Interns recruited to build startup

FROM THE GROUND UP: Décor Craft Inc. recently moved to a new Mathewson Street home, where owner Roni Kabessa has assembled a team of college interns to launch the Providence firm’s new spinoff company, Coexs. Pictured above, from left, are: intern Hanna Yang, Kabessa and intern Liana Flikier. / PBN PHOTO/ MICHAEL SALERNO
FROM THE GROUND UP: Décor Craft Inc. recently moved to a new Mathewson Street home, where owner Roni Kabessa has assembled a team of college interns to launch the Providence firm’s new spinoff company, Coexs. Pictured above, from left, are: intern Hanna Yang, Kabessa and intern Liana Flikier. / PBN PHOTO/ MICHAEL SALERNO

In a sleek, white-walled downtown Providence office, five young people gathered around a central conference table bang away on laptops trying to build an app that will bend the retail market.
It’s a scene out of startups’ stock footage, but with a twist.
The workspace is on the ground floor of Providence gift designer and distributor Décor Craft Inc.’s new Mathewson Street office building and the entrepreneurs are college interns.
DCI founder Roni Kabessa assembled the team, which started work in June, with the express purpose of transforming a raw, new business idea into a viable startup.
By the end of this month, the team hopes to present Kabessa with a functioning, beta version of their app and a detailed business plan before heading back to campus.
From there, Kabessa hopes to recruit a full-time professional team to take the fledgling startup, named Coexs, to market.
“I brought in five interns, hand selected with different skills, and gave them the space and the idea,” Kabessa said. “It is awesome. I couldn’t sleep; I was so excited about it.”
Kabessa said the idea of bringing in interns to launch a spinoff startup, instead of working on it within DCI itself, has become increasingly popular with modern companies and grows out of programs like IBM’s highly selective internships built around solving a specific problem.
Although the intern-fueled startup may be a common phenomenon in many parts of the country, it appears to be a novel concept in Rhode Island so far – even though harnessing the talent of local students has become a prime economic-development objective.
At Bridge.jobs, the recently created partnership to connect students looking for work experience with companies who could use them, the kind of internship Kabessa has started is rarely seen.
“The internships that we have on Bridge mostly fit the business model that an organization already uses,” said Adrian van Alphen, director of employer relations and internship development for the R.I. Student Loan Authority. “To bring in an entrepreneurial group of [interns] and work as a startup within an existing company might not work for every company, but we would certainly support the idea.” Van Alphen said the most similar thing to startup internships he had seen on Bridge.jobs was the “fellows” internships posted by the Tech Collective.
So what is the idea that had Kabessa so excited he needed to create a spinoff startup?
Essentially, Coexs is a Web portal that connects customers with content specifically relevant to the use of products they have purchased.
For example, if a company sells tea strainers, as DCI does, it could hire Coexs to create a Web channel with content relative to tea, such as trends on popular tea varieties, places to buy tea and tips on making a good pot.
For customers, who would access the site through a unique code on the product or packaging, the appeal would be access to content about a topic they clearly have interest in and a practical use for.
For retailers and wholesalers, the system would provide access to valuable data about their customers.
Right now, Coexs plans to aggregate content for each product automatically through a computer algorithm, with someone monitoring the sites to make sure they remain fresh and relevant.
Although Coexs’ services fit in nicely with the products DCI sells, Kabessa said he envisions it as a separate company he would own and would target clients well beyond DCI.
Helping make the Coexs project possible are DCI’s new offices, purchased in 2012 and converted into loft-style spaces from the former Westminster Senior Center.
Coexs has been installed on the ground floor of the 9,000-square-foot building, administrative offices are on the second floor and a design shop is on the third floor.
While DCI was built primarily working with smaller, independent stores, such as museum gift shops, the company has been growing through partnerships with larger retailers, including Target and CVS Caremark Corp. Down in the Coexs space, the five interns each have their own specialty.
Karishma Bhatia, who studies computer science at Brown University, is the software developer; Anneka Bjorkson, who studies industrial design at Rhode Island School of Design, works on packaging design; Liana Flikier, who studies international business and marketing at the University of Delaware, works on marketing; Daniel Ha, who studies manufacturing and design engineering at Northwestern University, does business research and Hana Jang, also RISD industrial design, does user-experience design.
Of the quintet, Jang is the only one who has graduated and expects to stay on with Coexs when it launches.
“I didn’t really know anything about startup companies and really learned a lot about what goes into them,” Flikier said about what she has taken from the Coexs internship. “Most businesses I am familiar with have established business plans. But with a startup you have to think about everything that goes into establishing a customer base. There is so much to think about.”
All of the interns are paid, but Kabessa declined to say how much they get.
Kabessa said this fall he intends to raise seed money for Coexs, possibly about $200,000 from investors, to take it to market.
A larger concern going forward is finding the right talent to launch the new business.
Although they enjoy visiting Providence, Kabessa said most big business-development talents still think they are missing out on something if they are not in New York or California.
Another source of frustration when recruiting is potential employees asking about the “exit” from a new venture before it is even launched.
“They are in a job interview and all they want to know about is the exit,” Kabessa said. “I don’t think about exits. I have a good gut feeling about this and want to see it through.” •

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