How to Make an Impact During the First Month of Your Startup Job

I just started at my first startup job a few months ago, and agree with a lot of the sentiment in this post.

The biggest difference I have noticed: at most companies, a new employee is a body to get done the same work, in the same way, as somebody else. You are defined by how well you execute an already-constructed set of tasks and goals.

At a startup, you are valuable if you add a whole new set of opinions and skills to the team. If you come in and just do what you're asked, even if you do it well, you probably aren't doing very well. You should notice things about the business that are not optimal, blind-spots that the previous employees hadn't thought about, easy ways to save or make lots of money, even though these things aren't part of your formal job description.

I'm just going to throw this out there, but I think this list is BS. There's really only two bullet points you need:

1. Get things done.

2. Make sure people know you're getting things done.

...and not necessarily in that order either. Being labeled "impractical" is the kiss of death in a startup.

Do those things, and most successful startups won't care about the other bullet points.

I saw something great in some Seth Godin piece. If your boss (or team) doesn't yet trust you to do big, impactful things, take on other projects to earn their trust. The breakthrough idea was that they don't have to be product projects. Just organizing lunch, a team build, software purchase, etc. can be enough. As a coder, those seem trivial but to a non-coder they're just as big and important a task.

There's another side to being optimistic that's extremely important when you're proposing an idea. I don't mean assuming every new idea is great or that every proposal will work out exactly as planned; that's obviously a recipe for disaster. In my experience, any sufficiently technical person will already have an opinion on whether or not some proposal works by the instant someone finishes explaining his or her big new idea. A lot of times, these opinions will be correct. However, often these opinions will be based on assumptions from situations in the past that were similar in some way but aren't necessarily important now.

As someone proposing a new idea, you should find out what the assumptions behind these objections are and why they're considered relevant now. Make someone explain the fundamentals of why something won't work instead of immediately walking away and telling yourself, "oh, someone objected, clearly they know more than I do and this idea will never be good."

Getting into the habit of identifying your assumptions and challenging them also helps you keep a more objective viewpoint over time by helping you to understand accepted wisdom instead of simply parroting it.

This post couldn't have come at a better time for me. While I'm not exactly working for a start-up--I'm working for a large publisher whose latest publication is almost two years old--a lot of this advice still applies. The biggest bullet point there for me is taking ownership, because it's true that things sometimes won't ever get done unless you do it yourself.

I would add to the list finding a big security hole or other risk and fixing it.

I joined an e-commerce team at a major systems integrator and discovered they had left the default password in place for the administrative interface of their flagship implementation.

It was actually possible to delete the entire product database using the website. I changed the password immediately, of course.

I get the idea that these things - thing actually - it is also called initiative - really can be said about any fairly flexible job and position.

I know a carpenter who is looking for the same thing when he hires or subcontracts.