MBA Program

Student Voices

Sam Hawes, MBA ’10

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, even in summer internships

Sam Hawes, MBA '10, gave his summer job everything he had, and got quite a bit in return.

Not many things in life give you 169 million results in sixteen-hundredths of a second. But search engines like Google do it routinely, day in and day out. What makes these mind-boggling results even more mind-boggling is how we take them for granted. Keyword searches on the Internet have become part of how we think, get information, solve problems, or just find what restaurants are close by.

But for companies who pay to be on that results page, the ever-expanding, ever-changing keyword lists present a constant challenge to stay on top, to survive or grow as a business. And Sam Hawes, MBA '10, knows how to help.

Start your (search) engines

Hawes spent 14 weeks doing a summer internship at WordStream, a startup software company in Boston that designs management tools for organizing and prioritizing keyword data which can be used by companies who engage in pay-per-click and search engine optimization campaigns.

Companies who pay to be listed on search engine pages must also bid on keywords. And that process might involve hundreds or even thousands of keywords. WordStream's aim is to make this process more manageable by providing a way to approach keyword grouping and organization, discovery, analysis, and action.

idea comes from founder Larry Kim, who launched WordStream in January 2009. The company has less than 20 employees and its size is one of the things that made it attractive to Hawes. He worked on the company's positioning and sales strategy, what he calls typical business school problems. But Hawes also got to work on product design, including a totally new product introduction, in which he took the lead role.

Making an impression while being impressed

He worked with everyone, including founder Kim and President and CEO Rob Adler. Hawes says, “Rob is one of the people who gets the most excited about what he's working on. He gets people interested. He would say ‘I have an idea for you,' and we'd go into the conference room and talk.”

Hawes found this collaborative environment and interaction with Adler to be much in line with the way he would want to run a company. He also saw particular relevance between his field experience and the MIT Sloan Entrepreneurship and Innovation Program (E&I) in which he is enrolled.

WordStream offered him a rare chance to use everything he had learned. “MIT prizes innovation,” Hawes says, “They want you to go and start companies.” Being part of this startup gave Hawes what he describes as a “full range of responsibilities” so that he felt he was applying “every ounce of what you learn” in the MIT Sloan classrooms.

The experience gave Hawes a clearer idea of what he wants after graduation. That is to be “in the thick of things. I want to be part of creating something. &hellip I want to have an impact.”

Action equals reaction

It appears he already has. According to Ken Lyons, WordStream's marketing manager, “Sam had a big impact on almost every part of our young company. He helped the sales team determine strategies for lead generation and selling strategy. He worked with our founder to design the next version of our product, using sophisticated customer segmentation techniques. Sam even conducted his own independent business development initiative that is on track to close our biggest deal to date.”

Adler says Hawes already had some background in technology but learned about search engine technology as well as product development. And, says Adler, he “was a shot of energy.”

Hawes did a complete reworking of the welcome screens on WordStream's Web site. Adler says Hawes “thought how they could be improved, took a leadership role, soliciting ideas, rolling out the ideas. He got input from each group, got buy in, he organized a group of people to get the job done.”

The impact WordStream had on Hawes was equally impressive. Hawes says, for him, starting a company or being part of a startup would be “the most intense application of an MBA. … I want to be in a leadership role. I want to deal with the market, the product, the financing, and the people within the organization. I thought a startup would be a [good] place to try. The combination of my participation in the E&I program and my summer spent with Rob completely confirmed it and ratcheted up my excitement even more.”

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