The 2024-2025 academic year was our second formal iteration of our Internship Program and the first implementation of our Student Dev Cohort.

Our intention with each program is to bring together ambitious students and recent graduates, providing hands-on experience and engagement across four core areas: investing, community building, research, and operations.

Internships

Exceptional's Internships are designed with a high degree of accessibility and engagement in mind. We strive to make sure that, as appropriate, interns have exposure not only to their core area of focus, but also to a range of foundational aspects of venture.

Additionally, with the rise of so many new and accessible tools, our internships have included communication on:

1. What tools students are using and how

2. How does our tech stack compare to student tech stacks

3. Sharing new tools, techniques, and effective skills

This type of engagement around better prompting, safety, and security regarding tools and apps has yielded very informative conversations and diverse perspectives.

Through inclusion on weekly meetings, one on one conversations, and collaborative feedback on projects, our team works to maintain strong communication and prioritize mentorship with interns.

50% of our interns this past year were student athletes. Most of you are familiar with Marell and Andrew's athletic backgrounds, which have influenced our prioritization of engagement with student-athlete communities. Our team is highly aware that oftentimes student-athletes are not given every opportunity for internships (schedules aren't accommodated, hours and location aren't flexible, and so forth). We continue to focus on making these early opportunities to learn about venture increasingly more accessible for student-athletes.

Here are some highlights of what our interns worked diligently on over the past year:

• Anna-Prin did excellent work helping us get the Student Dev Cohort launched in addition to supporting our December Demo Day.

• Matthew supported our team on investments, staying highly engaged with us. He contributed positively and proactively to deal flow and diligence processes.

• Vincent, Candice, and Sophia are supporting us this summer on deal flow, thematic research, and internal projects.

• Yashwanth supported and built out internal projects, in addition to leading our Student Dev Cohort.

Internship Applicants: By the numbers

We are extremely fortunate to have had two consecutive years of many qualified internship candidates and we appreciate all those who applied!

• Our acceptance rate for interns this past year was 2.60%

• Geographic diversity (39 different countries represented) but majority (+70%) were US-based applicants

• Gender distribution of applicants skews heavily male majority

Student Dev Cohort

We were motivated to launch this program because of the influx of great resumes we received for internships. The reality is, we are a team of 4, our operations are nimble by design, and our capacity for high-intensity internships is limited. This cohort allows for students to be in our orbit (and us in theirs!) and in conversation on a more flexible basis. We believe that early mentorship and connectivity to venture will only help to strengthen the ecosystem.

Our Student Dev Cohort (dev inferring both developer and development) is structured as a communication channel, where our team shares notes, drops questions, and encourages exposure to relevant topics. We host office hours to enable further dialogue. Participation in the cohort can be more passive or more engaged dependent on student schedules and availability. This year we had a mix of engineering students and a variety of venture-curious undergraduate and graduate students.

Special shout out to Yashwanth, who took ambiguous but important ideas and turned them into reality! He worked alongside us not only on internal tooling as an intern, but also in a leadership role for our cohort, completing a research project from ideation to execution. Our team was (and still is!) inspired by his curiosity and commitment.

Many thanks also to Uriel and Cynthia for their engagement with us and support on the latest cohort research project.

Our team also appreciated the engagement from and conversations with all students who participated in the cohort this year, including Kartik, Maithili, and Jackson.

With our cohorts, we hope to continuously improve the offering and keep bringing together talented students and engineers from universities across the world, creating a collaborative environment while supporting members in expanding their own personal and professional networks.

Student Dev Cohort Applicants: By the numbers

• We accepted a larger pool of candidates into this cohort vs. internship, so the acceptance rate was 9%

• Highest percentage of applicants were graduate students, totaling 29.6%

• 56.6% of applicants were either upperclassman (junior/senior year of undergrad) or graduate students

• 29.6% of applicants were CS majors

Onward: With gratitude

To the students who joined us this year: thank you for your dedication, your creative thinking, and your enthusiasm. You've contributed to helping us build something special and we're excited to see where your careers take you next.

For those interested in future opportunities, stay connected with us on socials, reach out if you're interested in working with us. melissa[at]exceptionalcap.com