I don't think you need to make the internship quite so formal as a "program". Just put out an advert for interns on places like Craigslist (we used Gumtree... a

I don't think you need to make the internship quite so formal as a "program". Just put out an advert for interns on places like Craigslist (we used Gumtree... a UK equivalent), and do some very hard filtering (you'll have to anyway). As for making the most of the interns, I think the key, once you've picked the right people, is to be willing to spend the time to teach them how to do stuff. What this means in practice is that rather than assuming (as every crazy startup founder does) that you need to do everything yourself, or that it's all too complicated for them, spend the time to show them and teach them how to do it. You'll be surprised how quickly they can learn stuff which you thought would take you ages to explain. As others have said, it also definitely helps to have some kind of bigger picture vision that they're helping you implement, to help motivate them. In terms of how early... we started very late... the summer had already begun... and we still got some good people with relatively little effort. So while I'm sure earlier is better, there doesn't seem to really be an end date.