Joining a Startup Out of College is Hard (A Solution) | Hacker News Reader

Joining a Startup Out of College is Hard (A Solution)

azeem.fm

18 pointsazeemansar27 comments

For most people, joining a startup as an employee straight out of college is a pretty bad career move these days. Your first job has an enormous effect on what options will be available to you down the road. A brand-name company like Google on the resume will open doors that a (likely failed) startup no one has ever heard of simply won't. You can always join a startup or found your own company later.

Prior to the dotcom crash, you could at least justify a startup on the potential upside, but with today's meager buyouts and non-existent IPO market even founders don't always end up with a life-changing payout. Employees should expect nothing.

Nah. It depends on what kind of career you want to go into, but the very best time to get into a startup is straight out of school. You don't have a family, or a house, or any of the other baggage that necessitates a steady paycheck and solid job security.

What kind of opportunities do you think you're passing up? If Google or Apple or Microsoft want you, you can always go back and reapply after your start up experience. Interesting doors open all the time.

My first 4 jobs were with startups, my career is fine, even though almost no one has ever heard of the tiny awesome companies I helped to build. I have little kids that need me around, so I found a steadier job in more established organization (which took exactly one resume, and one interview), but I plan on going back into the start up world when they're older.

YMMV, but in my experience resumes with 'top-shelf' names like Google or Microsoft on them almost always get a second look during the hiring process, even at startups. Hiring is an inherently uncertain process - association with success is usually taken as a proxy for quality. Of course, if your resume doesn't make the first cull you're not likely to find out why.

I worked for a couple of startups out of college. I agree that it's the easiest time to work for a startup, but it's also when you're likely to get the least out of the experience. Junior startup employees have no upside, typically below-market compensation, and don't tend to get the business experience required to start their own companies. Also - and perhaps I'm being cynical - but in hindsight I'm a bit leery of any startup that hires completely inexperienced staff. A startup is distinguished from a small company by its ambition to grow quickly. Hiring staff straight out of college means the company is prioritizing cash over growth, which suggests the founders are either short on capital or simply short-sighted. Neither bodes well for the company's prospects.

IMO, the best path for someone interested in startups is to work for a 'prestige' company out of college. Get some experience, build up a bit of capital, and find your co-founders. A successful tech company is the best environment to do that, and association with success will also make raising money easier.

This seems more like a complaint from ivy league college grads about lack of wealth in the technology sector compared to the finance sector. Color me unimpressed.

I don't really see it as a complaint. I'm just mirror-ing what I hear from a lot of people I went to school with; I work at a startup now and I love it. But I know that to attract the "ivy league" talent, or any talent for that matter, it is ideal to appeal to what they know.

And frankly, I think there is more than enough "wealth" distributed amongst VC funds to subsidize some portion of a kid's student loans for a year or two. Is that really that much to ask?

I just want more of my former classmates to be in technology, because they are really smart, and their talents get wasted at high frequency hedge funds and investment banks. So how do you get them? That's what I'm trying to answer; passion is a big part of it, but some people need a hook or starting point.

> "passion is a big part of it"

Right, and having known a lot of the "Wall Street" type engineers in college, I'm not sure if I really want them in my field.

Yeah, they're smart and bright (you kind of have to be in those environments), but I know more than a few who went into engineering position at major investment banks - soul-crushing, mind-numbing work that it is solely because of the compensation.

Maybe this is me being too startupy-self-important, but that speaks to a complete lack of passion, that you're willing to take on the IT equivalent of coal mining, where the only real upside to your job is the gigantic paycheck. On this side of the divide I'd rather have people who place an utmost importance in the, well, work of their work - someone who will take a high-paying, rewarding position over a ludicrous-paying soul-crushing job.

This isn't some justification to pay people less - if we can sweeten the pot for new grads I'm all for it, but I'm not sure I really want to attract Wall Streeters to our side of the industry.

Agree with a lot of what you're saying, but not all of it; I want whatever it takes to build amazing new companies that change the world, I don't really care who's doing it, as long as more phenomenally smart people are.

I disagree immensely - there's a certain mindset and culture that has contributed to the high-tech society that we see today. IMHO it is championed and built by people who care immensely about changing the world with their skills for the better, oftening making great personal sacrifices for their vision - this is a poor fit for someone who is demonstrated himself to be purely a gun-for-hire.

Phenomenally smart people spam people too, scam people also. Just because you're smart doesn't mean I want to work with you ;) There's a certain alignment of goals and values that has to happen, and I don't think that can work with the demographic you're talking about.

Eh, can't agree with you here; too many obvious examples to the contrary. A lot of people realize their entrepreneurial streak later in life, I'd like to bring that moment of realization earlier and better institutionalize it as a career path, that's all.

"gun-for-hire"; I mean, we're talking about 22 year old kids at the end of the day right? heh

This is a bigger issue than simple exposure. Students studying finance/econ at Ivy League schools are on a track that starts early (our author, I assume, applied directly to Penn's Wharton School). The expectations and goals start in high school then, sometimes earlier. It's hard to get away from those expectations and pressure, and students emerge at the end of the conveyor belt onto Wall Street before they even know it, ready to earn their "seven in seven" (a milly in seven years).

I think the bigger deal here is talking about start-ups as a viable career option all around (cultural shfit?), and encourage kids (high school and college) to experiment while in school, since risk is relatively low and time is readily available for most. A better system of on campus incubator/meet-up programs would be a nice complement, too.

VERY much agree with this; why didn't I have a Sequoia-backed high school startup program? VCs/angels are the ones with the money to support this; forget about the gov't doing it, that's bound for disaster. And maybe these do exist somewhere, maybe in SF.

Great point; I'll talk about this more in a follow-up post someday. (BTW, I didn't go to Wharton, I studied math and physics @ Penn, with full intention of becoming a research professor)

If you're after Brand Value, Security and Compensation, joining a startup is probably a mistake.

You're working at a company no one knows, with minimal money in bank, and compensated primarily in equity.

Basically you'll either join/start a startup, or always find an excuse not to.

I disagree, I know plenty of students who just need that initial push.

Also, anyone who has worked at a startup at a junior level knows equity is usually meaningless, and you're lucky if you're getting more than a few bps after a certain point.

I don't come from an Ivy league background, but I did join a start-up directly after school instead of joining a more traditional company. I did it because it was interesting and seemed like way more fun, and also I could wear jeans and combat boots to work. Money was not a motivator, and the stock options were, of course, not worth the paper they were never actually printed on.

There are those people who feel the money draw, and that's fine, and then there are those who prefer a different set of challenges. They go to work for non-profits, they join start ups or become entrepreneurs, they take their Columbia degree to the wilderness to count mayfly populations. I'm not convinced a start up would necessarily want to attract the kind of person who prefers money and security.

There's deeper issues not addressed by this article - why we've created a culture that so highly values 'brand-name resume builders', for one. And I'd argue that startup compensation needs to be rational even when competing sectors are not. But there's real potential in using the prestige (deserved or not) of a venture-capital firm as a recruiting tool.

As an aside, I hired Azeem at my startup after his post-college gig as an investment banker, and he thoroughly kicked ass as an employee. That doesn't come through in his blog post - I wouldn't want people who didn't know him to think he's still an investment banker!

Heh, thanks Greg. I may have not expressed it clearly, but when I say "compensation", I mean something that compels the talent you're hiring away from other industries. I think something like student loan subsidies could be very doable for a VC fund with hundreds of millions of dollars in capital. It sends a strong and serious signal IMO.

I think that's what it's really about, the messaging. It's just easier to market the names of a lot of these VC funds and the experience/track record/millions of $s that come with them, than it is to market their portfolio cos. It's a better hook; and on the other side of it all, venture funds SHOULD care about developing junior talent, and actively building the next generation of founders, entrepreneurs, etc etc. I just can't possibly imagine how any of this ends up being a bad thing.

Azeem, I think you highlight an important topic. I joined Wall Street after graduating as well, because 1. It paid well and was "a good job", and 2. Was one of the opportunities that came up to campus and was easy to interview for. Outside of investment banks and large consulting shops, there wasn't much else.

I think the lack of connectivity between college undergraduates and companies that would like to recruit them, but can't easily, is a large inefficiency and needs a solution (I feel so strongly about it, in fact, that I left finance and founded CollegeJobConnect a year ago and have been pushing it forward ever since to provide just such a service).

A startup can be a great place to learn and develop yourself, and when you are just entering the professional world you can take a few risks with your career more easily (no wife, no mortgage, etc.). However, a startup can also be a difficult environment, so any college student needs to do their research before jumping in.

All in all, I believe it will make you a professional weapon and give you the experience and "get it done" skills that you won't find in other roles, but might require a cash give-up in the short term comparatively (consider it an investment in yourself).

The part of working at a startup that I enjoy most is not working with I-bank/management consulting type people. My favorite part: "a rotational program between Sequoia’s portfolio companies". Hilarious.

'Brilliance' and a degree from a name-brand institution can help one achieve success -- but is no guarantee. Never has been, and never should be.

Our wonderful system of capitalism and free markets make it such that one can bring whatever one has to the table: degrees, IQ scores, grit, sheer experience, connections, and even mere hope. Some are able to be very, very successful by applying only 2 or 3 of these. No single one is a guarantee.

Joining a startup out of college is not hard. As I grew up, I went through the educational funnel to these types of jobs (McKinsey, Google, etc) and I found myself disliking the people around me and (especially in the case of finance / manage consulting) disliking the work they were going to dedicate their lives to.

So I just never applied to work at companies I found distasteful. It was quite easy.

But you didn't straight out of college, which is my point.

I am in the same boat as you.

I'm not sure what you mean. I never applied to any companies when I was in college. I was courted by a few tech startups and almost joined them because they looked interesting and fun - but at the beginning of my senior year I decided I should make money on my own and just started laying the groundwork for that. I basically spent the end of my senior year blowing off classes and iterating through ideas I thought might be profitable. After I graduated, I continued doing that. 2 years later, I have successfully bootstrapped a profitable company.

I don't think your solution will work. The people who should join startups don't prioritize brand value or the alleged security of working for a big company. They may prioritize compensation - but the startup world already answers that problem by allowing you to choose where on the risk scale you want to be (you can always start your own company if you're like me and very interested in compensation).

Oh, I misunderstood what you said; apologies.

And I don't know if you're right; I work at a startup, and my search was almost exclusively relegated to VC-backed companies; in fact, manyt of my friends at startups went through a similar thought process. Given that, I would imagine it would work?

Everyone is an entrepreneur, some just need more help than others, that's all I'm suggesting.

Student Loan Debt = Why joining a startup out of college is hard (for some)

This is the solution: a program where talented young people are mentored by the VC firm, under the condition that they work for startups (as founders or early employees) for the next 7 years. The VC does not necessarily fund their startups, but uses its contacts to ensure that the founder remains employed and able to survive. At the end of the 7th year, employee has the option of joining the VC firm as entrepreneur-in-residence.

People would be less afraid of the career risk involved in starting companies this way.

That's a cool idea! I don't know if it works with that timing, and those constraints, but that's such a cool idea, just conceptually.

It's an excellent idea, but it has a flaw: it doesn't pay off in the short term. The only think the VC gains is a connection to someone who will be important in a few years.

I'd be pretty much an ideal candidate for such a program, but I'm pretty sure that if I proposed it to a top VC, I'd be laughed out of the conversation.

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