Q&A: Rajeeb Dey, CEO Enternships

Features
By Maggie Holland
published

We spoke to Rajeeb Dey, chief executive of enternships.com and co-founder of StartUp Britain about the importance of work experience and skill sharing.

I spent a few weeks working with Peter Jones from Dragon's Den who actually took on four 'enterns' through us.

Should the government be doing more?

The government should support small businesses to take on interns/hire young people through tax benefits. The youth unemployment crisis needs to be addressed urgently and thus it should provide more support and incentives to help small businesses provide opportunities to young people.

What's it like being part of Tech City?

It's great being located near so many tech startups. We have two other startups based in the building and it's great to share resources, advice and collaborate on projects.

There's usually always some kind of tech event happening most days of the week and a great sense of camaraderie amongst the startup scene here in 'Tech City'.

If you were able to go back in time what would you change about enternships/the launch?

I'd hire a technical co-founder from the outset. At the beginning I struggled enormously with numerous technical issues and tried to balance the product development (which was outsourced) with business development on my own. It was extremely tricky, especially as I didn't have a technical background myself.

It also became clear that I needed a full-time developer to work with me to make the various changes and to keep iterating the product, which, luckily, I did last year. If I did everything again I would definitely have spent time to find someone to work with me from the start to focus on developing the platform and share the workload.

Did you have any memorable internships when you were a student?

I spent a few weeks working with Peter Jones (from Dragon's Den) who actually took on four 'enterns' through us.

If we were to talk a year from now what would you like to have happened?

We're in the process of developing Enternships in other countries - starting with South Africa. I'm hoping that in a year we have a fully operational team out there and that we have lots more success stories to share.

Rajeeb was a keynote speaker at the recent Digital London event

Maggie Holland
Maggie Holland

Maggie has been a journalist since 1999, starting her career as an editorial assistant on then-weekly magazine Computing, before working her way up to senior reporter level. In 2006, just weeks before ITPro was launched, Maggie joined Dennis Publishing as a reporter. Having worked her way up to editor of ITPro, she was appointed group editor of CloudPro and ITPro in April 2012. She became the editorial director and took responsibility for ChannelPro, in 2016.

Her areas of particular interest, aside from cloud, include management and C-level issues, the business value of technology, green and environmental issues and careers to name but a few.