8 ms·

My own experience is that the big risk that I did not account for, as a founder without venture backing, is that you become ramen profitable and just sit there

by lsc 10y ago

My own experience is that the big risk that I did not account for, as a founder without venture backing, is that you become ramen profitable and just sit there for a decade. This is hugely destructive for the founder in question. If you don't have vc baking and you don't sell to a big name? Looking for a job after running a business with a gross of a few hundred thousand a year is just not the same as looking for a job after working for one of the big valley companies. I mean I exaggerate and say that employers treat me like I was unemployed, and it is not that bad, but compared to working for large companies with reputations for hiring good people, running an unfunded, ramen profitable company looks pretty bad on your resume. I would argue that vc mitigates a lot of these risks. First, you have a name, a reputation to put on your reputation. Second, the bit about get big or get dead? In many cases, that is as good for the founder as for the vc. You are way less likely to end up starting your career over when the thing fails, both because of the reputation factor and because either you got big (which is good for the career even if the company gets dead before you can cash out) or you got dead fairly quickly, and have less time to explain away.

jbooth 10y ago
That's just tech companies being stupid, insular and cargo-culty with who they hire. Someone with business experience, who can prioritize effectively with an eye to the big picture, is way more valuable than someone who figured out the n log n solution to the stupid whiteboard question in 20 minutes. We're not working 20 minute days, here.
- lsc 10y ago
  The first business lesson? Things are are worth what people will pay for them. And really, the business skills you need to run a small business that doesn't really do sales do not have a lot of overlap with the business skills that large companies want or need in their technical workforce.
  - jbooth 10y ago
    Well, I haven't run a small business, but I've been astounded by the number of very sharp engineers I've run into over the years who are completely myopic about the business impact of their activity. From not having internalized basic microecon fundamentals to being willfully ignorant as long as they get to work on their pet technology. Small business owners, presumably, have both of those lessons pretty well internalized, in addition to a certain "just get it frickin done" attitude towards things that need to be done. The super-advanced algo-writing skills that we in the industry screen for, conversely, come up as a real-world requirement far less commonly, and you can poll the whole office for opinions when they do, because everyone's excited to see an actual nifty problem.
    - lsc 10y ago
      eh, I dunno. I think that as a technical person? trying to change things based on "business impact" or based on micro fundamentals is probably going to cause more problems for the company than just doing what I'm told. (At the very least, it's going to cause a lot more problems for my career.) - I mean, one would hope that the big company could afford to hire a businessperson who could more than just eek by. I do think that experience of managing people has made me a better employee, even if maybe I'm not ready to really be a manager again yet. I've got a lot more empathy for the boss than I did before starting this. I've been a bad boss, and I know what leads to those bad boss behaviors, and it's not maliciousness. Managing people is just hard. And there is a bigger picture that you don't see as an employee. I now can accept that when the boss asks me to do something a stupid way, if the boss still tells me to do it that way after I explain why I think it's stupid, well, sometimes there are other issues outside the boss' control that make the stupid way the only way. If anything, running my own company has made me way better at 'staying in the box' when necessary. Or, at least, it has convinced me that there are times that I ought to stay in the box.
    - tedmiston 10y ago
      > "just get it frickin done" attitude Jessica Livingston, in a recent interview with Sam Altman [0], said that she believes determination is the #1 trait for startup founder success (over intelligence etc). I don't think it's a stretch to say the same applies to very early employees. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFOC-cgIWaY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFOC-cgIWaY
- loeber 10y ago
  Unless you're interviewing at a three-person startup, the company doesn't need your business experience, sales knowledge, or whatever else. That's what managers are hired for. $BIGCO gives you a whiteboarding interview because they're hiring you for your engineering skills, nothing else. The managers are usually better than you at corporate strategy and big-picture thinking. If not, why are you applying to be an engineer? It took me a long time to understand this, too. It might be true that you're e.g. a good designer, but you're being hired as an engineer, so they want you to focus specifically on engineering. Why? Because that's the domain in which you offer the greatest marginal returns to the company. There's a virtually limitless amount of engineering to be done, and a limited number of hours in the day. Priorities.
  - ryandrake 10y ago
    Exactly. I also used to think that rounding out my technical skills with business knowledge, basic design skills, project management skills, etc. would make me more "marketable". Unfortunately, the reality is that companies by and large look to hire extremely specialized cogs, and your value to your employer is your ability to execute within the narrow constraints of your job title. You could be a self-taught product design genius, but if you're hired as 3rd software engineer from the left, your company expects you to sit there and code away. They aren't going to listen to your design thoughts. You could be the ex-founder of a billion dollar startup, but once you take $ROLE_X in $COMPANY_Y, your broad set of skills will not be appreciated. You're going to be judged by how well you do $ROLE_X only.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - jbooth 10y ago
    Unless you're being micromanaged to an incredible degree, there's still a lot of room for an engineer's discretion on how things are implemented. That's where "getting it" can play into making better decisions. I'm not talking about moonlighting doing the design or PM work, I'm talking about bringing an understanding of the business to your engineering work. And yes, you don't want to go complete cowboy, major decisions should be run up the chain, but you do need to know what and why the major decisions are.
orthoganol 10y ago
I think if you're so concerned about how you look on paper you should not be launching startups. Although some might argue that starting a startup has become a semi-established career path in itself, which I have mixed feelings about, and I suppose in that case it could be thought of in terms of typical career moves. Also, a few hundred k/year in gross can get you a lot of very expensive ramen. That's probably more than most devs make at FB or Twitter.
- lsc 10y ago
  I think you are confusing gross and net, either that or you think employees and data centers are free. Or maybe not.. There certainly was enough left over to eat, but it ends up being dramatically less than what a real company around here pays. Perhaps it is valid to call me out for complaining about a salary that is pretty normal for most us households, but I suppose I don't really know how to respond. I mentioned gross rather than net or my own take home because it speaks to the size of the company, which is important, I think, in the context of getting the next job.
- lsc 10y ago
  My concern for how I look, as you say, on paper largely has to do with career options. If you find that shallow, that is your right, but personally, I think it is important to talk about the risks inherent in this sort of thing. This career downside is not one of the risks I anticipated when I went into this.
  - jtrtoo 10y ago
    How were you handling sales, relationships building, market/MVP feedback, lead nurturing, and marketing in your business? And what happened with your business? Were you left with no connections, relationships, and reputation of results to leverage to your next "thing" (I.e. new career path, consulting gigs, resume material)? Even if your startup / bootstrapped / micro-enterprise failed, you got tired of it, or the market shifted, you don't get to a few hundred K in revenue in a solo/micro operation without having some results, reputation, and relationships to stand on when you walk away. At least not in any situation I can think of. I don't know you, but I'm wondering if this is more about your perception being off about what's making this next step (i.e. interviews and selling yourself) challenging for you. If it is off, maybe you're overlooking something else that is really the root cause of it, preventing you from addressing it or even asking the right questions of yourself or the community.
sopooneo 10y ago
I had this exact same experience. Eking along is a very real possibility that I rarely see discussed.
- visakanv 10y ago
  My perhaps-naive response to anybody in this situation would be: you should always be building relationships with people who'd be happy to hire you at a moment's notice. To do that, you'll want to be able to talk about things you've achieved. Network with your community, give talks, etc. Get known as the person who can build things, or get customers, and you should be getting job offers. If you're quietly working on your own thing and nobody knows or cares about you, then yeah you're going to struggle to get a job afterwards. But if you're known as a person who gets stuff done, you should be able to get a job at least at a venture-funded startup, I believe.
  - jtrtoo 10y ago
    This a thousand times. If you're an introvert like me, it might require some creativity to find compatible ways to do this, but so this.
    - hkmurakami 10y ago
      Proactively meet friends of friends. Don't say no to gatherings of friends of friends where you're likely to meet people in your industry (bbqs,dinner gatherings, game nights, book clubs, hiking outings, etc.). Don't go to "networking events". Keep it as close to your natural habitat as possible.
replicatorblog 10y ago
This is a great comment—I work for the author's firm, would love to learn from your experience if you're game. If you're willing to talk, reach out at joeflaherty@foundercollective.com
tlogan 10y ago
The same problem here. This is about discipline (which was imposed by VC). If you see that you are not growing toward your goal (maybe to be have $500K/year salary or something like that), then you need to move on. In short, zombies can walk but they are still dead. Regarding "not looking good on paper" - that is probably because you are looking for wrong jobs: managers in big companies do want to hire people who ran their business before. It does not really matter if you are VC or not-VC funded: you are "trouble maker".
- lsc 10y ago
  >Regarding "not looking good on paper" - that is probably because you are looking for wrong jobs: managers in big companies do want to hire people who ran their business before. It does not really matter if you are VC or not-VC funded: you are "trouble maker". But from what I've seen, if you are primarily technical, large companies pay vastly more than smaller companies... so I guess I don't really see what that changes, other than the idea that if you are right, even being more successful would not have helped me.
  - tlogan 10y ago
    If you are technical and applying to technical position then large companies will consider your entrepreneurship as a liability. On the other hand, many large companies will consider your entrepreneurship as a great plus if applying for leadership / management positions.
thr0waway1239 10y ago
What would you have done differently looking back, if you were insistent on starting your own venture and didn't want to take VC?
- lsc 10y ago
  I would not be so jealous with ownership. I actually turned down investment from people I should have pursued as partners.

by lsc 10y ago

jbooth 10y ago

That's just tech companies being stupid, insular and cargo-culty with who they hire. Someone with business experience, who can prioritize effectively with an eye to the big picture, is way more valuable than someone who figured out the n log n solution to the stupid whiteboard question in 20 minutes. We're not working 20 minute days, here.

lsc 10y ago
The first business lesson? Things are are worth what people will pay for them. And really, the business skills you need to run a small business that doesn't really do sales do not have a lot of overlap with the business skills that large companies want or need in their technical workforce.
- jbooth 10y ago
  Well, I haven't run a small business, but I've been astounded by the number of very sharp engineers I've run into over the years who are completely myopic about the business impact of their activity. From not having internalized basic microecon fundamentals to being willfully ignorant as long as they get to work on their pet technology. Small business owners, presumably, have both of those lessons pretty well internalized, in addition to a certain "just get it frickin done" attitude towards things that need to be done. The super-advanced algo-writing skills that we in the industry screen for, conversely, come up as a real-world requirement far less commonly, and you can poll the whole office for opinions when they do, because everyone's excited to see an actual nifty problem.
  - lsc 10y ago
    eh, I dunno. I think that as a technical person? trying to change things based on "business impact" or based on micro fundamentals is probably going to cause more problems for the company than just doing what I'm told. (At the very least, it's going to cause a lot more problems for my career.) - I mean, one would hope that the big company could afford to hire a businessperson who could more than just eek by. I do think that experience of managing people has made me a better employee, even if maybe I'm not ready to really be a manager again yet. I've got a lot more empathy for the boss than I did before starting this. I've been a bad boss, and I know what leads to those bad boss behaviors, and it's not maliciousness. Managing people is just hard. And there is a bigger picture that you don't see as an employee. I now can accept that when the boss asks me to do something a stupid way, if the boss still tells me to do it that way after I explain why I think it's stupid, well, sometimes there are other issues outside the boss' control that make the stupid way the only way. If anything, running my own company has made me way better at 'staying in the box' when necessary. Or, at least, it has convinced me that there are times that I ought to stay in the box.
  - tedmiston 10y ago
    > "just get it frickin done" attitude Jessica Livingston, in a recent interview with Sam Altman [0], said that she believes determination is the #1 trait for startup founder success (over intelligence etc). I don't think it's a stretch to say the same applies to very early employees. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFOC-cgIWaY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFOC-cgIWaY
loeber 10y ago
Unless you're interviewing at a three-person startup, the company doesn't need your business experience, sales knowledge, or whatever else. That's what managers are hired for. $BIGCO gives you a whiteboarding interview because they're hiring you for your engineering skills, nothing else. The managers are usually better than you at corporate strategy and big-picture thinking. If not, why are you applying to be an engineer? It took me a long time to understand this, too. It might be true that you're e.g. a good designer, but you're being hired as an engineer, so they want you to focus specifically on engineering. Why? Because that's the domain in which you offer the greatest marginal returns to the company. There's a virtually limitless amount of engineering to be done, and a limited number of hours in the day. Priorities.
- ryandrake 10y ago
  Exactly. I also used to think that rounding out my technical skills with business knowledge, basic design skills, project management skills, etc. would make me more "marketable". Unfortunately, the reality is that companies by and large look to hire extremely specialized cogs, and your value to your employer is your ability to execute within the narrow constraints of your job title. You could be a self-taught product design genius, but if you're hired as 3rd software engineer from the left, your company expects you to sit there and code away. They aren't going to listen to your design thoughts. You could be the ex-founder of a billion dollar startup, but once you take $ROLE_X in $COMPANY_Y, your broad set of skills will not be appreciated. You're going to be judged by how well you do $ROLE_X only.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- jbooth 10y ago
  Unless you're being micromanaged to an incredible degree, there's still a lot of room for an engineer's discretion on how things are implemented. That's where "getting it" can play into making better decisions. I'm not talking about moonlighting doing the design or PM work, I'm talking about bringing an understanding of the business to your engineering work. And yes, you don't want to go complete cowboy, major decisions should be run up the chain, but you do need to know what and why the major decisions are.

orthoganol 10y ago

I think if you're so concerned about how you look on paper you should not be launching startups. Although some might argue that starting a startup has become a semi-established career path in itself, which I have mixed feelings about, and I suppose in that case it could be thought of in terms of typical career moves. Also, a few hundred k/year in gross can get you a lot of very expensive ramen. That's probably more than most devs make at FB or Twitter.

lsc 10y ago
I think you are confusing gross and net, either that or you think employees and data centers are free. Or maybe not.. There certainly was enough left over to eat, but it ends up being dramatically less than what a real company around here pays. Perhaps it is valid to call me out for complaining about a salary that is pretty normal for most us households, but I suppose I don't really know how to respond. I mentioned gross rather than net or my own take home because it speaks to the size of the company, which is important, I think, in the context of getting the next job.
lsc 10y ago
My concern for how I look, as you say, on paper largely has to do with career options. If you find that shallow, that is your right, but personally, I think it is important to talk about the risks inherent in this sort of thing. This career downside is not one of the risks I anticipated when I went into this.
- jtrtoo 10y ago
  How were you handling sales, relationships building, market/MVP feedback, lead nurturing, and marketing in your business? And what happened with your business? Were you left with no connections, relationships, and reputation of results to leverage to your next "thing" (I.e. new career path, consulting gigs, resume material)? Even if your startup / bootstrapped / micro-enterprise failed, you got tired of it, or the market shifted, you don't get to a few hundred K in revenue in a solo/micro operation without having some results, reputation, and relationships to stand on when you walk away. At least not in any situation I can think of. I don't know you, but I'm wondering if this is more about your perception being off about what's making this next step (i.e. interviews and selling yourself) challenging for you. If it is off, maybe you're overlooking something else that is really the root cause of it, preventing you from addressing it or even asking the right questions of yourself or the community.

sopooneo 10y ago

I had this exact same experience. Eking along is a very real possibility that I rarely see discussed.

visakanv 10y ago
My perhaps-naive response to anybody in this situation would be: you should always be building relationships with people who'd be happy to hire you at a moment's notice. To do that, you'll want to be able to talk about things you've achieved. Network with your community, give talks, etc. Get known as the person who can build things, or get customers, and you should be getting job offers. If you're quietly working on your own thing and nobody knows or cares about you, then yeah you're going to struggle to get a job afterwards. But if you're known as a person who gets stuff done, you should be able to get a job at least at a venture-funded startup, I believe.
- jtrtoo 10y ago
  This a thousand times. If you're an introvert like me, it might require some creativity to find compatible ways to do this, but so this.
  - hkmurakami 10y ago
    Proactively meet friends of friends. Don't say no to gatherings of friends of friends where you're likely to meet people in your industry (bbqs,dinner gatherings, game nights, book clubs, hiking outings, etc.). Don't go to "networking events". Keep it as close to your natural habitat as possible.

replicatorblog 10y ago

This is a great comment—I work for the author's firm, would love to learn from your experience if you're game. If you're willing to talk, reach out at joeflaherty@foundercollective.com

tlogan 10y ago

The same problem here. This is about discipline (which was imposed by VC). If you see that you are not growing toward your goal (maybe to be have $500K/year salary or something like that), then you need to move on. In short, zombies can walk but they are still dead. Regarding "not looking good on paper" - that is probably because you are looking for wrong jobs: managers in big companies do want to hire people who ran their business before. It does not really matter if you are VC or not-VC funded: you are "trouble maker".

lsc 10y ago
>Regarding "not looking good on paper" - that is probably because you are looking for wrong jobs: managers in big companies do want to hire people who ran their business before. It does not really matter if you are VC or not-VC funded: you are "trouble maker". But from what I've seen, if you are primarily technical, large companies pay vastly more than smaller companies... so I guess I don't really see what that changes, other than the idea that if you are right, even being more successful would not have helped me.
- tlogan 10y ago
  If you are technical and applying to technical position then large companies will consider your entrepreneurship as a liability. On the other hand, many large companies will consider your entrepreneurship as a great plus if applying for leadership / management positions.

thr0waway1239 10y ago

What would you have done differently looking back, if you were insistent on starting your own venture and didn't want to take VC?

lsc 10y ago
I would not be so jealous with ownership. I actually turned down investment from people I should have pursued as partners.