Chinaccelerator/SOSV Investment Intern
By Cecilia Markmann '21
Chinaccelerator is an accelerator under SOSV, a global venture capital firm. Chinaccelerator is based in Shanghai and provides a six-month accelerator program for startups. During my internship, I interned for William Bao Bean, a General Partner at SOSV and the Managing Director at Chinaccelerator and MOX.
I took part in three main tasks: profiling entrepreneurs, helping start up a new pre-accelerator, and researching the InsurTech field. To start, the profiling of young entrepreneurs was a collaboration I was assigned to for H2’s Young Global Innovators program. I ended up profiling more than 400 entrepreneurs for potential nominations across 10 global chapters. The second main project was helping start up Momentum, a new pre-accelerator program under SOSV headed by Bill Liao, one of SOSV’s General Partners. I helped with an interview series and social media., The third main project I collaborated on was conducting InsurTech research including the InsurTech’s business model, its existing problems, opportunities, trends, deal flow, list to find candidates for investment, and case studies of disruptive InsurTech startups. In addition to these three tasks, I sat in on Chinaccelerator and MOX meetings, attended Chinaccelerator’s Demo Day, took notes for companies pitching in SwissTech Pitchinar, was a moderator for SEA GOAT 1:1 meeting between investor and startup founders, and checked in on startup social media platform progress.
I really enjoyed the internship and grew tremendously from the experience as I became more familiar with the entrepreneurship and VC industry. As I reflect, I can definitely say that waking up at 3 am for meetings was worth it! (I did my internship remotely in Denmark where the time difference was 6 hours behind China) What I have come to really admire about the field is not only the resilience that all individuals within the field possess, but also the nature of how VCs provide opportunities for startups to solve a problem, thus having a positive impact on their communities.