After spending three years working in consulting before coming to HBS, I knew I wanted to use my summer to expand beyond the world of Board of Directors advisory and multi-national company strategic planning and try something completely different, such as an early-stage start-up. I had always been fascinated by Cyber Security and, therefore, as the summer approached, I started to look at opportunities in this area.

Thanks to the HBS network and the Rock Fellowship support, I was able to find a summer position at At-Bay, a series A start-up based in Mountain View which focuses on Cyber Security Insurance. I joined the company as its first MBA intern.

It was a truly transformative experience for me and for the company itself! It was exciting to work and develop in such a dynamic environment. My background in consulting provided me with the curiosity and the mindset to navigate uncertainty and to frame the problems in the right way to come up with solutions quickly. Additionally, I was used to strict processes but at At-Bay, I had to learn how to tackle issues that no one in the company has dealt with before me, and how to test hypotheses and change course based on the feedback we received from early adopters.

My work started as an internship position in business development, where I began developing new collateral materials to boost our marketing and selling activities. However, over time, the CEO, an HBS alumnus, and the rest of the team empowered me to experiment with new things. My work was like drawing on a white canvas, as I had the opportunity to try and experiment with new ideas and get involved in all the aspects of the business.

The CEO, who also had previously worked in consulting, gave me a lot of flexibility to tackle many issues across the overall marketing and selling experience. I never felt that I was “just” an intern, but instead felt that I was an integral part of the company. Moreover, every person on the team dedicated significant time and energy to bringing me up to speed, enabling me to add value from the first days of my internship.

During my ten weeks in the company, I was able to design an online marketing strategy and create acquisition funnel metrics to test different campaigns and selling pitches to brokers. I was also able to work closely with the product team to review our front-end design and customer experience. One of the most exciting moments was in July; thanks to the great effort of the whole company to enhance online marketing, we started to get additional traction with brokers. Clients were searching for us!

That was a great moment and of course we celebrated it! We are a small company, and each new achievement deserves a celebration! I love this spirit and I have never celebrated so much in a work environment before. They call this “fergenizing” which, mixing English and Hebrew, means “to celebrate and be happy for other people’s achievements.”

When I look back at my experience, it was definitely not only an internship, but a truly defining moment. Going into the internship, I was worried about working in a really small company and I thought it would not have been easy to integrate with the team. Instead, I loved every single day with the At-Bay team. I learned that, at the end of the day, who you are navigating with is as important as where you are heading!