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Working at any of the big tech companies gives you zero experience in growing a small company. Startups don't care about Salesforce or Arabic translations befo

Working at any of the big tech companies gives you zero experience in growing a small company. Startups don't care about Salesforce or Arabic translations before they are many years old and have thousands of employees.

dmritard96 8y ago
Agreed for the most part. With that said, startups at the seed and pre-A don't need or care about any of that. Startups with 100M in financing might, although most likely don't care that much either. Skills startups do care about at the early stages - Self management/motivation and independence more generally - 0 to MVP fast, well and affordably - 0 to N customers fast, affordably - etc. There are so many caveats of course. Some startups (ours for instance) builds hardware so you need a few engineers that are truly full stack (plastic forming -> css). Bio startups don't need any of this. The nuances of VATs really don't matter.
- bertil 8y ago
  I would have to disagree: it’s probably different in the US, but I worked for a start-up that decided to go through international expansion (12 countries at once) after Series B: that the CFO knew about nuances of VAT in each country was key to lower the burn rate. I’m seen many people from the companies that I listed, some who joined very early, some who joined after they had more than 100M raised, have the right experience to start a company, or join early. My point is not that those people are essential, or even that their are a majority at big companies; my point is that, with people who can justify several significant failures and success, especially public ones like accelerators and major companies, you have stronger signal, more trust and one could interpret larger rounds as a sign of institutional progress.
  - user5994461 8y ago
    US companies don't need to care about this, that's why their startups are so much more successful. They have a single market with 300 million customers. Don't get me wrong, there are nuances between states and a few subtleties, but it's negligible compared to expanding across European countries or Asia.

dmritard96 8y ago

Agreed for the most part. With that said, startups at the seed and pre-A don't need or care about any of that. Startups with 100M in financing might, although most likely don't care that much either. Skills startups do care about at the early stages - Self management/motivation and independence more generally - 0 to MVP fast, well and affordably - 0 to N customers fast, affordably - etc. There are so many caveats of course. Some startups (ours for instance) builds hardware so you need a few engineers that are truly full stack (plastic forming -> css). Bio startups don't need any of this. The nuances of VATs really don't matter.

bertil 8y ago
I would have to disagree: it’s probably different in the US, but I worked for a start-up that decided to go through international expansion (12 countries at once) after Series B: that the CFO knew about nuances of VAT in each country was key to lower the burn rate. I’m seen many people from the companies that I listed, some who joined very early, some who joined after they had more than 100M raised, have the right experience to start a company, or join early. My point is not that those people are essential, or even that their are a majority at big companies; my point is that, with people who can justify several significant failures and success, especially public ones like accelerators and major companies, you have stronger signal, more trust and one could interpret larger rounds as a sign of institutional progress.
- user5994461 8y ago
  US companies don't need to care about this, that's why their startups are so much more successful. They have a single market with 300 million customers. Don't get me wrong, there are nuances between states and a few subtleties, but it's negligible compared to expanding across European countries or Asia.