Kountable, San Francisco, CA
During the summer, I received the most enriching opportunity to intern as a financial analyst at Kountable Inc., a trade financing and market maker start-up, that’s headquartered in San Francisco. Focusing on the Kenyan and Rwandan market, Kountable works with small and medium enterprises (SME) that focus on supplying to the healthcare, ICT, and construction sphere. The lack of collateral prevents entrepreneurs from obtaining a traditional loan to fulfill their supply contracts. This is where Kountable and their team of quality suppliers come in to launch SMEs into the global supply chain scene and provide full trade support in financing, procurement, insurance, and logistics. I’m empowered by the social impact goals that include fellow entrepreneurs supporting and building up other entrepreneurs as Kountable works to support Africa as an emerging market.
With an existing interest in finance and entrepreneurship, I looked forward to learning more about what finance could look like in the start-up arena. In terms of why I chose Kountable, I wanted the opportunity to be immersed in experiential learning and human centric ways of thinking. In true start-up nature, I walked in as a financial analyst intern and added on compliance, accounting, and UI/UX design to the mix. I appreciated the chance to explore every department to not only gain a more comprehensive idea of Kountable’s global impact but also to discover new interests along the way. This interdisciplinary type of learning atmosphere matched the liberal arts education that I’m currently receiving at Williams. I appreciate that Kountable fulfilled my five expectations walking into this internship: exposure to a wide range of disciplines, development of a globalized mindset, flexibility, dynamic workspace, and personal and professional development.
A critical start to my day would include conducting Know Your Customer (KYCs) compliance checks on all of our global resellers, suppliers, end customers, and all main contacts (i.e. directors). A key takeaway that I gathered from this experience would be the gravity that my compliance checks have on Kountable as a whole (i.e. its credibility and financial health). This became even more evident when I began working on the Credit Reporting Bureau (CRB) project and writing internal accounting policy and procedures. In this CRB project, I worked alongside the accounting and legal department to report resellers that have either not paid at all or still had outstanding fees. This included constructing and compiling proper data to write warning letters to certain resellers. The latter half of my internship included gathering more quantitative and qualitative data into a sheet to activate the actual reporting process.
Along the more legal side of my internship, I also worked with our Finance Controller and Head of Compliance to write internal policies and procedures for credit memo, discounts, and bad debt approvals. In order to curate these policies to specifically fit Kountable, I conducted a comparative analysis by examining policies both in and outside of our company’s focus in order to create an accessible document. The nature of this project pushed me to think about every occurrence that could occur and how the policies that I’m writing up will properly address xyz issue.
In a collaborative intern project with the finance, data, and project management teams, I created an in-transit milestone spreadsheet with fellow Williams intern Tyler Stebulis ’21 to assist the company in transitioning to ASC606—the new revenue recognition model that companies must abide by. There was an ongoing debate on whether we consider the date that’s in the backend of our project management system or the actual date on custom approval sheets or transit receipts. Although dates may seem less impactful from an external perspective, Tyler and I soon realized the impact of these dates since they influence when we can officially recognize revenue for our list of projects. This lends itself to the final revenue recognition project that we worked on which examined when we book deferred cost of goods sold (COGS), recognize revenue, move COGS to the profit and loss statement, and when the project is paid in full. It was through this project that I became more proficient in working with accounting terminologies and building quantitative models for Kountable.
In order to tap into the creative design realm, I reached out to our Head of Design to see if I could explore corporate design and learn the basics of UI/UX design. Kountable was revamping its website during my nine weeks as an intern; therefore, I took this opportunity to provide some insights I had on how to make the website more user friendly while emphasizing the global stories that highlight what Kountable does best. In order to learn about user interface design, I first learned the two programs—Figma and Sketch—to recreate the current home page from scratch without knowing any of the color palettes used or proportions for all shapes and illustrations. From there, I conducted comparative analyses like I did for policy writing in order to look at other tech companies and their approach to designing various tabs for their websites.
From this experience, I can wholeheartedly say that I gained a more nuanced way of thinking by working in a company that’s in an innovative and untapped market. I would like to express my deepest appreciation to the ’68 Center for Career Exploration and Mr. William F. McCalpin ’79 for supporting me in this summer endeavor. I also cannot thank Kountable enough for welcoming into the team with open arms and being such dynamic mentors and friends. To my intern group, Tyler Stebulis ’21, Jamie Morris, and Aradhna Sahini, much thanks for all the laughter and enrichment. Special thanks to my finance team heads Sheila Ellis, Joel Onodera, and Sujay Ranadive for strengthening my business acumen and investing in my continued growth. This internship became that much more special knowing that I was supporting a fellow Eph, CEO and Founder Chris Hale ’00, in helping Kountable in its efforts to be a global market maker. Alongside my professional growth, I can spot tangible personal growths and I attribute Executive C-Suite Assistant Jonelle Burke and Senior People Operations Business Partner Nicole Kwong for their positive energies and profound words of wisdom. I’m incredibly thankful to be a part of both the Williams and Kountable family and I will put effort to continue paying it forward every step of the way!