Lillie Lippman ’24


Kountable, San Francisco, CA

This summer, I worked as a marketing and business development intern at Kountable, a San Francisco-based tech startup founded by Chris Hale ’00. Kountable is a B2B marketplace that enables businesses to trade with one another when it would otherwise be challenging or even unfeasible. Kountable’s ability to make transactions possible and more efficient helps address the global supply chain issues we all have experienced lately. The Kountable platform enables problem solving, start to finish, such as supplying malaria test kits to healthcare facilities in Rwanda or providing the materials to build a water-efficient laundry system in a Kenyan hospital. Although Kountable’s platform seemed somewhat abstract to me at the start of the internship, I came to understand that the results of transactions facilitated by the company are incredibly meaningful and life-changing to the people impacted.

Even though this was a remote internship, I was able to work for a few weeks at the home of my supervisor, Co-founder and President Catherine Nomura. This allowed me to connect more personally and experience the sometimes hectic work life at a startup. My responsibilities consisted of two large projects that I worked on with another Williams intern. Kountable recently began crowdfunding, so our first project dealt with marketing and promoting their Wefunder campaign. We scoured through every bit of information we could find about Kountable, brainstormed and made multiple iterations of designs.

For our second project, we were tasked with researching potential investors and potential companies to join Kountable’s platform. We identified venture capital firms that we thought would be interested in the mission and values. We also researched startups in fields related to Kountable, such as renewable energy, infrastructure, medical supplies, sustainability and more. This project was fascinating because I learned a lot about many cutting-edge startups. Additionally, I worked on various smaller tasks throughout the internship, such as creating accounts for companies involved in transactions on Kountable’s platform, cleaning their mailing list and helping film an informational video regarding their crowdfunding campaign.

My internship at Kountable this summer was a great experience. I learned a lot about B2B businesses, marketing, business development, global supply chains and startup culture. It was also rewarding working at a company with social impact as one of its priorities. The internship helped me understand some of my professional goals more clearly; it reinforced my interest in working somewhere with social impact because it makes the work feel more meaningful. I experienced the fast-paced nature of Kountable and was exposed to many other startups as well through the market research I conducted. The skills and knowledge that I gained from this experience will be useful in the years to come as I explore new opportunities and continue to pursue these interests.

I would like to express my gratitude to Bill McCalpin ’79 and the ’68 Center for Career Exploration for supporting this opportunity and allowing me to explore my interests. I learned a lot this summer, and I’m excited to see where it takes me.