COMMENTS
Winner post. No guts no glory. No learning really bad!
Become a sponge. If you're working for a startup more than likely you have the aspirations someday to own your own. Most of the startup CEO's have been around the block and may have several contacts in the industry. Pay attention to these details; you're not just an employee, you're a future startup founder in training!
Jim
http://www.runfatboy.net - Exercise for the rest of us.
" When you want something the whole universe conspires to help you achieve it" -- paulo Coelho - The Alchemist
This so true for someone who wants to work for a startup.
Before you join, ask the difficult, factual questions like "how much cash do you have? how much cash are you burning?" And take projections with an enormous lump of salt.
Why do startups always hide the number of shares outstanding when making offers. They always make you ask for it, which I find to be incredibly insulting. They may as well tell my that I'll get a salary, but not specify how much. I should be a crime to not include number shares outstanding in an offer letter. Given all the equity laws we have, I honely don't know why it isn't.
Sorry for the types, that was written in haste!
Sorry for the typOs, that was written in haste!
"Don’t worry too much about being fired. Most startups need their employees more than the employees need their startup."
I recently lived through that one. I held a job for two days at a small warehouse before the owner proved himself ignorant about how Google works. After insisting that a page would go up in rankings if it contained a word a thousand times and refusing to take my word that they base it on incoming links, he said that I needed to be open to the opinions of others. I asked if that applied to him and he told me to go.
It'll be interesting to see how their web site and IT infrastructure turn out. He talked about how he wanted something polished and simple like an Apple product. To bad he kept on saying that he wanted to duplicate a competitors site which was a typical online store.
Perhaps that should be another point in your post: watch out for the founders who fail to recognize reality.
Abent extraordinary circumstances, don't do startups with academics, much less someone like your grad school professor. Not only are you taking on a subordinate role from the get-go, but things will happen too slowly and too expensively for a startup environment. You have much better chances starting something with fellow students.
Also, I would suggest that (except in high-capital circumstances) you should be able to make a beta version of your product in your free time surrounding a regular job. If you cannot build the basic technology with that amount of time, then you likely won't have the time you need to focus on business aspects even if you quit your job and focus on the startup 100%.
I've rejected every startup that's approached me so far. They all seem to be run by complete amateurs, people who don't understand the technology, the market, or basic business. Add to that the fact that joining a startup is inherently risky since most of them go under, and I'd say any early-stage employee would be well within reason to expect a partner-level position from the get-go.
This article lionizes startups, startup founders and even startup employees to some extent. If you believe this article, you're probably in for a lot of big surprises, disappointments and pain. Other posters have already called out a lot of the problems.
The contents of this list is "what founders wish working for their startup is like".
My start up is just 30 days old today. Our team has average experience of 6 years in top 5 Indian IT companies in areas as diverse as sales, technology, operations, systems design and development.
We have decent sized projects to keep us busy for 6 months and seed fund to keep us kicking
What does our forum members think would attract employees
Business model
Our background and experience
Current Client list
work culture
i know people would evaluate all of these but can there be a single largest factor ?
Amit
Probably "work culture".
People (or at least developers) who join startups often join because they want to be in a certain environment. It can be very superficial: if they have friends that work there, they might work there just to be with their friends. They might work there because they all come from the same ethnic group or went to the same school. Or they might be interested in a particular technology that you are using, like Ruby or .NET. Or you might just be the one who offered them a job when they happened to be looking.
Although there are some savvy (skeptical) job seekers out there who will dive into business concepts or try to negotiate themselves into being a partner, most people join a startup with very little interest or knowledge of the business as a whole. They just look at the pay, look at the job title, maybe look at a coolness factor and then take whatever job comes out on top.
Unless a startup employee has an interest (read: equity) in the company I would not expect them to have the passion, drive and commitment expected from a founder and/or major owner of the company.
Of course working at a startup is very different (perhaps more exciting?) to say being within an IT department at a large bank - which follows on from Dan's comment about the work culture being an attractive factor.
Regards,
Scott
http://www.invoiceplace.com
The comment about always having fun is definitely my favorite, that's something you can really only get in the small atmosphere of a startup.
Great article!
- BIll
Thanks Dan/Scott/Bill
I thank your for your practical views. at this point in time we are 8 founder memebers and the equity is divided between all of us in certain %. at this time we are not looking at someone who wants to come in as partner as now we have left a little aside for a strategic investment later on or at a later stage if we wish to get in a domain or a vertical expert.
but yeah i agree to you guys its probably the culture and the attitude that is most important
14. Go beyond just equity ownership, take emotional ownership. I've done this at past startups, only to find that at the end of the day my emotional ownership and dedication meant less than nothing to the equity-holders calling the shots.
These days, I don't get emotionally involved unless I have a significant equity stake.
"Go beyond just equity ownership, take emotional ownership."
I can see both sides.
From the employer's side, you really appreciate it when an employee cares. As an employer, you can sometimes get a bunker mentality: everybody's against me. So, you can appreciate when an employee says, "I'm not against you; I really care and I'm on your side."
But, from the employee's side, fly on the wall has a point. Lots of employers divide the world into two groups: my friends and people to take advantage of. Emotional involvement is a lot to ask out of an employee and he might still end up in the "people to take advantage of" group. An employee only needs to invest emotionally once or twice and get totally burned to just say, "I'm never emotionally investing ever again."
An emotional investment ending in a disappointment (not to mention a betrayal) literally damages the psyche of the employee. It can literally change the employee's personalities. To suggest that an employee make himself that vulnerable, well, that's something that I find hard to suggest.
That's spot on Dan. If an employee is encouraged/forced to provide excessive unpaid overtime and put under immense pressure to deliver without any or minimal recognition or reward then they are clearly being taken advantage of.
An employee that has worked for a company with this type of culture is likely to leave it with a very distrustful and at times mercenary attitude towards future employers.
Regards,
Scott
http://www.invoiceplace.com
I like point 3 best :)
As for point 11, it should work both ways. Startup employees are also quirky in some ways. So, employers, get used to it!
I agree with most of this list - joining a startup is essentially joining a vision. You're not there purely for the job, your resume, or the cash - but rather the chance to be involved in something exciting and potentially big.
Much better to look back and say "I was a key part of that company and as a side-effect I made a nice tidy sum of cash too", than just saying you were employee no. 1545 for company X.
Be prepared for fun, take some risks, get used to quirky founders, and take a share options and a lower salary - then enjoy the ride!
Go beyond just equity ownership, take emotional ownership.
I would really advise against this particular insight. The others are fine but this leads to burnout when the employee is taken advantage of or feels taken advantage. Sure, there are a few startups where the money and success make the emotional investment worthwhile but the number where the opposite happens is immense. I've been through burnout because I did this when I was younger and it really sucks, quite frankly. It's hard to maintain proper perspective when you're emotionally involved also which I think can cloud judgement. Just be careful.
So I've been surfing blogs looking for advice about joining startups and the main thread seems to be making sure to get equity in the deal but no concrete numbers on exactly how much is a fair amount. If the offer is mostly cash, is 0.5% a microscopic amount? Is asking for 5% or more insane and greedy? Any kind of advice about specifics (if possible) would be immensely useful.
For an employee, 5% is probably the max. To get over 5%, you are probably a co-founder.
Percentages can be highly variable. You might start off with 2% and, three years later, that might only amount of 0.5%. The dilution comes from other employees vesting, additional employees being hired, additional grants to founders, new investors or acquisitons. It is very easy to issue new shares in a corporation; it's all perfectly legal and ordinary.
You might get 5% if you are the very first (not second) employee who joins a company with one founder. If there is more than one founder, the founders are more self-sufficient and can handle more on their own (as well as there being less percentage available because there are more people already). With multiple founders, 2% or so is probably the best that you can expect, if you are there very first hire.
Clueless founders might give way too much in the beginning, although I'm not sure that you want it if the company is clueless. But you might get more than 5% is some cases and it might even work out in the end.
When you are the second or third person (or beyond), less than 1% might be the best that you can do, if there are multiple founders. Also, if you are being paid a decent salary, less than %1 is probably the best that you can do: either they are paying your salary out of investor money so the investors took a big percentage or they are paying you out of their own profit/pocket which means that they find it easier to find good employees while also not needing you as much.
At less than 1%, the percentages become pretty meaningless. 0.5% is obviously better than 0.25% but that's just saying that if the company is sold for $100M, you'll make $500K instead of $250K. At that point, you are hoping to be successful by being a super-long term employee who builds a percentage over time or that the founders become billionaires such that even tiny percentages are worth a lot.
Wow, thanks Dan, that's easily the most practical advice and concrete numbers I've heard so far. I've been weighing the risk/reward ratio of joining a startup and have been put off by the econ/business jargon, this'll go a long way towards making a more informed decision.
It's worth just stressing too that these will probably be "stock options" rather than pure shares. This means that if you leave the company before x number of years, then you will lose those share options. A price will be set on them at the time they are given to you and then you get the "option" to buy them at that same price in the future and hopefully sell them straight away at their greatly increased price (if the company has done well).
Yeah, I've also been learning about other stuff like "liquidation preferences", which means the minimum amount the company has to sell for before non-investors can sell their shares, which also gets into preferred versus common stock. There's a lot to learn but yeah, in general I'm thinking that you have to at least be swayed by the coolness and business potential of the product they're building and then like anywhere else in life, trust that working with good people means you won't get screwed at some critical juncture.
Don't be afraid to walk away... no matter how much time and energy was invested.
Jon
Founder of myfoodcount.com
Free & Anonymous Health Monitoring
Also, there is a lot of pop "Dogma" associated with startups and entrepreneurship. A sort of romanticized view of reality, where success growth increases lockstep with the amount of work put in. This sort of dogma is especially strong with americans, I've found, maybe because of the rise of self-help and business pop psychology dogma books.