You would probably get more out of working on an open source project rather than helping a startup.

My 2¢

I agree. I'll do that to improve my programming and problem solving skills. But for skills to run a business, or more specifically a startup, I think helping one is the way to go. Thanks for your suggestion though :)

I'm curious, why for three days? I can't imagine you could accomplish much in three days (at least, I couldn't) since you need to setup your environment, get accesses, familiarize yourself with the release system, etc...

I should have asked for just one day only. It doesn't have to be technical. I think this is an easy way to get rejected (inspired by Jia's rejection therapy), rather than asking in person. I doubt people would give me access to anything important. Nonetheless, if someone decide to let me help, it would be a great experience for me, and one more reason other than my resume to hire me.

In three days you could make an impact, but not so much on the technical side.

Taking the trash out, making coffee and setting appointments; anything that will allow the technical people more uninterrupted concentration.

Probably means 3 days a week

When I said 3 days, I meant 3 days only. I think it'll make the founders think about the most important things they need to improve on, which can also be handed to someone with little credibility, kind of similar to the idea of contributing to open source projects.

Pick up your favorite framework in the open-source community and contribute to that - either via code, tests, documentation or helping users. This you can continue for weeks and will help you in the long run.

Thanks a lot for your suggestion! I agree with you that this will help me in a long run for my programming skills. However, what I'm actually looking for is experience at running a business/startup.

I agree with Anu here.

You won't be able to learn too much in 3 days, and also none of the guys at a startup will take a lot of interest making you understand things considering the short tenure.

Pick up a small idea - some pain point that you see in your daily workflow. There are so many possibilities with free infrastructure today, Heroku, Google App Engine, and of course Amazon WebServices.

Start contacting people to see if they are interested and go through the proper way how someone seeds a startup. This will help you learn something that no experience ever will.

I believe 3 days is enough. A new marketing idea can be implemented in 3 days; a new UI mockup can be done in 3 days. To me, I'll be learning things, but to the founders they can actually benefit from my ideas or executions. It's free after all, and they can definitely take it further after the 3 days (maybe hire me something).

I assume when one says for 3 days, he/she knows that they won't have time after that - or else, they would have agreed for a week/two or so on. What if the idea/mockup was not completed in 3 days, and the trainee was not willing to spend more time...

From a founder's perspective they lost the time. Probably for mitigation they would have someone else implement the idea too... which would indicate that they might not provide the same attention to your implementation.

How is 3 days going to give you that experience?

Start a startup. Pick a little idea, build it, market it and see what happens. You'd probably learn a ton more that way than working remotely for 3 days.

Not a startup, but open source. I'd love to have you hack on Huginn for a couple of days! https://github.com/cantino/huginn

Looks cool! I'll try to contribute.

Hey, I own www.searchtempest.com and www.autotempest.com. And we're actually in Victoria, BC! I expect I could find something for you to do for a day or three if you're interested. Could even have lunch or something if you want to take the ferry over. Feel free to email me through one of our sites' contact pages.

Why would they? From their perspective, you're a risk, a leak, and a time-sink.

But if I can help them with marketing, UI/UX or wireframing or anything, that'll not be a waste of time for both the companies and me

Doesn't it take three days to understand the code base?

The point is not to only work on the technical aspect of the business - there's way more than just code to a startup/business.

Other aspects also take time to learn. You also listed programming languages, hinting at a developer position.

Hey there im the owner of sultansolutions.com and co owner of solaropia. Ill send you an email first thing tomorrow - Samer Sultan