By Arpitha Dhanapathi T’15
Arpitha is a second-year student at Tuck. Prior to school, she worked at Microsoft in Seattle, WA. Arpitha is from Bangalore, India and did her undergrad in BITS-Pilani, Rajasthan, India. Over summer 2014, she interned at Intellectual Ventures in Bellevue, WA. On-campus, Arpitha is a co-chair for the 2014 Tuck Diversity Conference, works as an admissions associate, and helps to lead the Tuck Venture Fund. She loves hiking, reading, writing, and night skies. Post Tuck, she plans to work in the technology industry.
Over the summer, I was fortunate enough to have worked at Intellectual Ventures (IV) in Seattle, WA, one of the largest players in the intellectual property monetization industry in the U.S. Since this was such a unique opportunity, I thought I’d share a few words about how I got there and what it was like to be there.
My criteria for my summer experience was pretty clear:
I learned about IV while working at Microsoft—before coming to school—and felt it was a really cool company. They work in intellectual property (IP) and patents—sourcing, bundling, and licensing. They’ve created a marketplace for IP. What I found most interesting was that they do a lot of in-house research, develop interesting patents, and have even spun off of a few cool companies like Terrapower—a clean, nuclear energy firm which is backed by Bill Gates. I like that they are futuristic and willing to take long term bets which is quite hard to find these days.
While searching for alums in Seattle, I came across John Boomgard, who is working at Global Good, IV’s sister organization. I kept in touch with John and he helped me get interviews with the Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO) team—the team that I worked with over summer.
OCTO was a small group of approximately 20 very smart people led by Edward Jung, the chief technology officer and cofounder of IV. Innovation Mega Projects (IMP) group within OCTO was a cool initiative that enabled us to work on some of the world’s biggest challenges in innovative ways. Here are a few examples:
During my internship, I was introduced to energy markets in the United States in a deep way. I carried out analysis of U.S. energy markets—through the Energy Information Association (EIA) and other sources—and developed insight into how much energy is being used by buildings, problems analyzing data at a regional level, and a few places where possible efficiency gains could be realized. I also carried out research on a number of smart cities around the world in order to understand common patterns in technologies and governance that might help our project. Half my summer was spent envisioning how futuristic modular buildings would disrupt the way humans live. I was introduced to, and was surprised by, my own new found love for economic modelling. Finally, I delved deeply into the world of the construction and demolition, which I had little knowledge of before. There are billions of dollars in these fragmented markets!
The crown jewel of my experience was getting to know all the extremely smart yet down-to-earth people and having the opportunity to work with them. I got to meet and talk to scientists, business development managers, lawyers, industry professionals—all in just three short months. My summer experience will always remain a memory I will cherish forever.
For those looking to do off-campus recruiting, I would just say—go for it! There are a lot of cool companies out there. The Tuck alumni network is a strong group that you can always rely on. Make sure you connect the strings and reach out to your network as efficiently as possible. You will be amazed at the results!