[HN Gopher] Want to found a startup? Work at one first ___________________________________________________________________ Want to found a startup? Work at one first Author : lawrjone Score : 273 points Date : 2022-08-31 10:35 UTC (12 hours ago) (HTM) web link (blog.lawrencejones.dev) (TXT) w3m dump (blog.lawrencejones.dev) | papito wrote: | That's it? | | Most startups don't know what they are doing, so first-time | starter-uppers get the wrong idea. Instead of moving at a steady | pace without burnout, the lesson they can take away from it is | that startups are all about heroics and working until 2AM while | chugging tequila. | | There are a lot of clowns out there with a serious case of | Dunning-Kruger who run these companies (usually into the ground). | whispersnow wrote: | I have worked at a startup, joined the founding team of a | startup, as well as consulted at a VC before. IMHO, I don't feel | that it is a pre-requisite to work at one first. Though there are | spirits a successful founder needs to have, but "working" at a | startup is completely different from "owning" it. The mindset, | pressure, things to handle, are at totally different levels for | the founder. And that's not necessary being gained/build by | working at a startup. | lawrjone wrote: | Author here! | | I've been speaking with friends about starting their own | companies recently, and one thing it's made me consider is what | experience would best prepare you to become a founder. | | Having spent my career in start-ups, the idea of founding my own | without first working at one and seeing what works terrifies me. | There's so much stuff you only learn from doing it over and over | again, at different company sizes, and seeing how it | works/doesn't. | | I thought it might be useful to share some of that experience, if | only to justify why joining an existing start-up can be an | amazing education for anyone wanting to start their own. As | opposed to, for example, joining an existing big-corp or jumping | straight into start-ups without that experience. | iddan wrote: | I give this advice to many aspiring founders I meet and I | practice it myself. Have been working in multiple early-stage and | growth startups at different stages with the goal of becoming a | founder one day including right now at FlyCode (S22) | cletus wrote: | I haven't worked at a startup. I have worked at two FAANGs (F+G). | So I can't speak to the actual experience of this but when | considering options, startups, particuarly very early stage | startups, seemed like such a terrible value proposition. | | There could be qualitative benefits and I think this is why a lot | of people go this route. Things like less structure and a bigger | feeling of impact. | | But your equity is most likely going to be worth exactly $0 and | the upside isn't really that high. For every Craig Silverstein | there are 100,000 people who got nothing. Look back at any HN | thread where people are asked about their exits (as an employee) | and it's sobering. $10-20k after 4-5 years is disturbingly | common. | | A first employee if they have a lot of pull might get what? 0.5%? | Maybe 1% if they're a rock star? It gets worse than that because | your equity and founder equity (let alone the investor's equity) | aren't the same. Theirs will have things like liquidation | preferences and participating preferred. Yours may well just | disappear on dilution or the kiss of death: a down round. | | If your startup gets bought in the sub-$100 million range, the | acquirer might avoid paying out employees by giving signing | bonuses to the founders to join as VPs and pay out the investors | while paying pennies on the dollar to common shareholders. This | may have changed but there were rules around acquiring companies | for less than ~$60 million that meant it was much better to buy | the company for $60m and pay founder signing bonuses for another | $40 million rather than acquiring it for $100 million and that | $40 million difference is coming out of your pocket. | | On top of all that, you, as an employee, will have very limited | opportunities to liquidiate your equity prior to an IPO that will | probably never happen (you'll get acquired instead and that | company may well be public). Founders and investors may sell some | of their equity on future rounds. Sometimes employees will have | access to this but often they won't. | | Now compare this to the FAANG path. It's pretty easy to get to | $400k+ total comp for really not that much stress and very little | uncertainty. You'll never make $100 million this way (unless you | become an SVP+) but let's face it, your startup isn't making you | $100 million either. | | Honestly, things like this read like VC propaganda just trying to | keep the pipeline of warm bodies fed. Outliers are used to sell | this well I have some outliers too: Jeff Bezos, Larry Page, | Sergey Brin, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. None of them worked | for a startup first. | | The power of anecdotes and survivor bias. | IMTDb wrote: | I don't see a lot of people arguing that vest and rest at FAANG | is going to bring you more money and less stress - in the vast | majority of cases - than working in a startup. | | It's just that some people would rather have the stress, | freedom and excitment that come with working at a startup, | rather than completing their OKR to avoid being put on a PIP at | the next PSC. Even if that means earning less money - on | average. | SamvitJ wrote: | Actually, Jeff Bezos worked at a startup, Fitel, for two years, | as his first job out of college. (Maybe 1990 D.E. Shaw would be | considered a startup, too, actually.) But good points | regardless. | | Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos#Early_career | [deleted] | N_A_T_E wrote: | Sounds like the big lesson is having autonomy to do whatever | needs to be done to solve the problem at hand. Pattern matching | how to handle situations based on previous success/failures might | not be the best way to deal with early stage startup questions | where you have to navigate unknown territory. | [deleted] | chaostheory wrote: | Another bad stereotype is the university dropout founder. The | reality is that most startup founders, especially the successful | ones, come from Ivy League level universities if you look at the | data. This makes sense from the perspective of risk mitigation | zackmorris wrote: | I've worked for startups, both under an agency and as a | contractor, and IMHO the problem isn't how well a startup | executes, it's how much runway it has. Or some combination of | those things. We can always gain experience and improve our | execution, but funding is (sadly) still an open problem. | | I adore HN obviously, but am concerned about the idea of | mentorship as a prerequisite to success. Truthfully, I was far | more clever fresh out of college at 21 than I am in midlife after | learning how to supposedly do things better. All I needed was any | money at all to work on my own projects (something like $24,000 | annually in the year 2000) but nothing like that existed. We | didn't even have Kickstarter. So I worked a bunch of dead end | jobs making rent and all but wasted the most productive years of | my life. | | But there have been several changes over the last 20 years that | removed the artificial barriers to entry that kept me and makers | like me on the outside. The main one being the JOBS Act of 2012: | | https://www.investopedia.com/terms/j/jumpstart-our-business-... | | Because of that, non-accredited investors can invest up to 10% of | their income: | | https://www.startengine.com/ (no affiliation) | | If I were starting out now, I would largely ignore what other | people are doing, and figure out a way to raise 2+ years of | income, or at least $100,000 per person, by checking all of the | boxes needed for crowdfunding. Then show the campaign to older | people who have some disposable income that want to invest | outside usurious and rent-seeking systems like stock markets and | real estate. | | Then I would use something like a referral program to bootstrap: | | https://andrewchen.com/how-to-design-a-referral-program/ | | https://www.coldstart.com | | Everything else on the technical side is honestly pretty easy to | figure out for programmers. There's just not that much to learn, | it's mostly about balancing process with pivoting to make steady | forward progress each day. Two-person teams have been more | productive than entire companies. | | And nobody wants to hear it, but, I feel that up to 90% of "best | practices" today are about working around fundamental | inadequacies in our tools which still haven't been addressed. For | example, all databases needed event streams (like Supabase) so | that we could have had reactive programming from the beginning. | Jira and countless other similar tools have just not kept up with | their errata. The level of expertise needed to set up cloud | deployments has passed the point of believability. Native mobile | development probably shouldn't be a thing, except for certain | performance-critical components. And so on. | | The big opportunities today are probably NOT in the typical high- | effort approaches common to startups mired in scaling issues. We | can look down the road a little and bypass those eventualities, | assuming that we can scrape up enough funding to work | independently and avoid groupthink. | geeny777 wrote: | How do you pick a high-growth startup that makes it through | several stages? It's like saying the best way to make money is to | pick stocks that beat the market. | lawrjone wrote: | I mentioned this above, but unlike an investor you don't have | to pick a start-up that exits successfully for you to gain | really valuable experience that can help you on your own. | | Pick a company with a team you respect, a product you connect | with, and has money in the bank (just completed a funding | round). | | You can't go much wrong if you do that, at least in terms of | learning. | Cthulhu_ wrote: | Look for the phrase "scale-up" instead of "start-up", these are | usually well-funded, up-and-running companies that still have | some of the start-up mentality but without the financial | worries. | | Of course, some of these are already a decade old and may | employ hundreds or thousands of people already, so YMMV; they | might just be like older, boring enterprises, just not as | formal or fixed in their ways. | solarmist wrote: | Those are companies that believe they have product market fit | though. At that point they are starting to transform from a | startup into an established company. | | So most of the early stage learnings can no longer happen. | lanstein wrote: | Picking a product that you personally use, love, and would pay | for helps a lot | georgesequeira wrote: | Look at their investors. When interviewing, ask to speak to the | investors. See what they say. When speaking with founders do | they have numbers they can show or is it pure show-personship? | [deleted] | PeterStuer wrote: | Counterpoint: I have seen some _very_ bad habits carried over by | founders from growing companies. Success isn 't always the result | of excellence. | | Also, many founders that worked in somewhat larger environments | before tend to rush into 'mature' processes long before their | benefits outweigh their costs. This almost always grinds progress | to a halt, creates a ton of middle management and other non- | productive overhead in a startup/scaleup. | hef19898 wrote: | Now imagine absolutely inexperienced founders and external | senior management. You have a total lack of knowledge around | how to run an org combined with the urge to rush into super- | mature organisations. That is fun... | gwbas1c wrote: | Don't forget that: Most startups fail. | | As an employee, you need to vhet the startup even more closely | than an investor. An investor will spread their money to | multiple startups; but you can only have a single full time job | at a time. | solarmist wrote: | Even as a solo founder who's worked at startups and large | companies and knew to avoid this, I still did many mature/best | practices that have slowed me down. I haven't discarded them, | but I definitely set many of them aside until later. | bilsbie wrote: | Any tips for finding an early stage startup to work for? | jononomo wrote: | Does anyone care anymore about just having five kids and a | backyard and a loving spouse and a wall full of books and solid | church community? I'm so tired of people just trying to make | money. | askafriend wrote: | 1. What you describe sounds awful (except the loving spouse | part). | | 2. This is a community of people interested in startups. This | isn't a general purpose audience nor is it meant to be. | ryanmercer wrote: | My wife and I are quite religious (LDS). We have 50~ nieces and | nephews, 2 rooms full of books, a little over a half acre yard, | grow a sizable percentage of our produce, and nature willing | would like to have kids. | | I still would like money though, lots of money. I need 600k-1 | million USD to quit working just to live. With my current | income, inflation, etc., I'll likely still be working until I | physically can't though. If I magically had that 600k-1 million | today to retire, I'd then be content on the money side. I would | have the freedom to pursue whatever I wanted to do with my | time, from volunteering way more to tinkering with | crafts/considerably expanding our | growing/YouTube/writing/whatever. | | You can want a morally upright life with lots of personal | relationships, and still want/dream of a nice little pile of | money. | Nicholas_C wrote: | Where do you live? This ideal is alive and well in most of the | U.S. outside of the big cities. | arkitaip wrote: | Most people want those things. The HN bubble just makes it seem | like doing a startup is the apex accomplishment in life. | duxup wrote: | I wonder how many start ups fail because of lack of start up | experience or ... product just didn't take off? | | Not to say experience is bad but I suspect the latter happens | most of the time despite whatever experience there is. | tcgv wrote: | > it was announced that our CTO and the two other most senior | engineers had also resigned | | > As it turned out, everything was pretty much fine. Different | for sure, but people step up and companies evolve, and while it | was challenging to fill the gap made by those who had left, it | happened faster than you might expect. | | > Knowing you've been there before is what allows you to respond | with "I know this will be ok" instead of overreacting, or | allowing the situation to impact you too harshly | | This is spot on and I can deeply relate. In my startup (150 | employees) we had some senior devs departures and the Junior | staff was acutely impacted, requiring me to put a lot of effort | into managing the situation and reassuring the team we'd overcome | it. Fast forward 3 months and we have filled the vacant | positions, morale is good again and productivity is mostly | restored. | coldcode wrote: | I wish I had had that opportunity back in 1985 when I founded my | first one, but being outside of the Bay Area (as in 1500 miles | away) there were basically no software startups at all, and with | no internet/web/ycombinator etc, no way to learn anything except | by trying and failing. We did ship our product, do marketing, | make some sales but not enough so we had to sell the product and | close down. Today I know all things I did wrong but back then you | were working in a world unlike today, and not even one person to | ask as everyone starting software companies back then was just as | clueless unless you were in a few places in the country. It's | hard to explain to people today just how hard this was (for | example I tried to borrow some money at a local bank to buy | computers, and when told we were a software company, the loan | officer assumed we were making ladies undergarments). | silentsea90 wrote: | Very cool. I think one doesn't need to join a startup for such | experience nowadays. Simply joining YC/XYZ accelerator might | help get a structure around the million things that are now | institutional knowledge so you can focus on what matters. | testmasterflex wrote: | That bank quote is too funny! What was the product if one may | ask? | coldcode wrote: | A rather unique take on spreadsheets that would wind up | influencing others to try experimentations on the spreadsheet | idea, but all were ultimately killed by Excel, as what | happened to us. Search "trapeze spreadsheet" on google if you | care to know more. | veltas wrote: | Would be interested in a blog on this | georgesequeira wrote: | Idea generator and fundraising are also a couple of benefits to | joining a startup before starting your own. | | 1. Finding ideas can be hard especially when you start from | scratch. Most startups (particularly fast scaling ones) can give | you ideas if you look for: | | * de-prioritized ideas due to "hyper-focus" | | * listening to common problems that customers [0] have that | aren't necessarily solved by your company. | | * product features built that many other companies would find | useful (e.g. collaborative editing infra) | | * internal tooling that other companies would find useful | | 2. Fundraising[1] | | Many friends got their first checks from investors that were | investors of a startup they previously worked at. And the truth | is, if you choose a slow-scaling/zombie startup, you will learn a | ton still but honestly, the investors of that company aren't | going to be stoked to invest in you if you spin out your own | thing. | | A quick list of common strategies that worked for them: | | * Choose founders who don't treat investors as "dumb money" | | * Choose companies backed by great investors | | * Join startups that are scaling fast | | * Join early (< 40) so you can be part of the "success story" | | * Ask to meet the investors throughout your tenure (ideally you | are upfront with the founders of the company you join) | | * Stay there and be a part of the solution through 2+ tough | moments (ie. investors can associate you with the success of the | company) | | [0] Getting to know potential customers and understanding how to | acquire them is also super useful. | | [1] You can avoid the fundraising focus by going to YC (or | equivalent) because you'll get the necessary clout to get | investors knocking. If you're going to a startup anyway to get | experience and find ideas, you may as well prep for fundraising. | KingOfCoders wrote: | Work in a startup where the founder has done it before and top | management has some experience. I've worked in many startups and | seen many more, and if people are not knowledgeable enough, you | can't learn a great amount of things. | ooopsnevermind wrote: | I worked at early, fast growing startups and later founded and | raised venture capital for my own startup. You'd think I'd agree | with this article, but I actually don't, here's why: | | 1) Working at fairly successful startups gave me excuses to put | off starting my own company because I was still "learning so | much." In retrospect, I should have started my own company years | earlier. | | 2) Identifying startups that will turn into rocketships is hard. | If you are that good at identifying successful startups early on, | you should probably consider becoming a VC. :) | hankchinaski wrote: | Working at startup sucks. Lower pay, lower stability, overworked, | much higher risk for the company to go bust. There is literally | no benefit apart from the fact that the bar is somewhat lower and | easier to get a job | 10g1k wrote: | I wish people would stop calling new businesses "startups". It's | just a new business. | Taylor_OD wrote: | This is like half the sell from start up ceos. "Want to start | your own company someday? Come here and get paid to learn how to | do that." | | As many other have said... You might learn how to run a start up | but its just as likely you will be able to see mistakes the | company you joined made and hopefully be able to prevent your | company from making those same ones. | m0llusk wrote: | Potentially good advice here, but some of the details seem off to | me. Here are some quick attempts to summarize hopefully as | constructive criticism: | | In my experience the best options are almost always the middle | ground. That is, the startup mentality drives sloppiness and | excuses while the big company mentality drives slowness and | perfectionism. The best option is somewhere in between. At a | startup it can often be extremely valuable to have a "parent in | the room" enforce big company thinking and oversight, and at a | big company it is almost always useful to at least envision a | shorter path than the usual consult with everyone and make a | design and see how it goes kind of thing. | | The "allows you to respond with "I know this will be ok"" | statement as a reaction to major changes and challenges sets off | red lights all over my dashboard. The situation will be okay | because you made it okay. This is true in companies of all sizes. | Fail to take responsibility for the full situation and you are | likely doomed. | | The "any process you introduce will break by the time you double | the headcount" strikes me as classic startup sloppiness. If you | really know what the situation is and why you are doing what you | are doing then even when changes are necessary it is usually | quite explicitly clear what and why. Solid processes and | operations often go the other way: even with significant changes | the core ideas and methods endure, so be careful what you start | with. | | Hiring from your personal networks first is another classic | sloppy startup error. This tends to end up with clubby teams made | of people who aren't actually as good as they might be and that | exclude the people you really want to hire. Better to start well | outside your personal networks and bring people in as needed. | Sorting out the interview process at least at first also works | better if it isn't all friends and long time coworkers. | | And this business of defining levels is a real mess. All the best | organizations I have contributed to have been close to flat. | | There are always many paths, but given how treacherous the path | to startup success can be it seems worthwhile to air criticism. | jchonphoenix wrote: | I've worked at multiple startups sub 50 to >1000 (unicorn status) | and have founded and sold my own company. I've also worked at a | few of the FAANGs. This is common advice, especially among VCs | since it's one of the key benefits used to pitch prospective | employees on giving up that fat FAANG salary, but in my personal | experience, it's not so cut and dry. | | Working in a startup will brand you as a startup person and help | you meet VCs which may make it easier to raise. It'll also show | you the problems that that particular startup faces and give you | n=1 degree of pattern matching. On the flip side, something like | YC can give you the same benefit or just shipping a for-profit | side project on the side. Additionally, given how poorly run most | startups are today, I'd posit that you're actually in more danger | of learning the wrong lessons than the right lessons by joining a | startup. At the end of the day, the truth is likely to be Peter | Thiel's observation that joining the right, highly successful, | high growth startup as a very early employee is a great way to | learn exactly 1 method of starting a successful company--the way | that company did it. But if the startup you join isn't that | rocketship, you've only learned how to (or how not to) achieve | that particular path of failure or mediocrity. | | Not particularly great advice though, because then the challenge | becomes identify those startups. And if you could do that | reliably, I'd suggest you switch careers into VC instead :) | lawrjone wrote: | I'm not sure I agree with the comparison of picking a start-up | to join being the same as one you might invest in. | | At least, in terms of this article, a start-up that has growth | ambitions and has just raised a round is a great bet. Unlike a | potential investor, you didn't need to get in before that round | to make the investment worthwhile, and in a sense you don't | care as much about the company itself being an outsized | success: not if your primary goal is around learning, which I | think is legitimate, especially early in your career. | | Similarly, I suspect it's not quite right to assume lessons in | one start-up don't apply to others. In London at least, there's | a strong network of people across the start-up scene who talk a | lot. Many of those start-ups have very similar cultures and | ways of working, similar enough that they hit the same problems | and lessons learned it one often translate to others. | | My intention, writing this article, was to encourage people to | view joining a start-up with momentum as a valuable learning | experience before they start their own thing, possibly more | valuable than a big corporation or just jumping into start-ups | themselves. | | I think finding companies that can provide you with that growth | isn't too hard, and I'd be happy to help anyone who wanted to | find them, if they wanted it :) | jchonphoenix wrote: | The point is that the valuable lessons and growth on how to | effectively build a successful startup only occurs at those | high success high growth companies. I've been at successes | and failures. You learn much more from success. | jchonphoenix wrote: | I agree you can learn many lessons about what not to do. The | broader point I'm making here is that there's a billion things | not to do and a few things you should do. The successful | startups will also make mistakes, iterate, and teach you the | things not to do but teach you how to figure out what you | should be doing. The unsuccessful ones just stubbornly plod | forward and you, the employee, just know you guys screwed it | up, but have no idea how to find success. | | TL;DR YMMV, but it's much more valuable to learn a selection of | "winning moves" you can apply than it is to learn a bunch of | "losing moves" not to apply. | xivzgrev wrote: | I agree. I joined a few smaller startups and saw plenty about | how NOT to do things. Only one I joined a larger company did I | feel happier (in hindsight). And now if I went back to a | startup, I'd feel more confident about whether the company is | run poorly and how much I can help it. | | Some problems are organizational immaturity and can be fixed. | Some problems come from leadership and won't change as long as | those leaders are there. | jatins wrote: | +1 Don't think this working for a startup offers much advantage | for an engineer if they later decide to work on their own. | | If you already know programming, there isn't a lot of value add | that couple years of startup experience offers in terms of your | programming skills. | | The skills that you don't have -- Sales, marketing, hiring -- | you will still not have. Working for a startup, as say, a | frontend engineer for couple years does not help you get better | at Sales. You'll need to hire for them or rely on co-founders | anyway. The "wearing multiple hats" trope is extremely over | hyped in my experience. | qqqwerty wrote: | There is way more than one lesson to learn from each startup. | You will hopefully learn how to hire (and possibly fire) | people. You will get insight into the nitty gritty of keeping | the lights on at a company (taxes, payroll, office leases, | etc...), and you will get familiar with the typical fundraising | cycle. Most people don't appreciate how fast 18 months to two | years of funding can run out. Going through that stuff once or | twice when you don't have the pressure of being the founder can | be very beneficial. And while going through an accelerator can | be a substitute, I can't imagine that encountering a lot of | this stuff for the first time while trying to start your first | company would be anything less then very stressful. | | For most employees, the best deal for them financially is to go | the FAANG route. But I absolutely recommend working at a | startup if you are hoping to one day start your own. It should | be said that most startup employees are not going to start | their own company (even ones who think they will). So certainly | keep that in mind. But I suppose another benefit is working at | a startup is probably a good way to gauge if starting a startup | is something you could handle. After having worked at one for a | while, I have certainly come to more realistic understanding of | what kind of startup I would be comfortable founding. I almost | certainly would prefer to bootstrap a small project rather than | go the VC route, but I think I would feel pretty comfortable | taking VC money if the opportunity called for it. But I have | also come to realize that the best fit for me in my next role | is probably not as a founder, but most likely as a very early | employee of another startup. But this time around I will have a | much better idea of what to look for in the founding team. | lawrjone wrote: | This is... Almost exactly how I feel, to the detail. Glad I'm | not alone in that! | JamesBarney wrote: | Is working at a startup useful? Yes. | | Is more more useful than having a longer runway from big co | savings? Doubtful. | | Most of the lessons you learn are either going to be | | 1. General startup lessons (This information is available in | YC Startup School, lean startup, etc...) | | 2. Lessons specific to the problem you're trying to solve | (Whats the best way to reach rural RV buyers, what keeps | people from renting a room for a night) | | Working at a startup will teach you a little of 1, and none | of 2. So I'd easily trade the knowledge gained during two | years of working at previous startup for 2 extra months of | working on my startup. | qqqwerty wrote: | > Is more more useful than having a longer runway from big | co savings? Doubtful. | | Having worked at a startup before, I now know to never risk | a substantial amount of my own money on the venture. The | risk of failure is too high. I would either a) go the side | project->bootstrap route or b) have angel or accelerator | money lined up, which should be easy because having worked | at a startup before, my network now includes angel | investors. | | > This information is available in YC Startup School, lean | startup, etc... | | I have participated in Startup School. It certainly has | some value, but it is in no way a substitute for working at | a startup. Not even close. Also, your competitors have | access to the same resources, so it is not exactly a | competitive edge. | | > Whats the best way to reach rural RV buyers, what keeps | people from renting a room for a night | | That is called marketing and market research. Almost every | startup in existence does it. And if you work at a startup, | you will get a close up look at how it is done, and you | will get some valuable lessons on what to do and what not | to do. And having worked at a startup, I now also have a | list of potential freelancers in case I wanted to contract | that work out. | ido wrote: | I've worked at multiple startups before starting my own, some | were more useful than others. In my experience only in lead | or above positions do you actually get exposure to these | things - a random IC doesn't really get much insight into the | company's finances, raising, negotiations, hiring, etc. | | From those I was a lead at I got some valuable experience | (including what not to do) & also contacts (some former | director/C-level people I'm still in touch with). I still | learned the vast majority from actually having to handle it | myself in my own startup but I think I would have learned | even less (in that particular area) if I was working at | amazon or google before instead. | hef19898 wrote: | I see that in real life at the moment, the part about the badly | run start-up. With some experience, it is easy to spot the | mistakes. Most employees are too young / unexperienced so | realize it. Heck, half of the middle management is still at | their first jobs out of university. And man, it shows. Nowhere | near FAANG in terms or organisation or best practices. | | Great place to learn a thing or two, if you have the necessary | background and experience. | baby wrote: | There really are millions of lessons to be learned though, not | just the "how to be successful". If all you did was working at | a big corp or at a FAANG you will run into tons of issues which | you will have to deal with at the same time as founder-related | issues. | ren_engineer wrote: | >Additionally, given how poorly run most startups are today, | I'd posit that you're actually in more danger of learning the | wrong lessons than the right lessons by joining a startup | | this can be more valuable in many ways, I've literally taken | notes about things NOT to do when it comes to things like | meetings, processes, etc. | bick_nyers wrote: | Exactly, you get to see how early (or late) decisions have | scaled up, for better or for worse. | | You have to take an intelligent approach though, you can't | just go in the opposite direction, e.g. excess meetings can | be very damaging to engineers, so let's do 0 meetings. | muse900 wrote: | I agree with plenty of what you are saying, at the same time I | believe that joining problematic start-ups or failing start-ups | can teach you plenty on how not do things. | | Remember that before succeeding you have to fail and improve in | a cycle of n times until you succeed. If you succeed without | failing then there is a high probability of luck being | involved. | lmeyerov wrote: | As a tweak: | | Follow a top CEO/CTO as person 2-10 with a market you like... | | ... And then: | | * Learn how 0->1 , product market fit, and overall process works, | which you miss by joining growth-stage | | * Grow from working with customers hands-on to becoming an area | owner with responsibility around customer journey, revenue, | hiring & firing, etc. VP Sales, early CTO/Dir of Engineering, CTO | where you are heavy on sales/solutions engineering flow in big | enterprises, ... . Working for a VP/director/manager is different | from owning a part of the business, especially where you have a | teneous & sales-oriented external aspect like revenue or customer | success. Likewise, not owning the customer journey hides a lot, | which is easy to miss in a growing company as specialization | happens fast, esp in engineering. | | * Pick carefully on enterprise vs consumer, which market within | that, and which internal teams you work with. That's the customer | persona you need to live & breathe later. | | Not easy! | | Also, fwiw, there is a big class of professional startup people | who are 'scale up' experts that can take a working product, VC | capital raised by other people, and help that grow faster. The | OP's advice is more for getting on that track. And from a | founders perspective: you can just hire them, everyone wins. Just | don't confuse that with a 0->1 skillset, not inherent.. | junwonapp wrote: | "Want to get to point X? Visit point Y first!" | | Just go to point X directly. Too many people shy away from their | dreams and delay, because they want to learn first, practice | first, and get ready before the real adventure. You will never | deplete "more things to learn". You are only depleting your | lifetime. And no matter how close working at a startup is to | working on a startup, it will never be as close to it as itself. | | If you need to save up some money or take care of any other | blockers first for your own safety, fine. If there is a great | company working on a great problem that you are excited by, | great. But if you want to start a new company, then working at a | startup is not a practice for starting a new startup. It is a | practice for working at a startup and a practice for wasting | another day of your life not living the way you really want to | live. | m463 wrote: | I like this idea. It might be like the best exercise for sport | x is to play sport x. | | And if you fail, you already worked at a startup (by founding | it) | wzwy wrote: | This article is not really about what's unique about working at a | startup that can give you an advantage when founding your own, | but more about how to accelerate the learning of skills required | to do so. Hence, the emphasis on high-growth startups. | | But, obviously, not all high-growth startups can provide an | environment of rapid learning. It's not just about high-growth; | it's also about how much output the startup is trying to extract | from its people. The more they try to extract, the faster the | learning cycle. In that case, a high-growth startup with limited | resource seems to be the ideal company to work for. | jokethrowaway wrote: | A start-up is unlikely to have things done right and can be the | worst place to learn good practices. | | Back in the days I knew people who were just working with | startups and didn't know about testing or versioning. | | Most startups have zero documentation. | | In my experience you're as likely to find good people in startups | or in established companies. It's luck, knowing someone who know | someone. | | Experience in the industry is useful. That said you can learn | just as much if not even more just starting and failing. | | Just never stop learning and eventually things will be alright | swayvil wrote: | So what they're saying is, if you have "I worked at a startup" on | your resume, this will make VCs more likely to give you money. | | Straightforward enough. | baremetal wrote: | This goes for any other business as well. | JohnFen wrote: | Good general advice -- it's been good advice for a lot longer | than the term "startup" has been around. | | But the choice of company you work for is important, too. | Startups are not all the same. You should choose one in the same | field as your interest, and one that operates with similar goals | as yours. | fortuna86 wrote: | The problems you have as a founder (fundraising, hiring, finding | product-market fit) are not the concern of most employees. | | Also founding a startup makes financial sense, working at one | usually does not. | luxurytent wrote: | No doubt my desire to start my own thing has increased 10x since | joining a startup (back in November) | | Why? I think it's a mix of: | | - Getting comfortable building from scratch (we're early stage so | almost everything we are doing right now is from the start) | | - Getting comfortable with new technologies that previously felt | inaccessible to me (ML, AI) | | - Founders are very transparent with the operational and legal | details of our startup, so I learn a bit here and there about the | non-technical hard things | | - The chase for the first dollars. This is really energizing (and | hard) part of where I am at right now. It can be prone to | burnout, but I do now want to try and go for my first $100/month | Wojtkie wrote: | > Almost immediately after I arrived, I learned our VP of | Engineering - who I hugely respected - was leaving. | Disappointing, but nothing like the shock one month later when, | at a Friday debrief, it was announced that our CTO and the two | other most senior engineers had also resigned. | | > I remember that meeting, where I and two others remained at the | table after everyone else had left the boardroom. "Shit" and | "well this is fucked" was all we managed to say into the shocked | silence, and I began to worry that I'd made a terrible mistake. | | This was my experience, too. The company just released its v2 app | and was having meetings finalizing an acquisition the first week | I was there. Within 5 months, the engineering team I worked on | went from 7-8 employees to 3, including the resignation of the | CTO. It's going alright now, but it definitely was worrisome. | losthobbies wrote: | For me, it was good to see that the person who started the start | up I worked at was just a normal guy. He hired this CTO though | that was amazing to work with. | | Unfortunately, my impostor syndrome (along with my inexperience) | became quite crippling and I had to leave. | | Looking back, I probably should have left sooner or been | comfortable with standing up for myself. | mclightning wrote: | Want to found a startup? Just become great at your craft. Dont | waste time with success stories and their advices, because it is | all survivor bias. Just keep building. | testmasterflex wrote: | This and "never give up" are the only solid startup advice one | should follow. What I work on today I can imagine myself doing | until I die. I'm 15 years into my first startup and 3 into my | second. Maybe it takes a simpleminded person to have that | patience but that's how you win. | mritchie712 wrote: | We have a "Founders Program" for people that know they want to | start a company in the next few years. I think it's better to | have full transparency on both sides: | | As the company: You get highly motivated, amazing talent | | As the employee / future founder: You make your intention clear | to leave in x months to start your own thing and can openly | discuss strategy for your company with the current founders | instead of hiding your side projects. | | I took this idea from Mighty / Supabase. | | Application process is simple, pitch me at mike@luabase.com. Tell | me what you want to do to grow Luabase and what you're thinking | of doing for your company. | | 0 - https://luabase.notion.site/Founders- | Program-16f8d963328a47d... | silentsea90 wrote: | Is this effectively part time employment? | mritchie712 wrote: | Yes. We're flexible on the # of hours, but would need to be | at least 20 a week to make sense. | | We also offer full benefits in the US if the person needs | them. Finding healthcare in the US without it being thru an | employer is a huge pain. | lawrjone wrote: | I think these programmes are awesome! | | We have a few people who are explicitly at incident.io to gain | experience of how to build companies. It may be that they won't | go to do this, but their time here will put them in a great | position to do so, if they ever want to. | | I've seen some companies who have a standing offer to angel | invest in your start-up too, though I was never sure how I felt | about that. | atlasunshrugged wrote: | On the angel investing, I was thinking that was the next | logical step too but rather than building an internal | mechanism and pulling focus I wonder if you could just | partner with an early stage vc to give them first look in | return for special consideration and earlier mentorship or | something. Tons of early vc's with dry powder and minimal | differentiation to lean on! | lawrjone wrote: | Chris (one of our founders) just pointed out that we | (incident.io) are signed up to the future founder promise: | | https://github.com/StellateHQ/future-founder-promise | | So we are doing exactly this, which is cool! I think the | primary value is in leveraging the investor network, as you | say, though the angel investment is a nice bonus. | mritchie712 wrote: | Awesome! Just saw this pull request, would love to have | Luabase added! | | https://github.com/StellateHQ/future-founder- | promise/pull/6 | atlasunshrugged wrote: | That's a super cool program, props to you for actually putting | it in place! I guess the next step is to also have a small | internal vc mechanism (or partnership with a vc firm) that | gives the first check to people who join? I know that'd be a | huge plus for me just as an option for something I could | potentially rotate to in the future if I was thinking of | joining a new co, it definitely sends a strong pro- | entrepreneurial signal regardless of whether you're founding | something or not. | mritchie712 wrote: | We'd never write checks out of the company, but I personally | angel invest and make intros to our investors and any others | I've talked to. I've pitched nearly every VC someone would | want to talk to. | up2isomorphism wrote: | The most important skill of the startup founder is to find | funding and customer, while find talent to implement, and if | there is no suitable talent at that time, he can at least take | the task until find someone. None of these skills can be acquired | if you just work for a startup. | yalogin wrote: | I don't buy this argument at all. It fully depends on your | mindset. No big company pays you to become lazy and entitled, at | least not the FAANG ones referred to by most as the gold | standard. If you cannot show initiative and growth in a big | company you don't belong in a start up. People with initiative | and a drive to do things thrive anywhere and in any condition. | They solve problems no matter what the form is and forge ahead. I | do see that working for a startup can be great, but this whole | "work at a start up first" is just trying to glorify startups and | nothing else. | weare138 wrote: | I don't think it even has to be at a startup. Just having some | actual job experience in general goes a long way. | ottoflux wrote: | i'd add that you also learn (perhaps more) about what _not_ to do | if you pay attention and keep your ear to the ground while | working. | avmich wrote: | > If you can't hire exceptional people then you shouldn't expect | exceptional outcomes: e.g, the outcomes most VCs expect. | | BS. Exceptional people are mostly an illusion - yes, there are | (for example) Linus Torvalds and Fabrice Bellard, but there are | much less such people than startups, orders of magnitudes less. | Exceptionalism comes from the combination of the idea quality, | low level of mistakes in execution, some luck in the market, some | combination of qualities, like perseverance, which smoothes out | some problems - and other qualities like that, engineering level | is certainly important but you can have exceptional results with | just competent engineering. It's hard to find an example of | textbook successful startups where engineering was outstanding. | Sorry, won't give examples, just look for yourselves. | lawrjone wrote: | Yep, perhaps I should have said if you can't create an | exceptional environment - of which team, culture and mission | are all parts - then you can't expect exceptional outcomes. | | Hiring people who have experience in those environments before | can help you replicate that success again, though. So worth | picking them, if you have a choice. | urthor wrote: | Most successful startup founder I know is north of 60. He's been | at it a decade. | | He recently got handed multiple billions to expand from 500 HC. | Secret ingredient: two decades at Mckinsey. | | Biggest trend other than experience is TIME. Most businesses take | a DECADE to really get going. | lawrjone wrote: | I think I failed to communicate this nuance in the article, but | my major point was how to most quickly develop the experience | you'd need to start your own company. | | I'd imagine McKinsey is a great place to see loads of companies | and be exposed to a lot of useful stuff. But it probably won't | pack as much relevant experience into as short a time as | several years in a start-up 5-10x'ing in size. | | Hiroki Takeuchi and Matt Robinson - two of the GoCardless | founders - both left McKinsey to start GC. I'd imagine that | experience was incredibly useful, though you'd have to ask them | if they think it's more or less valuable than seeing things at | a different start-up beforehand. | atlasunshrugged wrote: | Really, the secret ingredient was McKinsey? Maybe I'm biased | but except for one person, I've never worked with McKinsey | folks (and working in Germany you work with many) and thought | they'd be great entrepreneurs | bolton_strid wrote: | hcks wrote: | Contra a lot of popular belief here: I don't understand how | working as an engineer (because this is always what seems to be | implied) will improve your odds at starting a startup. | | Working as an engineer, and kickstarting a business are two very | different jobs. | | Even in practice successful tech startup founders seems to be 40 | yos with a background in management consulting. So I really | wonder where do people get the idea that working as an engineer | is a path towards entrepreneurship. | | EDIT: and it's rather ironic that the author doesn't himself run | his own startup. | PeterisP wrote: | The key assertion of the fine article seems to be that if | you've worked as an engineer in a startup, then you at least | have seen first-hand how startups work, how they are run, what | problems they encounter and what solutions work/fail there. The | dynamics of a startup are quite different from those in a | large, stable (even if growing) company, so an ex-startup- | engineer might have seen more relevant things than a middle | manager from some Fortune 500 company. | lawrjone wrote: | I'm not sure most successful tech start-up founders have | management consultant backgrounds, I've not seen that at least! | | Speaking to the point about not having been a founder myself: | you're right, and hope I was clear about that in the article. | But I have spent the last year as the first employee working on | building out a start-up, where a big challenge is in | establishing a team and learning how to build a product that | people want to buy. | | When you build a start-up as a founder, you need to know how to | do that stuff. Otherwise there won't be much point in being | good at the founder-specific work like raising money etc, | because there's not a business around it. | | The main point is to try to minimise the 'firsts' you might | have when you start your own company. If the only thing you're | doing for the first time is exclusively founder responsibility, | then I think you're much more likely to be successful. | ghiculescu wrote: | > But I have spent the last year as the first employee | working on building out a start-up, where a big challenge is | in establishing a team and learning how to build a product | that people want to buy. | | Lots of people have these experiences but don't succeed as | founders. | | I suspect a key difference is you are currently doing it | without real risk, and with someone else's risk appetite. I'd | be wary of trying to apply the exact same approach when it's | your company on the line. So in that sense there will be just | as many "firsts" either way. | wirelesspotat wrote: | Great blog post, particularly the anecdotes about working at | GoCardless. Thanks for sharing | lawrjone wrote: | Thanks! | synu wrote: | I would suggest joining even smaller than 40 if you can, although | that's not bad. I had joined a 250 person startup before founding | my first company and I can say confidently I had no idea what I | was getting myself into, and I think the experience would have | helped. | | Either way you're going to be figuring out a lot of stuff on your | own, but I think I would have recognised that earlier and would | have had a little more practice. | polote wrote: | If you lack the confidence to start a startup then working at one | can help you gain than to create one in the future. But I'm not | confident it increases the chances the company is going to be | successful. | | Actually if you had the chance to work at a company that became a | unicorn, you will have better chance to get founding which | increase the chance that your company is going to work, so yeah. | | Except for that confidence and founding part I'm not sure it is | valuable | lawrjone wrote: | I'm first employee at a start-up now, and while not a founder, | the experience I have from seeing this stuff in previous | companies totally changes the game. | | When we decide to do something, such as make key hires, build | new teams or invest in infrastructure, we have way more | confidence that we're doing it at the right time. And when we | do it, it's 90% what we need, skipping so many of the painful | intermediate stages I've seen before. | | It makes a huge difference in velocity, which is key for | successful start-ups. So while you're right about funding and | network, you execute better too. | polote wrote: | Yeah so what you explain is that you have more confidence | about what your do, but that says nothing about the success | rate of previous startup employee vs success rate of others | Jgrubb wrote: | Yes, having experience in a domain can help you be more | confident in your decisions. Are you trying to argue that | experience plays no role in long term outcomes of building | businesses? | wzwy wrote: | I don't think he's arguing about the benefit of having | confidence and experience in a domain, but rather the | origin of the experience and confidence and how it | impacts a startup's success. | | In this case: the startup success rate of those who | worked for startups vs those who worked in some other | institutions (or for some, no work at all). | | Sure, working at a startup might make you be confident at | making decisions, but will that confidence lead to good | results when you're a founder? Working at another place | can give you confidence as well, but again, will it help | you get the results you want in your startup? | | Anyhow, I'm not sure the answers matter much because the | author didn't write much about the uniqueness of the | skills learnt in startups. He emphasised more on velocity | of learning skills that can be learnt in many places, but | high-growth startups can provide the fastest route. | robocat wrote: | Another massive advantage is finding cofounders and employees | from the pool of people you work with and meet. | | I think that is the best way to find suitable people outside | your specialty where you can properly judge people's integrity, | ability, and their match with you (working style, filling the | holes in your skills, compatibility, boss vs employee). | | I have done this, no I have seen other successful entrepreneurs | do it. | ido wrote: | But aren't these already valuable? I now run my own startup and | i feel i benefited a lot from my former stints in other | startups, even when some of it fell into the "what not to do" | category :) | | Also in a startup you're more likely to need to wear multiple | hats and deal with uncertainty, which are two things you'd | definitely need to deal with even more in your own company. | ryanmercer wrote: | As someone that spent 15 and a half years working for FedEx and | then jumped ship to join TrueNorth shortly after their Series B | I've definitely found it interesting. | | FedEx: | | - an ancient dinosaur, using a LOT of ancient tech (I did my job | in an AS400 terminal for 15 and a half years). | | - A bureaucratic dinosaur, even backfilling positions could take | 6 months just to get a posting and even simple office fun | activities had to be kicked up the chain to corporate legal for | approval | | - You were a serial number, mine was 628254 | | - Everything I did was micromanaged to the second via time stamps | | - Reviews were rigid, mechanical, impersonal | | TrueNorth: | | - Agile, even in the 6 months I've been there things have rapidly | changed (and for the better) and that just blows my mind. I know | it's normal for a startup but it's truly like magic to me. | | - Not a bureaucratic dinosaur, our CEO is hands on in the | trenches still. She's there asking questions, looking for | feedback, keeping a decent working knowledge of everything that | is going on. There aren't a dozen people between her and the | lowest rung of the ladder. | | - I'm not a serial number, I'm just Ryan. I'm treated like a | human being. | | - Reviews are typical for modern companies. I can also ask my | boss for feedback any time and, unlike at FedEx, know I'm going | to get actionable feedback and not have him scrutinizing | everything I do for the next few days/weeks wondering what I'm | trying to hide/cover up in my work. | | --- | | I definitely see a lot at TN that is being done much better than | at a dinosaur like FedEx, we have the ability to just try | something if we think it's going to work better unlike at FedEx | where it would have to be kicked up through multiple rungs of | management, then non software engineers would be tasked to | investigate it, then maybe 3-4 months later a very limited time | study would get approved and done, and then that new process - | regardless of if it was better - would get buried. At a startup | it's just "sure, give it a try, see what happens" most of the | time or a much more immediate feedback "actually, that is going | to be an issue because of x, y, and z". | | I did join TN when it was north of 50 people though. It had 2 | years and change of operating before I joined so I did miss out | on the truly chaotic bits but 100% I would say I'm now better | equipped for either a brand spankin' new startup or a decades old | company due to my time here. I absolutely think differently than | when I started 6 months ago and I don't feel stifled by some | antiquated system of doing business. If I have an idea I can go | explore it, or even try it, I can grab 15 minutes from someone's | calendar to ask why they're doing something a certain way and | what about it is annoying/is awesome, and I can take that and | maybe apply it to my work or even let my brain percolate on how | to improve that for them. | | If I ever had an idea for a startup, I 100% feel better equipped | to take stab at it now that I've worked for one. I definitely | know what is working as far as communication, documentation, | scoping, etc. | leetrout wrote: | My experience at a few startups does not align but I support the | overall thesis. | | More than one startup talked a big game in hiring about the | product, the customers and the culture only to be more of a cult | of personality where decisions were made in private between | cofounders despite being an "open" company, unequal pay despite | "transparent" salaries with bands, a lack of managerial skills or | care for personnel management (once told not to bring my feelings | to work) and in almost every single instance a technical founder | or early engineer that cannot or will not share work by | delegating. | | The most important things I have learned have absolutely came | from being involved with startups and 90% are what NOT to do. | | The good thing is I identified what I love: | | "Devops" and adding automation and structure to processes very | early. Everyone thinks is has to get in the way or will slow them | down. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast. | | Building people is was more fun than building tech but you have | to be on top of your hiring game early on. And you have to be | willing to share and trust. | | You have to ship. But that doesnt mean you dont invest in | yourself. If you have money for 100 days then build for 100 days. | If you have money for 2 years then build for 2 years. This means | making that investment in your tools and your process. | | Lastly, if you are B2B, buy a SOC2-in-a-box and get it over with | and use something like auth0 or workos and just be ready with SSO | integrations. Dont put off the foundational tablestakes of doing | business with other tech companies. | ghiculescu wrote: | Last suggestion deserves a caveat. Unless more than 5% of your | revenue will unconditionally require SOC2, you should avoid | doing it and accept the small revenue hit. | | But you are correct, if you _do_ need it, you should do it as | early as you can and buy it out of the box as much as you can. | I recommend Tugboat Logic for this. | leetrout wrote: | That's true! | | For those that do not know, an audit is going to cost AT | LEAST $20k but the total cost could be more than $50k | (certainly more if you are paying market rate and you account | for the team's time to pull everything together). And the | requirements can cause side effect costs (penetration tests, | etc). | lawrjone wrote: | As an incident management tool, getting certified was a | thing we knew we needed early. | | Gotta hand it to Chris (one of our founders) who came from | being Director of Platform at Monzo (a UK neobank) and had | spent years battling auditors, and knew exactly how to play | it. | | Kinda hammers home the point of my article... but about | three months into our company life, we were SOC 2 | certified, and it didn't feel like much effort at all. | | In case anyone is looking for actionable advice, we used | Vanta to help us through the process. If you're funded, I | think it's well worth the money. | bastardoperator wrote: | After working at a startup, I don't think I would ever start one | because I'm not interested in exploiting people when it comes | work life balance or compensation. | bolton_strid wrote: | ghiculescu wrote: | Founder here. Seen plenty of people who "want to start a startup" | come through the doors over 10 years. | | To my knowledge, only 1 ever took the plunge, the rest all moved | on to different jobs when they finished up with us. In every case | they told me that an advantage of the new place is that they'd | learn some more things they need to know for when they start | their own thing. | | To be clear I don't judge their choices at all. Just pointing out | that this is a pretty common thing people tell themselves. | | By contrast the former employees who have gone on to do their own | startup expressed no interest in the topic until one day they | were suddenly a founder. | speakfreely wrote: | This seems about right. Startup ideas are the white collar | equivalent of day dreaming about how you would spend the money | if you won the lottery. It's cheap to talk about, easy to | fantasize about, and many people have a very distorted | perception of what skills are necessary to be an effective tech | founder so (in their minds) their technical proficiency makes | it plausible. | silentsea90 wrote: | I am in the same boat as an employee who left a cushy job at G | to join a startup with the motivation to start my company, but | I feel there's a limit to "preparation" and one needs to be | honest and take the plunge. Else, I am bs-ing myself. | silentsea90 wrote: | As somebody who's worked at startups aplenty, this is ok advice | for the first X years of your career, where X might be ~2-5. | Beyond that, if you're still joining startups to found one | eventually, you have to question what you're gaining from the | time you spend at a startup. It is easy to claim you're preparing | for an iron man triathlon, and just keep training and never | actually participating in one. | invitrom wrote: | Hmm I feel like most founders I know just started companies after | college without much experience. While people that want to get | experience first seem to never end up starting a company. I think | it mostly comes down to risk adversity. | TrackerFF wrote: | Just to contrast this: Most of the startup founders I've met, | have previously worked in consulting (think McKinsey, Bain, | BCG, etc.). | | Which I guess makes sense, as they've been exposed to certain | industries from top to bottom, as well as people with enough | funds to actually invest. | fma wrote: | Doesn't match the data... | | https://hbr.org/2018/07/research-the-average-age-of-a-succes... | eatonphil wrote: | That says "successful". If you're just talking about all | founders it may be different. | eatonphil wrote: | I think the average US founder age is 40s. But I'm not sure | since most statistics focus on _successful_ founders. This link | seems to look at all of them. | | https://www.zippia.com/founder-jobs/demographics/ | pclmulqdq wrote: | The average founder of a business is not founding a VC- | targeted startup, or even a technology business. There are a | lot more landscapers counted in all of these surveys of | successful startup businesses than founders who even | considered YC. | lawrjone wrote: | I am absolutely not saying you can't do this. In fact, | GoCardless is an example of a company started by very young | founders with little start-up experience, and is now a unicorn. | | The difference is that if you have this experience when | starting a company, it can help you avoid so many stumbling | blocks, and you can skip forward to more mature company stages. | | While you can't really compare two companies, I think it's | interesting that the company I currently work at (incident.io) | has only taken a year to go from me joining as the first | employee to 40 people + series A + hundreds of customers now. | | There's no way we'd have moved so fast if it wasn't a case of | replicating what we already knew worked, tweaked for the | environment we found ourselves in. | | So yes, it doesn't mean you can't be successful as an | inexperienced founder, but I do think it makes a difference in | terms of execution. | checkyoursudo wrote: | Is a "startup" the same as starting a company? If I start a | company without ever seeking external funding/accelerating/etc, | is my company a "startup" in the same way that "founding a | startup" implies? | | I was under the impression that starting a company in general | and 'starting a startup' are not exactly the same thing, though | I surely might be wrong about this. | hollerith wrote: | In his essays Paul Graham defined "startup" as a company | designed to grow quickly. | ido wrote: | I think this may just be your bubble - I'm 39 and worked as a | programmer since I was 18 in 3 different cities/countries & I | know lots of both experienced people and people out of college | who started companies. | sausagefeet wrote: | > I believe if you want the best chance of succeeding as a | founder, first join an existing high-growth start-up where you | can learn what good looks like, before you start something | yourself. | | We're all entitled to our beliefs, but this seems very specific | to me. Why doe sit have to be "high-growth"? What if your startup | isn't meant to be "high-growth"? Why do you specifically have to | work at a startup? I believe getting some work experience is a | good idea, mostly just because if you want to put other people's | livelihood in your hands, one should probably mature a bit. | | Additionally, this advice falls into the classic trap of "I did | this, and therefore I think everyone else should". The advice | could be true, or it could not, there is no way of knowing, so at | the end of the day, the value of such advice is pretty low, IMO. | tsss wrote: | Because startup companies are by definition high-growth. The | term has become significantly overused by clueless journalists | and business types looking to pad their resumes with buzzwords. | lawrjone wrote: | Specifically, high growth is useful because you can spend a few | years there and get experience of doing many things at several | different company sizes. | | It means you get several opportunities to learn how to do a | specific thing, and see how different attempts yield different | results. At a company that grows more slowly you'll need to | revisit things less frequently, which reduces your opportunity | to learn. | | You're right though, I don't have experience doing things other | than what I've done. I can only speak to how useful my | experience has been when going back to very early stage as a | first employee, which has a lot of overlap with founder. | | And in that sense, I'm continually thankful I have the | experience I do in my current position. I think it means I'm | materially more impactful, and I can only imagine performing | significantly worse without it. | sausagefeet wrote: | > You're right though, I don't have experience doing things | other than what I've done. I can only speak to how useful my | experience has been when going back to very early stage as a | first employee, which has a lot of overlap with founder. | | I think you're missing the critique: you don't know how | useful your experience has been just because you experienced | it. This is why systematic studies are necessary: to collate | a lot of experiences to see what works and what doesn't (and | even those are hard). | lawrjone wrote: | Totally accept this as a critique of the article! | | I think the content is still useful, though. Especially as | it gives some examples of the type of challenge that appear | routinely when scaling a company, and why experience seeing | this before can help you avoid similar mistakes if you ever | start your own thing. | | I'd personally love to see people write competing posts | from other angles, even if they too will be limited by the | author's own experience. | | It would be great to hear what type of stuff you can learn | from working at a large corporation was particularly useful | when starting a company. I'd read that in a heartbeat! | PeterisP wrote: | The needs of a startup are quite different than (and often | conflicting or opposite to) the needs of a stable, large | company. So if you have learned "what good looks like" | elsewhere and have no first-hand experience in a high-growth | environment, then you as a founder may be prone to decisions | that are a poor fit in the context of a startup, which by | definition is a high-growth. Launching an "ordinary" (i.e. non- | high-growth) new business in an established niche will have | much more overlap with previous work experience at some | corporation than trying to get product-market fit for a | startup. | sausagefeet wrote: | Let's take it as a given that the needs of a startup are | different from a stable, large company. That doesn't mean | working at a startup is the best way to learn how to make | your own startup. You could work at a company that is | seriously dysfunctional and learn things you shouldn't. You | could work at a company that just fell into amazing success | and not learn anything that applies to the startup you'll | make. | hnbad wrote: | I think a better framing would be: Want to found a company? Work | at one first. | | Every startup is different. A bootstrapped startup that has to be | cashflow positive from day one is different than one built on an | initial investment. | | Having work experience also means you can better understand if a | startup model is actually appropriate for what you're trying to | build. Startups in the sense that VCs use the term are high risk | high reward and optimize growth for a high ROI exit. This is | great if you want to take the gamble for a chance to retire at | 35, not so great if you just want a fulfilling work life or can't | afford to loose. | | The quickest way to tank a startup is to run out of money, yours | or your investors'. I guess if you want to optimize for outcomes, | the best advice would simply be: Want to found a startup? Be | wealthy. But that doesn't make for a good blog post. | daenz wrote: | I've worked at several startups, but my experience has been that | I've been relatively siloed in my work. Maybe I wasn't taking | advantage of the startup experience, but aside my limited view at | standups, I didn't know how the sausage was made in different | areas of the company. I couldn't see how it all fit together, | because I had an incomplete picture. | lawrjone wrote: | Yeah, this recommendation only works if you can make the most | of opportunities at whichever company you've joined. | | I got lucky, in that GoCardless gave me a load of opportunity | and I grew a lot with the company, which opened more doors. | | Not every company is like this, so that's a significant caveat | to this advice. But ideally you'd find companies that are. | dkyc wrote: | I feel like this article makes valid points, but they don't | necessarily support its conclusion. The question it asks whether | to start a startup or work at another startup first. Yes, working | at a startup and gaining experience will likely improve your | abilities and increase your chances to succeed later. However, so | would starting your own startup. | | The question about working somewhere else is not "is it better | than nothing", but "is it better than starting a startup _now_ ". | It can be equally true that "founders that worked at other | companies before are more likely to succeed" and "the ideal | course of action for a person who wishes to start a successful | startup is to start it now". | lawrjone wrote: | I think the thing about starting your own start-up without | experience seeing what works elsewhere is you're highly | unlikely to avoid making some big mistakes. | | If you've spent time in a growing company and at least seen how | things evolve over the years, you have an idea of what does | work that you can base your first attempts against. | | Trying to come up with novel solutions for everything from | hiring to org structure is a recipe for pain, and I'd invest my | money with a team of people who've experienced good versions of | these things over those with none any day. | dkyc wrote: | I don't doubt that. But you don't have to come up with 'novel | solutions' for everything because you can read books, watch | conference talks, listen to podcasts, read blog posts, by | people who have done it before. Working somewhere will give | you a very close and detailed, but n=1 experience of one | company. | | But I'm biased, as I started my first startup at 16 and | failed, and proceeded to re-try at 18, and succeeded. I'm not | doubting that someone with years of experience in high-growth | startups would have been a better founder than me at 16, but | I do think that starting a startup was a choice that lead me | to startup success faster than trying to get a job and then | attempting. | | _> and I 'd invest my money with a team of people who've | experienced good versions of these things over those with | none any day._ | | This is an absolutely valid (and imo likely correct) | assessment, but it's a different question than "What should | I, as the potential founder or employee, do?". ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-08-31 23:00 UTC)