Defer IB Internship Offer to Work on my Startup
Hi Everyone,
I’m a rising junior at a target school and I accepted an offer for a 2024 IB internship at a top BB firm several months ago. However, I’m also running a startup right now and am not sure what to do.
My startup recently graduated from a top accelerator program, we are gaining more traction every month, and we hope to raise a $1.5 million pre-seed sometime in the fall.
I am highly conflicted right now about what I should do with my offer. I want to take a gap year so that I can focus on building my startup and see if it works before deciding to drop out, but I also don’t know if HR will let me defer the offer.
How do I tell HR that I want to take a gap year and defer the offer?
If HR says no and does not let me defer my offer, then should I turn down my IB internship and take the gap year anyway to work on my startup? Will I even like IB anyway at this point?
Or should I put the startup on the side while doing school and the IB internship until I get a better idea if it will work? (I’m also slightly burnt out and want to go out more this year, so continuing to do both at the same time will be very challenging and I’d much prefer to do one or the other)
Any help/guidance on this would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
Go for the startup man. Can always rerecruit and have a great story to tell if they do not let you defer a year, which im sure they will.
I'm not anyone worth listening to and I've got no idea with what I want to do with my life but I just wanna congratulate you and your startup on graduating from the accelerator. If you are confident in securing the pre-seed then I would ask to defer -- you only get one life and a lot of people dream of being in the position you are currently in. Obviously it's nice to have a safety net and fall back onto a BB FT offer if you can convert but why would you want to spend 80 hours a week building CIMS that will be seen by 5 people when you can build your own business from the ground up, create something bigger and be your own boss?
If you believe in your startup/product why not go for it
If you raise the seed round, 100% go startup.
The only thing is I won't find out if I'll be able to raise the round until after I've had to make the decision. If I raise it will likely close the round by September/October but I have to decide by mid August. Additionally, I could also bootstrap my company the way it is structured without raising any VC funds and still achieve a good exit down the road.
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