Surprised by Intern Outreach

March 09, 2026

by a searcher in Oakland, CA, USA

Since starting my search, one of the most surprising things has been the number of students (both grad and undergrad) reaching out about internship opportunities. While I’m flattered by the interest, I hadn’t planned to bring on interns and I’m still trying to figure out whether it actually adds leverage or just complexity -- not to mention the additional expense. For those of you running self-funded searches, I’m curious: - Have you worked with interns during your search? - What kind of workstreams did they actually help with (deal sourcing, industry research, CIM screening, outreach, etc)? - How did you structure it so it was helpful without creating too much overhead?

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Reply by an investor
from Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland

Thanks for the tag. We have leveraged quite a few high quality interns from the searchfunder platform. Our interns have been involved in a multitude of activities (e.g.) market research, deal sourcing, financial modeling, etc.. It is highly dependent on the intern, level of maturity, specific demand & supply of deal related activities from our searchers. FYI, it may require a bit of guidance & direction in the beginning of the internship, but it is well worth the effort.

Reply by a searcher
from The University of Chicago in Dallas, TX, USA

You talked about the "additional expenses"; did you mean direct compensation? It's been my experience that undergrad (and even MBA interns, at that) are rarely compensated. Now, the appropriateness of that arrangement isn't quite the point I'm making here; I'm simply relating what's been my experience with the searchers I've worked with. (I was once an MBA intern myself). A major component of the work involves list generation, from which a credible set of prospects is culled and contacted. The contact is usually done by the searcher, though. Also, some interns are exposed to evaluating CIMs. It's a good way for the interns to dip their toes into the early stages of due diligence, learning what makes a good industry/candidate target; and, for the searcher, it's valuable work they can spend a little less time on, after someone has already done preliminary but credible vetting. Hope this helps.

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