Startup internship is a program that provides field experience to students who want to run startups before they start their own businesses so that they can learn marketing and management in the real fields.
Student participants will be working for one or two years in the venture businesses which are tied-up to this program.
Through proper assessment, SMBA will financially support the students to start their own business.
The internship program is targeted mainly to undergraduates, but graduates who have passion for startups can also apply.
The participants will be educated entrepreneurship and basic information regarding startup business during their first two to three weeks of internship.
During this period, participants will form networks and solidarity by getting to know each other.
After basic education, participants will be dispatched to the venture companies that are associated with the program. There, they start their internship and learn how to run a business for at least one year.
After their one-year internship, students can choose to either finish the internship or keep working for another year.
When they finish their internship, SMBA will fund the seed money for businesses up to 100 million won through the internship assessment.
SMBA launches this new internship program in order to fulfill the needs for field experience to promote startups properly.
Existing startup promoting policies just offer funds or consulting, rather than real field experiences. Hence, those who are interested in startups hesitate to actually start a business, even though they recognize the importance of startups. SMBA designed this program to solve this problem.
SMBA’s startup internship program benchmarked America’s “Venture for America” program and Finland’s “Startup Life” program, both of them which are renowned as startup internship programs.
This internship experience is expected to increase the chances of success in startup businesses.
“We expect the participants of the program would get practical experience of startups and start their business succesfully,” said Lee Ha-nyeung, a Deputy Director from SMBA.
Yoon Hye-joon
hajun1237@ewhain.net