Student Perspectives: What a Year at a Startup Taught Me About Marketing, Data, and Taking Initiative

Isha Thakkar, MS Business Analytics ‘26

When I started at Homads for my summer 2025 internship, I had no background in the mid-term rental space. I found the internship on Handshake through the Blackstone LaunchPad Summer Internship Program (https://www.blackstone.com/our-impact/blackstone-launchpad/), which connects students to opportunities at Blackstone portfolio companies and startups. I didn't know what to expect. Looking back, that uncertainty turned out to be one of the best things that could have happened to me.

Homads (https://homads.com/) is a mid-term rental marketplace that connects property owners with renters who need furnished housing for about 30 days to 12 months. That includes remote workers, traveling nurses, students on temporary assignments, and families displaced from their homes after events like fires or floods who need somewhere to stay while their insurance covers the cost.

What makes Homads different from platforms like Airbnb is that it's not a booking platform at all. It's a listing and lead-generation platform, closer to a Zillow for mid-term furnished housing. Hosts list their properties, pay a monthly subscription to access vetted renter leads, and connect with renters directly. Homads doesn't take a cut of any transaction.

I started as a Marketing Intern in June 2025. By September, the internship had converted into a part-time Marketing Lead role, and I've been in it since. Almost a year now. It has been the steepest learning curve of my career so far, and the experience has changed how I think about marketing, data and what it means to take ownership of your work.

The most important thing I've learned

Data and creativity are not separate skills. I used to think they were. Before this internship, I saw marketing as a creative discipline. You develop a concept, make it visually compelling, put it in front of people. Analytics felt like it belonged to a different part of the business entirely.

What I learned at Homads is that the creative work only gets good when the data is leading it. When I started digging into our campaign performance through Mixpanel, Insights and Meta Business Suite, tracking impressions, click-through rates and conversion funnels, I found that we were putting budget into channels that weren't delivering results. Some of those campaigns were ones I had built and felt confident about, so seeing that was not easy. But the data was clear, and I had to be honest with myself about what was working and what wasn't.

I started running A/B tests, experimenting with AI-driven creative testing, and shifting spend toward what was actually performing. The result was a 45% increase in engagement across our campaigns. That outcome didn't come from a better idea. It came from being willing to look at the numbers and change direction.

The discipline of letting data guide creative decisions, even when it means scrapping something you liked, is the most valuable thing I will take from this experience.

How I approached networking and building relationships

Networking at a four to ten-person startup looks nothing like networking at a large corporation. There are no structured events, no formal mentorship programs, no company-wide mixers. But what a startup does offer is direct access to the people running the business, and I've come to believe that's even more valuable.

From my first week, I was working alongside the CEO and the Product Manager. Not through layers of management. Directly. We discussed strategy together, debated ideas, and planned campaigns as a team. That taught me more about how a business actually runs than any formal program could have.

One moment in particular stands out. A few months in, I noticed our brand awareness was plateauing despite consistent content output. I researched what companies in similar spaces were doing with influencer partnerships, put together a case for why it could work for Homads, and brought it to the CEO and Product Manager. We talked it through, they agreed, and I'm now leading that initiative.

That conversation only happened because I had a genuine working relationship with leadership. It was built on months of showing up, doing the work, and being willing to bring ideas forward even when I wasn't fully sure they'd land. At a startup, networking isn't a separate activity you schedule. It's built into the work itself. The relationships you build through the work can end up being more impactful than any event.

My biggest contribution to the team

The most meaningful thing I think I contributed to Homads was bringing consistency and new ideas to the marketing function. The team already had tools and systems in place like Airtable for project management. But what I was able to add was a habit of checking our metrics weekly, really looking at what was performing on social and what wasn't, and then adjusting based on that. Over time, that consistency made a real difference in how we planned campaigns and allocated our efforts. The 45% engagement increase that I previously mentioned came out of that steady, consistent approach to tracking and iterating. What feels most rewarding is knowing that the habits and processes we've built are something the team can keep using going forward.

I also had the opportunity to come up with and lead several new initiatives. I originated our virtual AMA (Ask Me Anything) events for hosts, which helped with positioning and acquisition. I pitched the influencer partnership strategy to the CEO and Product Manager, and once we agreed on the direction, I started executing it.

I am currently leading the company's full rebrand; new website, new color palette, typography, page layouts, all from scratch. What has been eye-opening about this project is realizing that a rebrand isn't just a design exercise. For a subscription business like Homads, how the brand looks and feels directly affects whether hosts trust the platform enough to subscribe and stay on. Once I saw that connection, I couldn't unsee it. Marketing isn't just about content, it's about revenue. Understanding that has changed how I approach every decision.

What I want to learn next

This experience placed me at the intersection of marketing, product, and data. And I've realized that's exactly where I want to build my career.

I want to go deeper into product marketing and product management. Not just learning how to market a product but being involved in shaping what the product becomes based on user behavior and market needs. That feels like the natural next step from the work I've been doing at Homads.

I'm also very interested in how AI is changing the way small teams operate. At Homads, I used tools like Claude, Figma Make, HeyGen and BestEver to produce work that would normally require a much larger team. I want to understand that space more deeply. Not just using the tools, but understanding how to actually build them into how a company works day to day.

And honestly, this experience has also made me want to build something of my own eventually. Working this closely with a startup, seeing how decisions get made with limited resources, how you solve problems in real time, how you figure things out as you go, has made entrepreneurship feel much more real to me. It's something I want to explore down the road.

For students who are looking for an internship, I recommend using Handshake and check it regularly. I found the Blackstone x DivInc program on Handshake, and that one application is the reason I'm where I am today. I almost missed it because I wasn't checking consistently, so that's something I'd definitely recommend staying on top of.

I'd also say, don't underestimate LinkedIn and the people already around you. Talk to friends, family, classmates, alumni. A lot of the best opportunities I've seen have come through conversations, not job boards. And on LinkedIn, it's worth reaching out to people in roles or companies that interest you. More people are willing to have a conversation than you might expect.

When you do land something, give it everything you've got. Looking back, I think the reason my internship converted into a part-time role was that I tried to take initiative where I could and treated the work like it mattered to me personally. That made a difference.

I know the search can sometimes feel discouraging, but the right opportunity doesn't always come from the biggest company. Sometimes it comes from a place you hadn't considered and it turns into something you didn't expect.