Startups in Sevilla, by Daniel Ziegler

When coming to Sevilla, I was not sure what to expect. I did not read much about cultural norms or how businesses worked, all I knew is that I wanted to participate in an internship offered by my program. As I began interviewing with different companies, it became somewhat overwhelming. I had 4 interviews in English and 3 interviews in Spanish. One of the interviews in English really intrigued me. It was with a company called Scope, which is a small tech startup that provides insights to improve productivity of software development teams. Once I had received the offer for the internship with Scope, I did not really know what to expect. I had previous experience in the prototyping stages of a small finance startup in the United States, but I really did not know how this startup would work. I soon learned that Scope is part of Andalucia Open Future, an acceleration program for startups in Andalucia. The building I worked in is called El Cubo, which had numerous startups working in a very tech-driven environment. At El Cubo, I worked on a software development team of 5 people. We had two small tables in an office building that had a very open floorplan. We were surrounded by other tech startups that were hard at work. Due to the fact that El Cubo is an acceleration program, companies there worked diligently to improve their software so that they could gain clients and investors in an effort to grow their companies. I mainly worked on developing the user interface and documenting the software of Scope, but I also had other tasks including proofreading presentations because my three bosses were all Spaniards who wanted help with their English. The startup work ethic here in Spain turned out to be very similar to what I had experienced in the United States. The only main difference was that here in Spain, I worked alongside numerous other startups.

Through my internship experience in Spain, I learned that although I had a set number of hours to complete each week, my bosses were not always going to be present when I was working. I had to learn to be more relaxed, work independently, and go with the flow. Another thing that I learned is that when someone asks if I want to go to get breakfast, I should always say yes. This is where I had some of the most valuable conversations with Spaniards. Overall, my internship experience taught me more than I could have ever imagined about Spain. When I look back on my semester abroad, I think that the first thing to come to mind will be all of the great experiences I had in my internship.