Inside Nova Founders’ Internship with Christian Endres
Why did you apply for the internship?
I applied because I saw the internship as a possibility to be able to work with a high level of challenge, responsibility and learning at a younger age than I would be able to get at both university or any other gap year job.
After I had my interviews with the Managing Partners, I then became convinced that Nova Founders would end up being a very good place for me and other young diligent people to learn.
What has been your greatest learnings so far?
My greatest learning is something as simple as structuring the arguments I want to make, my work and time in general. If I am to deliver and present, lets say a market analysis, I very quickly acknowledge that making the analysis may be 80% of the work, but without being able to logically break each point down to the core in both the analysis and the presentation this message will not come through when presenting the proposed plan.
This is something so simple that everyone is aware of, but it was only when actually working side by side with some of these genius minds, whom I proudly call my colleagues, I realised that you are never the best at every area, so you can always learn from others.
What has been the coolest thing about the internship?
The coolest thing about the internship has to be Nova Founders’ mentality that when you gather some of the most ambitious, dedicated and brilliant young people the most meaningless factor is their age. If you are the best at something it does not matter what your background is; what truly matters is your mindset to learn and work.
What has been the hardest during the internship?
The hardest thing correlates a lot with the coolest thing. You get a lot of responsibility if you take the chance and prove that you deserve it. If you do not focus on time management, as I did not, at the start of my internship it can often lead to long hours at the office. Also, it becomes an often unnecessary stress factor that at least I found out, can be prevented by something as simple as going A-to-Z which tasks that are urgent, which are important and then combine those two to find out what needs to be first in line.
“The hardest thing correlates a lot with the coolest thing. You get a lot of responsibility if you take the chance and prove that you deserve it”
What are you responsible for?
Currently, I am responsible for one of our ventures’ finance department on an interim basis until our incoming CFO starts his employment within a couple of months. Herein, I have worked with diverse things from negotiating deals with supplies and setting up our dunning strategy and our group-wide P&L and Cash Flow models to predict our rentability and the potential need for upcoming funding.
How does a normal day look like for you?
First of all, I feel that it is important to state that a normal day for me does very much depend on which project I am working on. On my current venture project, my workday starts with me noting and ranking the urgency of the different tasks I have pre-planned for the day as well as some comments on these. When arriving at the office, I quickly get an overview of the night’s incoming emails and the venture’s in- and outcoming payments for the day. Hereafter, I have my daily morning meeting with the CEO and update him of our finance status whilst he gives me input on the work and priorities I have set up for the upcoming period. After that, I typically update our reports as well as take a call with some of our debtors or supplies.
From here, I typically have a meeting with our Sales Director regarding the status of the campaigns we wish to run. Info that I will then redirect via phone to our Dutch research department whilst I set-up the workflows for them to work on it from there. When finance and research is properly looked after for the day, I use the evening hours going through my inbox and modelling in case an interesting analysis has come up during the day.
What would you have liked to know when you considered applying?
Two pieces of knowledge I felt that was perhaps lacking when applying was:
1) The open opportunity to have a free non-interviewing talk with one of the former interns. From what I could read and hear from the interviews everything seemed as good as it ended up being, but I feel like this would definitely be more personal if I had had the opportunity to have a call with one of the interns prior to my interviews.
2) Another thing I would have liked to have known when I started, is that the internship is never determined from the start. I went into it hoping to work in one venture, which I only did for the first 4 months until I helped with the entire acquisition of the venture that I predominantly work at now.
What are your plans after the summer break?
I will start my BSc in International Business from CBS in Copenhagen and most likely either find work within Consulting or continue working with Nova’s venture, which I am currently on a project with. But who knows, I may found a company as well.
What are your long-term goals?
I want to learn as much as possible about the topics I enjoy. Both short term and long term. I have done precisely that with Nova so long term this will most likely end with me working and learning within either a top tier consulting firm or my own start-up.
