Unbelievable summer - Summer Consultant Rakuten Interactive Employee Review

While the phrase "a startup within a big company" is something large enterprises enjoy throwing around these days, I can truly attest that this is the culture and infrastructure of Rakuten Interactive. Along with this comes a handful of pros and cons: -Your contributions directly impact the team's outcomes; you're not simply following the path someone laid before you but are plotting your own course with minimal guidance -CEO is the hardest working person on the team and does an excellent job of selling everyone on his vision, while also focusing on providing opportunities to help you to work towards your long term career goals -The team is close knit, diverse, social, and best-of-breed -There's a focus on internally promoting -All roles have an externally facing element and ability for travel, allowing you to grow your network

-You have to be good at taking initiative and be internally motivated to get stuff done -We're in the early stages of building the business, including the team and processes, and so you won't survive if you're not ready to contribute to building up the Rakuten Interactive brand -US Headquarters in San Mateo is wonderfully hospitable, but not the most convenient location

This is the company's 1st internal startup/incubation effort, and it is a very hard and demanding mission. - Small team gets to learn how to build a new company from scratch, while leveraging the resources of Rakuten Group - CEO works extremely long hours, is reachable at all times, takes time to mentor every employee - Culture of self-direction, performance, frugality, 0 politics, and diversity of all backgrounds - Starting at the ground floor, roles and rank have a high possibility of being accelerated - Everyday is different. Literally. You may be doing sales one day or making hoodies for the team - Lots of milestones and goals, especially international growth - Mature, supportive advisors who roll up their sleeves to do interviewing, operations - Travel opportunities between New York and San Francisco if that's what you like

- The hours are/will be long--this is not going to change as operations ramp up - Being new, it doesn't have all the perks and support system that a McKinsey would have - All flights are economy class, T&E is low and tightly controlled as "runway" - Have to conform with parent group, Rakuten, Inc. most of the time, such as attending the global Asakai (morning meetings) - Do not join if you're not looking for a challenge