Internship Update: Rinse

by Shelby DeGroot

I spent my summer at Rinse, a laundry and dry-cleaning startup. The company was founded in 2013 and currently serves 5 cities across the United States (SF, LA, Chicago, Boston, and DC). Rinse allows customers to schedule pick-ups for their laundry or dry cleaning through the website or app. Rinse employees (called Valets) pick the product up from the customer between the hours of 8-10pm and return the clothing within 3 days. 

This summer I learned a lot about how to how to deal with ambiguity and go with the flow in a start-up environment. I started the summer in Operations and was initially reporting to the COO/co-founder. A week in, I was moved to Marketing and told they didn’t have the bandwidth to give me a manager. The project they assigned me involved designing a field marketing strategy to grow their share of current markets. Because I didn’t feel this project was helping me build the skills I was looking to build, I took it upon myself to create a new project while also doing what was asked of me. That ended up being my favorite part of the summer.

I designed and analyzed the annual customer satisfaction survey and presented findings to the leadership team, highlighting product strengths and potential areas of improvement. I determined which questions to ask by collaborating with the Product and Marketing teams and made recommendations to the CEO about changes to make moving forward.

Anderson prepared me for this role by giving me the tools to figure out what to do when you don’t know what to do. I learned how to make an impact even when I have no experience in a given function. I also learned how to build relationships in a short period of time. I would love to continue to work in Tech after school, and my exposure to Marketing this summer has opened my eyes to a new function that I hadn’t previously considered.