San Antonio and a Startup Internship at the Open Cloud Academy by Austin Guerrero

The first time I visited San Antonio was for my Trinity admissions visit in March of 2014. I fell in love with the city almost immediately because it reminded me of my hometown Tucson, Arizona. Both San Antonio and Tucson share eclectic and culturally rich attributes. Despite the city’s intimate and welcoming characteristics, San Antonio is actually the 7th largest city in the United States. Through attending Trinity University and completing internships downtown for the past three years, I’ve been able to experience the intense growth of San Antonio’s urban and professional community as well. While attending Dr. Martinez’s entrepreneurship class, I was exposed to the growing startup community in San Antonio through visiting Geekdom which often hosted Startup Grind, and other startup events popping up around town, such as Startup Weekend. Now, three years later, Geekdom has expanded immensely and has attained a favorable reputation as a startup space all around San Antonio.

I am currently on my second go around as the intern for The Open Cloud Academy, a unique startup located alongside Geekdom. The Open Cloud Academy is a subsidiary to the tech giant in San Antonio named Rackspace. While having the beneficial combination of a large name company and the small startup business characteristics, the Open Cloud Academy has the best of both worlds. Although a startup itself initially, Rackspace now has a little over 6,000 employees and was bought by a private equity firm for 4.3 billion dollars. Rackspace created the Open Cloud Academy to be an:

“Education Center [enhancing technical career opportunities in San Antonio] focused on developing technical talent. [The Academy’s] team of Subject Matter Experts guide and empower students to achieve industry recognized certifications in a unique hands-on learning environment”

           

 Although it is underneath the Rackspace umbrella, we function relatively on our own; working at the Rand Building, making it feel like a startup with our team consisting of six, including myself. Our team consistently makes decisions together through meetings around the office about big events and decisions we plan to make regarding the Academy now and in the future. Value is placed on each member’s opinions as each person of the team is such an important piece in the Open Cloud Academy’s success.

       Last summer was my first summer with the Open Cloud Academy; it was an adjustment period for both sides. It was my first professional internship, and the Open Cloud Academy’s second time to host an intern during a time of expansion. What’s great about working at the Open Cloud Academy, and I’m sure other startups, is that the intern is given responsibility on the very first day of work—tasks that may immediately affect the business.                                   The most exciting part about a startup internship is that the internship is giving me exposure and opportunities in all aspects of the business world. When an intern is placed in a startup environment, the intern can be immediately assigned to complete important and various roles in the company instead of doing the same, monotonous tasks all day. For example, one day I will analyze statistics for the academy, such as graduate performance at Rackspace or the success rates of different styles of teaching. The next day, I could be planning events or talking to prospective students from all sorts of backgrounds. I also get to have a hand in some budgeting decisions, event planning and attend events representing the Academy. This jack-of-all trades style of internship allows you to become a more flexible employee and pick up all sorts of skills that I could not gain elsewhere.