Kountable, Inc., San Francisco, CA
This summer I had the privilege of interning at Kountable, a San Francisco based start-up founded in part by Williams alumnus Chris Hale ’00. Kountable began as a fintech meant to minimize the trade gap in East Africa. Small and midsize entrepreneurs (SMEs) struggle to secure funding in developing and underdeveloped nations simply because they rarely have the necessary documents and data that banks and other funding options require. Kountable solves this issue in Kenya and Rwanda by working closely with SME resellers to acquire the appropriate documentation, and providing an innovative funding structure which enables the entrepreneurs to grow their business. Over the years, Kountable has adapted, adding value propositions to help resellers with all aspects of their trades. This summer, we launched the next version of Kountable, a membership platform that will allow us to work more closely with our resellers to help them grow and learn between trades. It was an exciting time to join Kountable, as the company’s agility and ambition were on display in equal parts.
Generally, I was responsible for content creation for the membership site, creating and tracking marketing campaigns for the new platform, and social media management. When I started in June, I was handed a few documents and asked to read through and summarize them into a piece to be sent to prospective members. I really enjoyed the opportunity to learn about Kountable while also producing something that went directly to our customers. Ultimately, this became the direction of my summer—producing 20+ articles, reports and other pieces that built out the membership site and populates the main website now. I also worked with another Williams intern to develop a conversion marketing strategy. We built a full, multi-step marketing funnel that successfully converted leads to membership, and I created a dashboard to track the success of each new campaign, website traffic and membership numbers across dozens of metrics. This dashboard led to a new role of social media manager, which I will continue into the fall. As the summer wore on, I became more comfortable with each new role, and was able to build on my experience in one position to take on another.
I’m very grateful for the opportunity to work at Kountable this summer. It was my first career-oriented job experience, my first full-time job, and my first time doing a lot of what ended up defining my experience. The Kountable team supported me every step of the way, and really helped me feel confident in my ability to add value and make a substantive difference. I began the summer thinking that I might want to work at a fintech start-up after college, and the last few months have really cemented that. I also really enjoyed working for a mission-based company that is committed to promoting sustainable economic growth and solving real world problems in innovative ways. I was exposed to a really exciting world, and I have the Williams ’68 Center for Career Exploration and Mr. William McCalpin to thank for that.
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