Ask HN: Founders whose startups failed, do you experience bias in interviews?

Steve Blank was recently in Melbourne and said that his opinion was that 'experienced' was a better adjective than 'failed' for founders who have stopped working on a startup. It's a nice perspective.

Personally I agree, but would add a single caveat. I consider a founder 'experienced' when they have made a good faith effort to attempt solving a difficult/worthwhile problem. Someone who succeeds at someone pedestrian isn't terribly interesting and neither is someone who tried to build the hyperloop with paper mache for a week.

So, my advice is to ignore the title and give weight to the particular characteristics of their startup. The presence or absence of success is far less relevant than what they were trying to achieve and how they executed. I would pick someone who got to 80% of a home run over anyone who succeeded at hitting to first base. Ask questions about how they executed, the unique problems they faced and why they picked their vertical - this will tell you more about them than a snap judgement based on whether they were a CEO or a President.

On a side note, I would generally consider managing to found a company that survives for 1-2 years (full time) while tackling a hard problem as a demonstration of above average/high capacity. I would definitely look into them.

Again, depends on the context of your workplace, and the context of what they actually worked on.

Hope this helps.

Hopefully most people are aware that only one in ten startups succeed. That and often times a "startup" is really "me and my buddy hacking on some stuff on the weekends". It's actually the latter that bugs me more... calling one's self a CEO when you never had any employees (other than your buddy, who worked for fun & free beer)... it feels like it cheapens the title. Sure, call yourself a founder, absolutely... but CEO is a bit different.

These people should have the good sense use titles that are subsets of their full roles.

  s/CEO/Sr. Product Manager/g
  s/CTO/Sr. Software Engineer/g

You mean lie on the resume / hide their level of responsibility?

That doesn't make any sense whatsoever (beyond being dishonest, it would likely be surfaced in reference checks and stop a hire).

I'd see the startup experience as very positive, assuming they could articulate why the startup failed and learned from the experience. There's many startup CEO's who would make (and are) great sales, strategy, or product leaders, and CTO's who would be great fits for engineers, architects, or engineering managers.

Depending on the startup, mentioning themselves as senior developer might be the truth. Imagine the team was not larger than 5, team lead would work.

The title should reflect what the person actually did, also the CV is supposed to help find a job not self sabotage.

Saying to be a CTO when you where coding all day seems a bit fantasious and inacurate anyway. senior developer/team lead reflects much more the reality of what the person actually did in the job.

We're just talking about the largely arbitrary labels you choose to put on your resume. Putting "CTO", when you ran a two person startup, is objectively more dishonest than calling yourself the "Sr. Software Engineer."

I was in no way suggesting withholding any detail in the interview, or even the resume. Of course you should be completely honest about your experience. Just don't use lame titles, that turn people off, when there's not even a good reason to.

The best course is probably to use 'Founder'. You're not really a C-level executive until you have a company big enough to require one.

I opt for the less glamorous title owner/operator

I've only held two jobs since my startup, and my first job directly led to my second job. I know for sure that my failed startup experience was considered an asset in that first job because the company was very entrepreneurial minded. It was a very natural fit.

Before I ran a failed startup, I was a grad student who never actually graduated (albeit, a very good one who opted to start a startup rather than write a thesis), and before that, I was a failing high school teacher teacher. So I have a bit of a history of not achieving unambiguous success.

Honestly, it really comes down to how you sell your experience. If the interview has behavioral questions, your running a startup should give you plenty of good fodder to pull from. Know the role you're applying for and be able to succinctly explain how your skills and experience will allow you to excel. Ideally, have some quantitative evidence of your capabilities. Don't be a know-it-all; come in with great questions and be a listener. And hopefully you can frame your startup, and especially its downfall, in a positive light.

One last thing, my personal opinion, based purely on my instincts, is that although I was technically President and CTO, I feel most natural identifying my former role as "Founder" (with responsibilities and accomplishments outlined), because we never quite reached a stage where we truly had executive responsibilities that would translate to an established company.

I was one of those 18-month CTOs. I just made sure to get past it very quickly in the phone screening and get to why I was looking for a job, the kind of role that I was best suited for, ect, ect.

IMO, the approach to take with such a candidate is to see if this is someone who needed to "sow wild oats," or someone who keeps making the same life mistakes over and over again.

I understand your bias that older candidates are the worst ones. They're the slow learners.

Comments so far focused on bias in judging capability based on past startup results. I'd really wish see the other angle explored: "Is someone who's used to being boss of the company going to handle taking orders?"

When reviewing resumes do you expect the founder to just want to recover for a year before founding another startup?