MyCube’s Summer Seduction

Singapore-headquartered MyCube certainly has a lot of money to burn in the name of marketing. The “world’s first Social Exchange™” was the official worker t-shirt sponsor for SXSW (South by Southwest – we were there!) in the US in March, and now is offering a 6-week summer internship programme that includes a free round-trip plane ticket, free housing, “spending allowance” of SGD 3K (USD 2.4K), AND, get this – for one person, a SGD 10K (USD 8K) grant “to further their studies or start their own company”. Four others will also have an “all-expense paid trip to Ideas Island in the Philippines for one week of brainstorming and relaxation”.

Sounds very enticing, sounds like a little like Queensland (Australia)’s “best job in the world” publicity stunt in 2009.

MyCube is marketing this internship programme globally and is not just looking for a handful of lucky interns, but thirty. Yes, 30.

If you’re listening, listen well: these 30 interns will only be selected from these countries: Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, New Zealand, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, USA – and apparently, “others”. (Does “others” then mean it’s open to all around the world?)

What is more important than the travel perks is that MyCube hopes to:

“provide aspiring entrepreneurs with training in company formation, fundraising, product development, marketing, financial management and more. Interns will attend lectures from internet and business experts, work on real-life case studies and new business ideas, and get significant hands-on work experience. After the program, interns will become MyCube “ambassadors” to their home country and may attend lectures, conferences and other events sponsored by MyCube, as well as serve as mentors to future participants of the program”.

The internship allowance rate of SGD 2K per month is very high – about three times the average that of what even some bigger organisations offer in Singapore. Plus the coverage of airfare, housing, one SGD 10K grant, and not to mention the all-expenses paid trip for four to Fredrik Härén and Teo Härén (of Interesting.org)’s private island, Ideas Island – that’s a lot of money. Rough guesstimates lead me to a figure of about SGD 160K (USD 130K).

Dollars well-spent? Not sure, but it sure got my attention.

If you want to be part of the thirty, applications closes tomorrow 5th June and the names of the final thirty will be released on 10th June.

If at this stage you are intrigued enough to wonder what MyCube does, they are in private beta now, having unveiled the first stage of their grand plan to enable users to own and monetize all their own digital social network content 6 months ago in November last year.

(By the way, if you’re looking for positions in startups, you should check out our startup-focused jobs portal.)

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