ramxpa

I was an intern at the UNHQ in New York city in 2010 and as a computer science grad student, i was definitely the odd man out. Right from my middle school days, i have always been intrigued by the UN and no one understood why a CS grad student would pick the UN for an unpaid internship instead of a typical tech company that paid $25-30+ an hour.

- My batch had 300 interns from 70+ countries and almost every intern was very talented and went to one of the top universities in the world. The internship selection process was similar to grad school admissions (essays, recommendations etc) and it was selective (around 5%). There were only a handful of tech people and it wasn't hard for me to get in! Unlike me (someone in tech), the internship was coveted for those in economics, international affairs and several other fields.

- Most people only see the irrelevant parts of UN where world leaders give prejudiced talks in the general assembly but there is a lot more to UN than that. UN plays a very important role in the world's peacekeeping, social development, human rights and several other things that aren't very visible to people living in developed nations.

- As a programmer, i built some internal publishing tools using PHP but i also got to wear suits and sit in group discussions at the world bank and with ambassadors of several countries. I loved that part. Out of my own interest, i also built an internal profile network for the interns and i learned a lot of new things doing that.

- The department that i worked at had many talented people who were well qualified and were passionate about what they were doing and i am still in touch with some. Of course, it is a large organization with a lot of red-tapism with many inefficient departments. My internship made me realize I didn't want to spend my 20s and 30s at the UN or any similar organization.

I probably spent around $8k-$10k out of my pocket to do the internship (travel, food, rent etc). I wish the UN paid me for the work but looking back, it was a very memorable experience and i would definitely do it again.

I replied to a posting on the 'Who's hiring' thread back in Jan 2011 and landed at my first real job out of college. I just left that company after 4+ wonderful years. I was an international student who wanted to work for a startup and very few startups were willing to take the risk back then. I had very little to prove and also came along with strict visa requirements. I am so thankful to this thread, i was able to connect with a person who identified my potential and eventually became a great mentor for me.

Capping the price at $150/mo isn't really a wise decision. If a big customer like MLB wants to use Tapalytics for their iOS app which i assume has millions of MAUs, you will still be forced to charge them $150/month because that is your top most tier and it comes with unlimited MAUs.

In the long run, there is a good chance that a significant portion of your revenue might come from enterprise customers who would be willing to pay you multiples of the $1800 ARR. Adding an enterprise/custom quote as the top most tier is a vey common practice. Looking at the pricing page of similar companies (Kissmetrics, VWO, Optimizely, Mixpanel) might help.

The index and score from Mattermark are great for consumer facing companies and mobile app companies but are pretty useless for most other industries. I checked some companies that are making making millions in revenue and they had a double/triple digit mattermark score. I am pretty sure that isn't a good representation.

Also, a note for those signing up for the trial, there is neither an option to cancel your subscription directly nor information about billing inside the application. You have to email them to cancel the account and i got a response after 5 days(3 working days) when i sent an email asking them to cancel my trial account. While it is totally acceptable for an early stage startup to not have those features and i am sure they have it in their backlog, just make sure you don't send that cancelation email the day before your trial ends.