Comment by keithwhor
6 years ago
I don’t disagree with the spirit of your post. Large tech companies are paying ridiculous salaries and generally speaking we’re in a period of early-stage capital glut.
The point you’ve made — that it makes more sense to just start a company — is directionally correct, but for the most part is a logical fallacy. I hear this from competent, capable people all the time, “I might as well just start my own company rather than work at a startup as an employee.”
The reality is that 0 to 1 is an extremely, extremely difficult hump to overcome and most people intuitively know this. Which is why anybody who says, “I’m better off starting my own company than working at a startup,” especially without startup experience, is likely to never actually do that thing. I’ve never actually seen it, though I’ve seen a number of people go from working at to founding startups.
The real insight here is that it is actually more valuable to found — or be a really early employee at — a successful startup. And so the question becomes: how do you put yourself on track to get a $72k check from Peter Thiel at 23? Take risks, prove your competence and grow your network. That means work at startups.
Sure. I’m (currently) a lucky recipient of survivorship bias. There’s a long way to go and my current state is incomparable to most of the people we look up to and respect as a community. But the key word there is, “survivor.” If you look at the start of my startup career — middling ad tech company in Toronto, eng. lead at a failed Series A SF startup, short stint at a biotech company, turned down by BigCos — none of it looks like it could possibly have been leading anywhere. I just used those opportunities to meet really talented folks who believed in me and, one by one, would end up supporting me down the line. I’m lucky and very grateful for that. Some of the aspects of my journey to date are non-repeatable, and I’ll always give thanks for those moments — but a lot of the lessons I’ve learned can apply to any ambitious young technologist.
Keep at it. If startups aren’t for you, fine, but, again — survivorship bias requires you to survive in the face of insurmountable odds. And it does happen. Startups teach you how to survive. It’s OLN on steroids for careers.
TBH the best way to get a full spectrum startup experience is to go start a startup, like many other things in life.
Working at a startup, other than maybe a 1-2 year maximum stint to get a taste, isn't really useful because a lot is hidden from you even when you start the angel stage. And if you wanted to do the stint, I would probably do it as 1 year of PMing and 1 year of engineering max. If you really wanted the full spectrum experience just incase, then another year at a pre-ipo growth company, another year at a big tech co and another year at a VC to understand the full spectrum life cycle for 5 years.
As a founder, the demands of doing a startup induces you to learn a lot. It forces you to do that networking and making friends part and you will eventually get a mentor network via all your investment activities that will probably be way better than observing from a distance as an IC. Other founder friends you make and friends made at a co-working space doing similar things would give you a lot better experience and a better network.
I joined a smallish startup that grew big, as evidenced above. I mostly just churned on pushing out a lot of code and that's about it. I was part of helping create that 0 to 1 and all it gave me is a bit better work ethic since so much was hidden from me as a jr. The friend I made there that joined really early didn't gain much more insight than me and now works at big tech with me. I learned a bunch just through observation, but I think a founder mentor network would of taught me stuff a lot sooner, and a lot better.
Yes — some execution is hidden, for sure. I, personally, try to be ultra transparent with the team: here’s our bank account, here are deals in-flight, here are the VCs and founders we’re talking to.
The value I aim to provide anybody that works with us is all the things I felt I was missing when I was a startup employee. I wanted to understand how deals happen, what personalities are like, how things work. As we grow I can’t share entirely as much — a piece of minor bad news can hit me pretty hard emotionally and it’s not fair to subject the team to me being upset or a hothead over something that will blow over — but I do try to encourage folks to learn as much as they can.
Even if somebody were to be entirely disinterested in founder-level execution, early employees have a super easy, instant warm introduction to any investor on that company’s cap table downstream. You might not be using that aspect of your startup career yet, but it certainly can help you if you wanted to use it.
You are a much better founder than my founder was, and I'm glad you are. My founder was a good business man, kind of slimy, but effective. And definitely not transparent and gave a pretty employee unfriendly options contract. Again, I was an unwise jr and that experience was years ago now. I was also employee ~50, so I don't know if that was early enough to get real warm intros for investments with people I didn't interact with that much.
TBH the pre-ipo company I went on to next has given me a much better network than the startup I went to as a jr. One coworker direct has started a company that I think will do pretty well, along with a bunch of others who have gone on to VC firms, their own startups and so on.
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> The real insight here is that it is actually more valuable to found — or be a really early employee at — a successful startup.
Sure, and it's more valuable to be holding a winning lottery jackpot ticket than a year's worth of paychecks.
Problem is, most startups aren't successful, and you have to take the risk into account.
>Large tech companies are paying ridiculous salaries and generally speaking we’re in a period of early-stage capital glut.
The salaries are not ridiculous at all. It's the rate the market has decided those workers are worth. If a start up wants to compete they have to change something big because as it currently is I don't see it as rational at all. All the benefits you mention only happen if it works out for you. For nearly all people who try, it's not going to.
Most of the time, startup founders will have been successful elsewhere, or else they’d not have the ability to risk enough to do a startup. That’s why one avoids startups run by executives kids who are “creating” a track record.