Internship Spotlight: Nicole Morrison ’25, Win Number
Nicole Morrison ’25 is spending her summer developing her startup Win Number, which builds technology for political campaigns.
We asked rising second-year MBA students to check in from their summer internships, where they applied the lessons of their first year at Yale SOM.
Internship: Win Number/Tsai CITY Summer Fellowship, New Haven, Connecticut
Hometown: Branford, Connecticut
Pronouns: she/her/hers
The SOM class you’re using on the job: Innovator, Founder’s Practicum, Managing Groups and Teams, Competitor, Workforce, Executive
Go-to work lunch: New Haven Salad Shop
After-work routine: Spending time at the beach on weekends!
Favorite thing about internship city: Shoreline Connecticut is home for me, and spending the summer in New Haven provided extra time for all of my favorite Connecticut activities, from going to the beach and hiking to enjoying New Haven pizza!
The Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale (Tsai CITY) is the student hub for entrepreneurship at Yale. I applied to MBA programs with the goal of using my two years in grad school to launch a startup, and I spent the past year immersed in the innovation community at Yale. I participated in Tsai CITY’s Accelerator program last fall and its Advanced Founders program last spring. I also received support from the SOM’s Program on Entrepreneurship, participating in Founder’s Practicum last spring.
My startup, Win Number, builds tech for state and local campaigns. I spent ten years working in the Democratic campaign space and saw firsthand how the current tech wasn't built for state and local campaigns. I wanted to devote my summer to advancing the startup, so I was thrilled to be selected for Tsai CITY’s Summer Fellowship, an intensive 10-week accelerator for 12 student entrepreneur teams. It was a great experience to spend my summer with a supportive community that shared in each other’s successes and challenges.
My primary goal this summer was to build our minimum viable product, and I leaned heavily on the frameworks we learned in the core course, Innovator. Two undergraduate students worked with Win Number over the summer, and I drew on what I learned in Managing Groups and Teams, Workforce, and Executive as the leader of our small team.
The first week of the fellowship coincided with the Yale Innovation Summit hosted at SOM. We heard from keynote speakers including Dr. Chelsea Clinton, Emmett Shear, and Tom Steyer, and networked with attendees during lunchtime postering sessions.
The next two weeks featured daily speaker sessions on a range of topics, from marketing and HR to product development and sales. Following the morning speaker sessions, we spent the afternoons in one-on-one sessions with the day’s speaker and meetings with Tsai CITY staff, advisors, and mentors. We did take one day off from this schedule to travel to New York City for New York Tech Week, where teams attended events relevant to their startup’s industry.
One of the unique aspects of the summer fellowship is the five-week “break,” where teams spend time applying the lessons from the first three weeks to their startups. During the break, I attended a conference in Washington, D.C. on political campaign best practices.
When we returned to New Haven for the final two weeks, we focused on the annual Yale-NYU pitch competition, with the goal of bringing home the trophy. Each team worked with a pitch coach to hone their presentation, and we even had a mock pitch session with outside judges to practice. The pitch competition was held at NYU; we spent our morning meeting staff at the premier accelerator program Techstars and our lunch networking with Yale alumni. Several hundred people attended the pitch competition, which offered great exposure for each of our startups. We ended the day on a high note with a Yale team winning the competition. (Congrats, PartsMatch!)
Working on a startup is incredibly challenging, but the Tsai CITY team made sure we took time off for fun! The first week of the summer fellowship culminated in an overnight retreat in New Jersey that included s’mores, pool time, and a painting workshop. We also attended a WNBA game in New York City featuring the New York Liberty and Washington Mystics.
The Tsai CITY Summer Fellowship was an incredible experience and provided crucial resources as I work to launch Win Number next spring. I would strongly recommend the summer program to other student entrepreneurs, along with all of the other resources that support student entrepreneurs throughout the school year!
Nicole Morrison is a recipient of the Selby Family Entrepreneurship Innovation Award at Yale SOM (Summer 2024).
