August marked the end of the inaugural year of the Bowery Capital Sales Fellowship Program. After a very exciting summer, we’ve been able to take a step back and ruminate on the learnings and successes from the first year of the Program.
Overall, we were very pleased with how the summer played out and think that the Program added tremendous value to both the Fellows and the host companies. As Lauren Dadigan, Sr. Manager of Sales Development at CB Insights explained, “The eagerness, intelligence, curiosity, and drive from our Fellow was infectious in the office. His time here over the summer made a direct impact on our business.”
Some notable results after the summer include Medidata Solutions’ Fellow being offered a full time role after graduation in 2018. CloserIQ’s Fellow generated $18k in revenue in 9 weeks, while Electric.ai’s Fellow sourced over $25k in revenue during the Program, almost twice as fast as the typical 13-17 weeks that it takes an experienced sales rep to ramp and generate revenue. DojoMojo’s Fellow was offered a contract extension and Digital Ocean’s Fellow was offered a part-time contract to continue working while he still attends Columbia for his junior year.
In addition to working at their designated companies day-to-day, Fellows met once a week at each office to learn more about the sales process and winning methodologies. The sessions, dubbed “Coffee with Closers,” walked the Fellows through the various stages of the sales cycle and allowed for a more classroom-like setting where Fellows were able to interact and learn from industry leaders. “Without any sales experience prior to the program, I picked up so much useful information along the way due to the well-structured order of speakers. Starting at the top of the sales funnel and making our way down all the way to customer success and post-sales, made it really easy to keep up and really understand the whole process of selling in any industry,” explained Cole Drummond, who spent the summer interning at Oscar Health.
Universities are slowly starting to add sales education to their curriculum, but the raw skills needed in order to directly impact an organization are best learned by having the opportunity to be hands on. Kevin Wei summed up the experience well, “the Bowery Capital Sales Fellowship Program was a fantastic opportunity to experience the startup scene from a business perspective. Not only did the program place Fellows with businesses where we could take on real responsibilities, it also provided us with the networks, resources, and training that let us make a difference and contribute to those firms’ growth. 15/10 would do again!”
As we look forward to the summer of 2018, we plan to double the amount of host companies and Fellows in NYC and then plan to expand to San Francisco by 2019. Bowery Capital would also like to thank MOAT, Medidata Solutions, SwiftShift, CB Insights, CloserIQ, DojoMojo, Oscar, DigitalOcean and Electric.ai for participating as host companies this summer.
If your company is interested in being a host company or you or someone you know might be interested in being considered for the Bowery Capital Sales Fellowship Program in 2018, please email info@bowerycap.com.
