The ideal startup career path | Hacker News Reader

The ideal startup career path

cdixon.org

38 pointstomh-8 comments

In todays time there is no guarantee anywhere so why not pursue your dream.If your dream is to work in a startup, create something that is used by millions then there is no point holding back.last year has shown that even elephants can collapse.False sense of security that was provided by bigger companies is no longer there. I do agree though that for many people money is a driving factor and there is nothing wrong with that.One thing is there atleast in a startup there is hope that you can make big some time.Also based on your skills if the startup collapses you can always get a new job if you want to shift back then why not try.

It is true that most early startup employee will not become financially independent if/when the startup sells.

However, if you take away this dream, I suspect a lot of non-founding, startup employees would not risk leaving a stable job to work at a startup. They know they're too risk adverse to startup their own company, they're not interested in being mentored or eventually funded, and they prefer stability over excitement.

What leads them to working at a startup is the promise of making it big someday, maybe they know people who have done it. Or read about it.

I'm not really judging this, but more so just pointing out what I've seen. I am not recommending that you, as a founder, lie or deceive them,. However, the truth is that if you take away their hopes and dreams (and people can be very imaginative), you'll have a much smaller talent pool to choose from.

We actually tell people this, and work through a few example exits to educate them on what it would mean for them financially. Then we tell them that we'll have a great time working with unbelievably excellent people on a supremely meaningful problem, that they get a better education in how startups work that anywhere else, and that they'll actually be paid pretty well for it. And then we tell them that big companies are impersonal, and routinely fire great contributors for stupid reasons, and that if we go out of business the founding team will personally work our utmost to find our employees good jobs.

It does convince people, most of the time. More importantly I think I sets the right tone for our relationship going forward. This is not a big company. Startups are a family.

That's great to hear, and it sounds like that's helping build a strong, honest culture.

What bothers me are when I see good, capable people who stay with a sinking ship only because they're holding onto hope. I feel like some startups exploit that hope in a negative way. I don't know how often this happens, but I have seen it a couple times.

As student I joined a startup which has shown me a lot of insight which will definitely useful in case I ever join another one. I can also recommend joining startups which operate in slightly different industries to get a broader understanding of different aspects of a startup.

So when is one too considered too old to begin a startup company? Do most folks consider a 30-year old to be a bad fit for his first startup job?

Adobe was started by their founders when they were in their fiftees. KFC was founded by the founder when he had retired. It is never too late to pursue your dream.

The founders of LightSail were 20, 54 and 52. We've mad ea ton of progress and raised VC funding. We all work our butts off. We're going to fix the electrical grid, and we're going to make it green.

If there are hard limits I haven't seen them.

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