5 ms·
This is mostly accurate but it misses one essential point. And so do many of the responses here. One of the reasons to work at a startup is to get a lot of resp
by geophile 5y ago
This is mostly accurate but it misses one essential point. And so do many of the responses here. One of the reasons to work at a startup is to get a lot of responsibility for something interesting to you, the sort of thing that wouldn't come your way outside of a startup, for a long time, or maybe ever. The point in the article that comes closest to identifying this regards "calling", but that's not the same thing.
I am 64, and worked in many startups, from 1988 through 2013. My main criteria for evaulating a startup were interesting work, and potential financial reward. I would also try to avoid companies whose business model didn't make sense to me. This worked out pretty well. I started out on an academic path, went to an industrial research lab in the 80s, and this led me to the startup world, where some ideas in software research were used as the basis of innovative products. I wasn't comfortable as a pure academic, and I loved writing software, so this was the right path for me.
At each new company, my thought was: if the business fails, at least I've had fun and worked on interesting software. And this often worked out very well:
- Startup 1: The company was building an innovative product, really a new category of software. I was given responsibility for one huge part of it, and this was my first job ever in which I was being paid to create software (as opposed to research). The company had a modest IPO. Nice payout. In my last couple of years, I started a new project which was rejected by the company. But this led to ...
- Startup 2: I took a summer off, built software based on my ideas, and merged with a startup that had complementary ideas. We needed each other. So much fun. This company was acquired toward the end of the dotcom bubble. Nice payout.
- Startup 3: Post bubble explosion, my choices were a consumer startup or interesting tech at a non-startup. I chose the consumer startup. Pretty dull, although fascinating from a sociological point of view. I left when I got bored and tech startups were happening again. Minor payout a few years later when they were acquired.
- Startup 4: My favorite. Fascinating project, three key pieces, I built one of them. I also really enjoyed building the tools to support the development and troubleshooting work. Acquired by a huge company. Nice payout.
- Startup 5: Really interesting idea. I loved the idea so much that I missed the fact it should have been a feature of a product, not a product by itself. Oops.
- raspasov 5y agoThis! My guess is this is more wealth and range of experience than 99% of the people on this forum. I encourage everyone to read this comment.
- mycologos 5y agoIt's a nice comment with an interesting point of view, but the "range of experience" is somewhat limited by the fact that their first four startup experiences ended in four "nice payouts", which is an amazing and atypical track record.
- johnrob 5y agoWorth noting that this is an exceptional track record - 4 of 5 startups with a paying acquisition. Great story, but it’s not likely the normal result of doing 5 startups :)
- geophile 5y agoI am aware of that. I was extremely lucky.
- throwaway212722 5y agoThroaway for obvious reasons. Sharing my journey: Startup 1: joined as the first employee pretty much straight out of school. Talked to potential customers, worked on the product and overall learned lot about startups. Modest low exit some years after I left. No payout. (Europe, so not common to have equity back in the day). Startup 2: joined the founding team of a gaming startup. The company flopped. Built and learned a lot. Startup 3: started my own company, moved to US, raised funding etc. Learned a lot, we had to shut it down after couple of years as failed to grow the business and didn't see a way to pivot. Returned remaining funds to the investors. Startup 4: joined another startup. One of the first 20 employees. Build a lot, learned lot. Exercised the stock when I left. The company IPOd 6 years later. $50M payout. I had early exercised some stock so some of it was federally tax free under QSBS. Startup 5: Joined pre-IPO FAANG, got a decent salary. Learned a lot of about politics and presenting to execs. Honed my own craft and skills on the company time. $3M payout from RSU which more than half went to taxes as ordinary income. Anyway, been lucky with two of my last companies, but I would say the earlier startups gave me skills and confidence to operate in the level I needed. I think FAANG is nice place to make $1-2M over some years but it’s unlikely to make $10M or more. In all my jobs there were some crunch times every now and them, but I never worked 100 hours or over the weekend consistently. After being a founder I did realize that you don’t have to work that hard for other companies. Startup outcomes are uncertain but you can definitely affect them by choosing the right companies. If anything else, you will learn a lot likely. Time moves faster in startups, so few years in a startup might be like 5 years at FAANG, and you actually learn to build things instead of sit in meetings.