igloohome's Ex-intern Taylor Speaks!

igloohome is always happy for interns to join us - we believe fresh pairs of eyes bring with them different perspectives and new ideas (new jokes are definitely welcomed too).

Here, we have our ex-intern Taylor share about his experience with igloohome as a marketing and operations intern in 2016!

As written on 28 April 2017:

With fellow igloohomies - can't really explain the poses

Hello there ! My name is Taylor and I was a proud intern of igloohome. Having just finished my second year of being a SMUGGER (Singapore Management University mugger :C), I decided to look for a start-up for my first internship. I have always been an aspiring entrepreneur; I decided that seeing a start-up being built from scratch would be very exciting.

Having gone for a few interviews for different companies, I went to igloohome's interview expecting a pretty standard one. Boy, was i wrong.

My interview, get this, was done at a terrace house, in a bedroom while sitting on a bed. This might sound wrong, but I'll explain. At the beginning, igloohome's office was not ready yet when I first started. They were temporarily working out of a residential space for a short while. I was interviewed by the lovely Shermaine and awesome Kenny, who would be my de facto bosses/colleagues/friends in the next 4 months ahead.

My first day reporting to work was ironically at another house again. It was at the house of our first customer, who had seen our igloohome lock and was a proud supporter of Singapore startups. I made sure to take note of everything that I could learn there; it was the start of the weirdest journey as an intern.

Over the next few months, I worked as both a marketing intern and operations intern. I assisted in everything from customer service to ad creation and logistics. It was a fun and exciting job in which I had something new to do everyday; I attended start up fairs with our CEO Anthony, tackled tough situations with Shermaine and Kenny, participated in meetings with contractors and offered suggestions to improve the company. I even got to pose on a short clip for ChannelNewsAsia.

Look Ma, I'm on TV!

I really appreciated the fact that everyone from Anthony to my "bosses" were always willing to listen and also took my suggestions warmly. I still remember the time when I suggested about changing the pricing and was thinking of a way to do it; it ended up as a debate between me and the CTO, Kelvin and our IT king, Sastra. Anthony heard about the idea and we had a meeting the next day to discuss about his findings for the pricing. Everyday was packed with situations like this.

I would like to introduce you to a friend I made at a start-up fair.

Pretty soon, there was a decision made to swap me to operations as there were opportunities for learning there. I handled daily operational situations that came with igloohome locks. I'm pretty sure at one point I was demonstrating to customers how to install a lock, and realized that that it was my first time holding a screwdriver in five years. It was always challenging, always fun and working with Kyle and Best was always hilarious.

Looking back now, I enjoyed the internship and I learned so much from these bright and amazing people. They say that you should always learn from people smarter than you. This is a company of intelligent and innovative people solving problems and having fun while doing it.The energy of the company was amazing; you would have thought a company selling locks would be pretty boring. That would be such a misconception.

Hanging out singing karaoke!

igloohome was a place that for four months I called home. Going back to school, I realized I miss the every day ongoing of igloohome. I miss the lunches in which we would traverse all over Singapore to eat the best prawn mee, the ba kut teh. I miss complaining to Best about tough situations, debating with Kyle about random things from locks to stocks. I miss the funny moments filming videos with Shermaine and listening to the older folks in igloohome and their advice on life, the IT folks' debates on technology and on why computer science is awesome.

This was the best internship and job I had, and I'm proud to see igloohome doing so well nowadays. I still occasionally meet up with my igloohomies but school life has gotten in the way. As I sit at the SMU library studying, I still miss the warmth of igloohome.

Free food and group outing to Timbre (before igloohome moved to JTC Launchpad)