On a stage flanked by two large banks of near-blinding light, Adam Guild, CEO of restaurant software startup Owner, stood in front of hundreds of college students paying rapt attention to his every word.
“Burnout is a myth and a self-fulfilling prophecy,” declared Guild, who dropped out of high school to work on his company. In fact, he was living proof after grinding every single day for “seven fucking years” that if you don’t believe in burnout, it will not happen.
Guild was speaking Monday at Internapalooza, a mix between Coachella and an awkward networking happy hour for gilded summer interns at prestigious Big Tech companies and startups.
At its peak in 2016, the annual event was billed as the “largest gathering of interns in the world,” hosting 3,000 in the club level of AT&T Park for a merch-fueled, free-food bonanza sponsored by Google, Dropbox, and Andreessen Horowitz. Past intern attendees have included future billionaires like Figma CEO Dylan Field, DoorDash CEO Tony Xu, and Meta chief AI officer Alexandr Wang.
This year’s Internapalooza had a much more intense vibe than its pre-pandemic iterations, reflecting the transition from the happy-go-lucky attitude of the previous tech era to the heads-down, hard-tech, grindcore mentality of the current AI boom.
The legions of millennial whiz kids have been replaced by an exclusive club of a couple of hundred Gen Zers hand-picked by organizer Z Fellows, a bootcamp and network for tech entrepreneurs.
“This year we were very selective and accepted engineers from top engineering schools who intern at the top tech companies in the Valley,” said Z Fellows founder Cory Levy, who combed through 1,000 applications. Some of the applications were technically impressive; others were hilarious. One student submitted an AI-powered Chrome extension that stops you from sending an email to Marc Andreessen. Another wrote about a roomba they built to bring beer on demand.
The restrained setup and guest list symbolizes a broader Silicon Valley shift: Companies are tightening budgets, laying off workers, and throwing unprecedented comp packages at the most exceptional talent.
The event took place at Broadway Studio, an old-fashioned events space in Jackson Square that was an early 20th century men’s social club. Corporate booths lined the edges of the room with limited swag and even less free food. The venue’s fully stocked bar was closed for business, replaced by bottomless plastic bottles of water, and every collapsible chair had a copy of “Principles of Building AI Agents” by startup founder Sam Bhagwat.
What followed was an hour of practical advice from a lineup of startup executives. Steven Schwartz, CEO of online marketplace Whop, told the crowd that “sometimes you kind of have to fuck around and find out what happens.”
The keynote speaker, investor and AngelList founder Naval Ravikant, told the crowd that they had already tapped into two “cheat codes” to a successful life by deciding to work in the tech industry in the Bay Area. But toward the end of his interview with Levy, the audience grew audibly restless. The smell of Papa Johns pizza was wafting through the hall, and the interns were hungry.
While munching on free slices in a backroom with a large psychedelic light installation, students discussed the hacker houses they’re living in for the summer, the lack of corporate perks at Amazon, and the challenges of interning at a chip company called Groq that’s easily confused with Grok the chatbot.
“People in this room will probably decide the future of Silicon Valley,” said Aayan Agarwal, a Meta intern who hopped on the Caltrain right after work to make it to the event. The Purdue University student is making more than $8,500 a month this summer while living in corporate housing in Sunnyvale and said the best part about interning at Meta is working in the same building as Mark Zuckerberg during such an exciting time.
“It’s been really cool to see the Scale AI acquisition, Alexandr Wang joining Meta, and all the other researchers coming to the company,” he said. “I’ve seen Mark, Nat Friedman, Susan Li, and Alexandr at the office.”
Aine Keenan, a software engineering intern at Google, said it’s been frustrating that so many tech events in San Francisco are male-dominated, but she has a mantra to help her through.
“As my mom always says, ‘You come into the world alone, and you’re going to leave alone,’” she said. “So Imma be me and go to all the tech events.”
By the 9 p.m. closing time, the venue was still bustling. One corner of the room was particularly raucous, where interview copilot startup Final Round AI was allowing attendees to test a new feature that allows job candidates to be grilled by AI versions of Elon Musk, Donald Trump, Satya Nadella, or Chamath Palihapitiya.
“Are you friends with Ghislaine Maxwell?” one intern asked an AI-generated Musk.
“I focus on technology and innovation rather than personal relationships,” Musk said, smiling in a black jacket with a sherpa collar.
As the event drew to a close, an employee working the Owner corporate booth packed up laptop stickers and a clipboard filled with more than 100 names and email addresses from students. Her takeaway from the night?
“These interns are so sweet and so innocent,” she said. “They’re so untouched by the ills of the world.”