I’ve spent my entire career at startup companies.
They have been a proving ground where I have been able to test myself, push the limits of what I am capable of, and be shaped by some incredible mentors. I don’t recommend that everyone work at startup companies, but I do think that technology-focused companies are reshaping the way most companies think about jobs, about hiring, and about marketable skills.
I recommend that people spend some time working at technology-focused companies, if not early stage startups themselves because there is so much you can learn and so many ways you get to grow in the process.
This is an incomplete list, but here are 7 ways that startups will shape you (for the better) as a human being.
1. Your ability to advance is limited only by your effort.
One of the biggest problems I have with large companies is that they often have a very rigid structure, and it can be very difficult to advance outside of rigid performance reviews, standardized raises, and a whole bunch of other things.
A large company, by definition, is very efficient and systematized. The systematization usually includes how they give raises and promotions. What this means is that in many cases they will offer you both only at regular intervals and without regard for how hard you might be working, ignoring additional compensation if you’ve had an outsized impact on the success of the company. You’ll need to wait a year (or two) in order to get a 5% raise, which may or may not even be keeping up with inflation. Promotions are often simply based on tenure at the company rather than merit or impact.
Startups, on the other hand, are directly incentivized to give raises and promotions based on the impact of the company.
Think about it. Startups are companies that have started from absolutely nothing and need to grow into a large, profitable company as quickly as possible (before they run out of money). Every employee has to make a difference in order for the startup to grow, quickly enough and so the best startup founders know to incentivize their employees well and give them opportunities to advance. This aligns the goals of the startup (profitable growth) with the goals of each employee (experience, money, title, etc).
This means that when you join a startup, your ability to be promoted is based on your ability to help the company acquire more customers, to save money, and to lead others in the organization. It’s always obvious who is pulling their weight vs. not doing the work, and the good thing about startups is that there is always more work you can do to make a difference to your boss.
My personal recommendation is as follows. If you’re working at an early stage startup, 35 employees or fewer, work as closely to the CEO as possible. If the company is larger than that, you may not have access to the CEO, and in that case you want to work with an executive who has pull in the organization.
The next step is to make a massive impact in an area that they care about. Executives, and the CEO in particular, have massive power to award more money as they see fit, and they want to keep top performing people incentivized to keep doing good work for the company. The harder you work, and the more effort you put in, the better the company will perform.
2. You get access to incredible mentors and experience that you wouldn’t otherwise.
I was fresh out of college at one of my first startups. I graduated with zero business experience from my education (because I made the decision to focus on writing) and I was learning business as I went. But at this company I worked incredibly closely with both founders, both of whom were startup veterans.
The CEO had started and sold 3 companies before this one, and didn’t need to work anymore. He was starting this company because he loved building businesses, and he wanted to leverage his experience to build one final company. Working closely with him for two years taught me more about business than I could have learned otherwise.
At the next startup, my desk was right next to the President of our US operations (the startup was based out of New Zealand). He was a veteran from Intuit and Mint.com, and is one of the most successful startup executives in Silicon Valley. Because we were in a small office at a small company, he didn’t have his own office and I got to sit next to him every day to listen to him on calls, get his input on things I was working on. We developed a close relationship, and he is still a mentor of mine. For example, he gave me feedback on a book I recently published.
These stories aren’t unique to me.
The people who are starting tech companies tend to have a wealth of experience from previous companies. This is true at larger companies, but you get less access to these veterans because there are layers of other people between you, as a newbie, and those people. It does you less good to have amazing people in an organization, but have minimal access to them. Being part of a larger, successful organization will give you forward momentum in your career that you’ll be able to leverage to get better and better jobs.
But I still advocate for working at smaller companies where you have access to the men and women entrepreneurs building something from scratch. If you can spend time around them every day, work alongside them, and get their input on your projects you’ll be able to model their successful behavior and apply it directly to your work.
3. Almost everyone starts with little experience, get a job based on hustle, and gain more experience in 2 years than you could in 5 almost anywhere else.
One of the biggest gifts the world will give us is an opportunity to rise to the occasion. When the world offers you an opportunity that you’re not quite ready for, it’s presenting you with a golden opportunity to step up, work your ass off, and learn everything you need to in order to fill these bigger shoes and crush the gig.
At every startup job I’ve worked, I’ve been hired for a role that I didn’t quite know how to do, and the expectation was that I would grow into it. I never really shy away from a challenge, so I seek those situations out where I have to sink or swim.
Startups are goldmines of opportunity for you to step into a role you aren’t prepared for because they may not be able to compete with a larger company in terms of perks, which means they are more open to hiring people who show potential, but haven’t had the opportunity to prove it yet.
These companies will hire you not because you have done the exact work before, but instead they will place a bet on your raw athleticism. Just like a gifted athlete will blossom under a rigorous training regimen, startups want to see you rise to the occasion as an employee of the company. And, after all, the startup is a bit of a bet as well. It only makes sense that they’d place a few careful bets on someone like you.
Startups give you plenty of opportunities to rise to the occasion.
There is basically infinite work to be done at a startup, so everyone does all the jobs at one point or another. You can take this opportunity to be proactive. Find something that needs doing, and suggest it to your boss. “Hey, what if I took some time this weekend to straighten out how we do lead scoring inside of our CRM?” Then go off, do a great job, and you have one more useful thing to put on your resume.
The trick here is to spend some time reflecting on what you want to learn how to do, or what you need to balance out on your resume, identify a place in the company where you can do that work, and then create your own opportunity to do it.
This is more proactive than most people are used to being about work. You can’t phone in your startup job. So when you step up to do more work, you automatically stand on a higher plane than the rest of your peers.
4. Tech skills and operating like a startup are transferable anywhere these days.
This point is incredibly pragmatic.
When you work at a tech startup, you automatically become more technical. Many people learn some front-end coding for the first time, and others learn how to have a cogent conversation about what an API is. Ten years ago, those skills were more niche and less transferable once you got out of startup land. But now, the entire business world is looking to startups for how they operate, how they leverage technology, and the way startups have mastered the art of moving quickly.
For example, many large companies now have incubators for early stage startup companies so that the innovation, experimentation, and culture of these startups can make its way into the larger corporation. Rackspace, Dell, Google, and Oracle are all massive companies that foster startups because they know that the things that are learned at startups have an outsized impact on their business and employees.
Spending a couple of years at a startup will inject that potent startup DNA into your career. You’ll embody concepts like moving fast, learning how to iterate your way to perfection, comfort with ambiguity, and confidence that there is always an answer to be found. You’ll be able to leverage your tech skills and add that element of startup DNA at every company you work at in the future. As a result, you’ll add much greater value to those companies, and you’ll command more money in the process.
5. Startups are an adrenaline rush.
You know how people are usually really bored going to work at their jobs? They gotta dress up like a drone, show up by 8:30 every morning, climb into a beige cubicle, and then waste away under fluorescent lights, counting the hours until 4:30 on Friday so they can sneak out early and hit the bar.
Startups aren’t really like that.
Startups are way more of a grind and a rush. Startups are a battle to build the business quickly, to satisfy your customers, to get a new product out the door, and to survive. There are times when that’s a pure grind and you’re up at all hours of night to get something out the door. But those times are incredibly worth it when you launch the new product or get the new campaign live or you close a big customer.
In every product launch and every sales call, there is a certain life or death element the startup is playing with. If you can’t get the product live in time, you’ll start losing customers. If you don’t close this big customer before the end of the month, the company may be in trouble financially.
The media right now is glorifying the cush lives of startup workers, but this portrayal of free lunch and laundry service on top of a 6-figure salary isn’t really accurate for 99% of startup companies. Yes, there are companies that have made it big have earned the right to live large. Those are much later-stage companies that have, in many ways, ceased to be startups and are enjoying the fruits of very profitable success.
But for the rest of the startups, every day has an element of life and death to it, and you get to be in the driver’s seat, making decisions and doing work that will have an impact on whether or not the startup lives or dies.
So dig in and enjoy the rush.
6. Startups are trial by fire.
You’ll learn how you perform under adversity.
These intense, adrenaline-laced situations inside of a startup really are often a do or die situation. Because the company is fighting to grow or die, everyone in the organization is being put to the test almost every single day. And everyone has the same two options: to cave in to the pressure or to dig deep, find some strength you didn’t know you have, and pull out a win against all the odds.
In particular, men need to be put to the test to see how much we can endure and how strong we are. We fight as kids to establish a pecking order. We compete as a way to grow stronger and more resilient.
Startups give us a training ground where we can go every day and see how we perform under adversity. There will be those days of insane pressure and adrenaline and each of those moments will be asking us tough questions.
“Do you have what it takes to make it?”
“Are you going to dig deep and find what it takes to get this work done, or are you going to roll over and give up?”
That’s the point when we have the opportunity to stare that adversity in the face, square our shoulders and say in response, “Is that all you’ve got?”
In our very comfortable modern world, we don’t often get the opportunity to really put ourselves to the test, but it’s essential for us to really know who we are. We can live our lives picking up our food at the grocery store, getting our coffee at Starbucks, and never really going without a meal, or knowing how hard we could push ourselves. Our modern world has solved so many problems that we don’t get as many opportunities to see what we are made of unless we create them.
Startups are an incredible place for us to stress test ourselves and come out the other side with the confidence and swagger of someone who knows their own limits and knows what they’re capable of.
7. Startups are an opportunity to make a dent in the world.
There’s this Steve Jobs quote that everyone likes to reference about how he wanted to make a dent in the universe with Apple Computers, and how he would be unsatisfied until he had done something so massive that you could literally call it a dent in the universe.
That’s an insane thing to say, and it’s incredible that one man thought he could do something so massive that the universe itself would have a dent in it. But man, that is an incredibly empowering way to look at your life. Your purpose is to make a dent in the universe.
But that’s still a bit high-minded, and I’m not Steve Jobs, and you aren’t either (or are you?). So let’s back his quote down just a little bit so it’s a bit more accessible.
Every creator, whether that’s an artist or an entrepreneur or a parent, brings something new into the world. By the mere act of creation, they indelibly change the world.
When a new business is started, the world becomes a better place because that business will provide products and services for people to use. Jobs and wealth are created. The pie is a bit bigger, and there is a bit more to go around.
For example, I write because I want to change the way people think about themselves and their lives for the better. I want people who read my words to feel encouraged, empowered, and confident that they have what it takes to take a risk.
The act of creation changes the world, one person at a time, whether you’re Steve Jobs and Apple Computers or you’re an entrepreneur opening up a coffee shop in your neighborhood.
Startups are designed to be high-impact businesses that change how something is done, and make that change at scale. A successful startup company can have millions of users, or it can transform the way that business is done. And the the fingerprints of startup companies are all around us.
As I write these words, I’m listening to heavy metal on Spotify. Spotify is a startup that wants to change the way that people listen to music, and wants to transform the corrupt way that the recording industry compensates their artists.
Another example is Uber. By now, most of us have gotten a ride in an Uber, which has transformed the way that people get rides in cities across the globe.
At this point in history, I believe startup companies are better at effecting change than nonprofits or political action. They move faster and have stronger motivations to actually transform the way that business is done because it’s life and death. If the startup isn’t successful, they go out of business.
What’s more, is startups train you to think about adding value and creation in a way that most of us weren’t taught in school. Creation becomes a way of life for people working in startups, and startup people often go on to add value and change the world in a way that people who take safer careers often never will.
Startups are a training ground for you to become an incredible creator.
Go forth, jump in, and take a big risk on a startup, and take a risk on yourself.
Tell them Austin sent you.
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Photo: Flickr/Hugh Mason