Employee #1: General Assembly | Hacker News Reader

Employee #1: General Assembly

themacro.com

77 pointscraigcannon7 comments

> Mimi : As a first employee, for better or worse, the thing about joining a startup is that it’s not a meritocracy, right? If you’re disappointed in a decision that’s made, or if you feel the founders aren’t leading the way that you would lead an organization, it can be incredibly frustrating. It’s actually tricky to be a first employee because you identify both with the founders and the employees.

Best line in this series so far. If you are going to be an early employee, make sure you are compensated for this. Even if the structure is "flat" between founders and employees at some point in time, it can always change, and the founders always win.

There is nothing wrong with this, it is their company after all. But this is a huge point of frustration for early employees (something I've experienced and seen experienced by many others), and make sure you price this inevitable frustration in when deciding if you want to take an offer to be an early employee at a startup. If you are an early employee and want to get something big done you'll have to convince the founders, but if the founders want to do something big they don't have to convince you.

Step 1. Befriend the scion of one of America's wealthiest billionaire families.

This comment refers to the Adam Pritzker and the Pritzker family [1].

> Mimi : I met Adam [Pritzker] while I was working at IDEO.

I didn't know about this family but I've visited Chicago enough to be familiar with the Pritzker Pavilion at Millenium Park.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pritzker_family

They seem to have pivoted from running a co-working space to lead generation for lenders.[1]

[1] https://generalassemb.ly/apply/financing-your-education

Sounds like they're finally Making Something People Want. Coworking spaces only seem like a big opportunity to tech industry navel-gazers.

Lending, on the other hand, is the world's third oldest profession (after prostitution and politics).

Coworking has shifted to office lease arbitrage for small companies and large companies. It is no longer about just freelancers. Private offices with some modicum of sound and visual isolation are on the rise (WeWork et al.). Small companies get the flexibility of not being locked into a long-term 5-year lease, with the ability to scale (add desks). Large companies, instead of leasing their own space for a satellite office, can just "take over" a large portion of the desks of a local coworking space. Both get the benefit of sharing common space like lounges/kitchens with others they don't work (breaking out of their bubble).

Wow, before reading an HN comment, never realized to associate Adam Pritzker as being part of the Pritzker family.

Not relevant but I actually work out of the GA Chicago shared space every now and then.

Never thought to connect those dots...just super interesting and impressive. L

This will probably get buried but wonder if GA is in the market for picking up some tech ed bootcamps

Reply on news.ycombinator.com