Ask HN: What is the best 5 year plan to join a startup?

What you need to do is focus. Decide who you want to work for, learn what they use, and learn it. Startups want to see that you have a passion for what they do. Gather as much knowledge as you can about the startup you want to work for, walk in there on your interview day, and be as excited about it as the founders are.

More than skills you need passion for a technology or a platform . Once you have that you will push yourself to learn more and in that process learn various skills.

Do what you love and make it a job instead of making a job out of something you have no interest in.

In our B2B start-up the back-end skills needed would be

PostgreSQL - solid database design skills, stored procedures, and query writing and tuning.

J2EE for the application logic layer in the core system.

PHP for rapid prototyping of extensions.

Lucene

Willingness and ability to rapidly shift gears and adapt to evolving requirements