Major: Canfield BHP, Plan II Honors, Management Information Systems
Previous internship: Venture Capital Intern at Crosscut Ventures
Topics of Interest: clean tech, social entrepreneurship, intellectual property law, art history
For students interested in the intersection of business, technology, and social good, Sanika Bhave is a student worth learning from. As a Venture Capital Intern at Crosscut ventures, Sanika had the opportunity to spearhead various projects, from developing LA’s first free regional tech job board to helping run a social impact fund.
Crosscut is an early-stage fund based out of Santa Monica, California. Because of the pandemic, Sanika worked remotely, but still had the opportunity to learn from leadership and develop skills throughout her summer.
“I worked under Nick Kim, who is the head of platform (at Crosscut),” she said. “Part of what I did was help spearhead Crosscut’s platform initiatives, like making sure our mission, what we stand for, and our past successes are known to the broader tech community.”
One of the projects she worked on was something called Interchange, LA’s first free regional tech job board. Sanika said the idea behind Interchange was to reduce barriers to entry in the area.
“Silicon Beach is very much a real thing, and we want to retain top tech talent in LA, but also attract people to come to live there,” Sanika said. “The launch of Interchange was really cool. There’s no paywall, no barriers– whether it be income, racial background education, etc. Now (everyone has) a fair shot at being employed by the best and brightest. Working on that was really cool.”
In addition to working on Interchange, Sanika had the opportunity to interact with founders through Crosscut Connect, the central repository used to provide founders support.
“Last week we had a webinar with Brian Makita, who is the head of performance marketing at Warby Parker,” Sanika said. “We also talked with art portfolio companies and marketing departments about how performance marketing has evolved at Warby Parker since COVID and how those strategies might apply to our portfolios as well.”