obsession and distribution. I also led feasibility studies and GTM strategies for the international expansion of our business in markets like Dubai. That’s when I decided to do my MBA to learn more about business vision and to upskill myself as a marketer and strategist. USC Marshall became my top choice because of the stellar Trojan network. Even as a prospective student, I was amazed by the number of students and alumni who were willing to lend a helping hand. I really believe in the power of community and knew that this will be a great place for me to continue my holistic development.
Shivani: What motivated you to join Kaapi as a Product Marketing intern?
I joined Kaapi as a Product Marketing intern during my fall semester to continue gaining practical experience in that role. It is a bootstrapped early-stage startup, and I knew that I would be able to get my hands dirty across multiple projects. I also wanted to get exposure to the product led growth model in B2B SaaS, and the company followed a similar growth strategy.
And Product Marketing is my target role because I believe it is integral to not just building the right distribution strategy but aligning the internal and external stakeholders with that vision – a critical aspect to the success of any company’s growth. The experience from the internships definitely helped upskill me in this role and I will continue my journey as a PMM at VMware after graduation.
Shivani: How did the first-year MBA experience help you during the internship?
The first-year MBA experience helped with both the soft-skill and hard-skill part needed to succeed in any role. Marketing and quant classes helped me polish my analytical skills while juggling multiple responsibilities and talking to people from various backgrounds helped with prioritization and communication. Such qualities really helped with the virtual nature of the internship – both with the actual work and with building relationships at the workplace.
Shivani: How did you prepare for the internship recruitment process?
The first couple of months in the MBA program really helped to get clarity on the way forward. I started the journey by talking to a lot of my 2nd years and alumni to better understand the industry, role, and hiring process. This helped me breakdown the process into:
- Getting the interview
- Strong elevator pitch
- Resume and cover letter aligned to the role
- Strong network
- Acing the interview
- Aligning career stories with the target role
- Behavioural and casing practice
- Lots of mock sessions with peers
- Acing the role
This might not be super urgent considering companies sometimes don’t expect students to hit the ground running during the internship. But, I believe one can start polishing the necessary skill sets in advance to give them that advantage.
Covid had definitely thrown the plan into disarray but thankfully I was able to secure a PMM internship for the summer at a B2B SaaS company. And then, I followed up on that with 2 more PMM internships. The latest one being at Vowel, a startup that has the same early investors who invested in the likes of Stripe, Twilio etc.
Shivani: Walk us through your day at Kaapi as a Product Marketer?
Every day was different and that brought with it the excitement of learning and facing new things. My key project, in the beginning, was to evaluate product usage metrics. That analysis identified a key trend, which I was able to confirm after talking to multiple users. This resulted in releasing a new feature, which I then later helped to launch in the market. It was great to be involved in the entire lifecycle from feature prioritization to feature launch – something that gave me key insights on how to work with engineers as well.
Shivani: What were some key challenges in interning virtually?
Before Kaapi, I had already done one internship virtually so the experience from that had definitely helped. But, I will say coordinating in different time zones and building connections can definitely be a challenge. I have found async communication and clear documentation to be lifesavers in this regard. But, it was still difficult to recreate the water cooler conversations that team members have in the office. Actually, the new feature I worked on there was around solving this exact problem. So, that turned out to be a fun experience on a personal level too.
Shivani: What’s your advice to the 2021 MBA Product Marketing summer interns?
Have clarity on your role and what is expected from your 2/3 months. Try to absorb as much as you can by talking to people from different teams. Keep track of your good and bad days during the internship – it will not just help you learn but make your decision-making and stories for the next year better as well. And most importantly, make sure to have lots of fun!