

How to get a job after your startup fails - jmaskell
http://www.jamesmaskell.co.uk/2013/how-to-get-a-job-after-startup-failure/

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api
I found that having a failed startup was good resume fodder to some extent. I
was worth more in the marketplace after my failed startup, since I was
perceived as having a more versatile skill set.

(It helped that my failed startup, while financially a failure, was cool and
helped me demo a lot of advanced coding skills. :)

But I did run into a personal problem: after being a startupper, I found it
very hard to transition back into working for someone else. In the end I had
to sit down and be honest with myself: did I want to start another startup
right now or did I just want a paycheck? I decided-- for the time being-- on
the latter. So I had to swallow a bit of the radical self-direction I'd become
accustomed to and decide to work for my employer since that's the deal.

~~~
danielweber
I remember one particular job I interviewed for after leaving a start-up, and
got asked various questions like "why did you fail?" and "working for that
little money? That's stupid!"

I always think of them as the perfect example of "the interview is for you to
learn about the company and the company to learn about you."

~~~
mseebach
So, if someone calls you stupid to your face in an interview, that's probably
not a good place to work - so I'm guessing that was slightly a hyperbolic
recollection.

That said, both questions can be turned around to your advantage: The first,
show that you have learned from your mistakes and that's you're cool and
focused in the face of adversity. The second, that you're not just a day
labourer, but you're focused on and motivated by the long haul: "yes, it was a
long shot, but if we'd succeeded, we'd change the way the world thinks about
X".

~~~
danielweber
No, they really said "stupid." I must have blanched -- I've worked with
difficult people and can tolerate a lot -- because he immediately tried to
back away from it.

But, yeah, bad place to work. They went bankrupt and got delisted from the
exchange about 2 years later. I will admit to feeling some schadenfreude at
that.

------
Peroni
__5\. Be clear about wanting to work for someone else __

I think this particular point requires a bit more emphasis. I work for a large
development company that requires me to source the top technical talent in the
UK. A significant number of highly talented individuals are currently running
their own start-ups which is understandable. Regardless of how brilliant a
developer may be, that's not a guarantee of success and there will come a
point where some of those startups fail and the founders will have to go find
a 'regular job'.

The number one concern I have when I'm in discussions with a failed startup
founder is how long they will stick with us before coming up with another
brilliant idea and leaving us to go give it another shot.

I'm more likely to relax when a potential employee tells me that for the next
couple of years they simply want to focus on a 'regular job' and maybe revisit
the startup idea further down the line. Unfortunately the onus is almost
entirely on the developer/start-up founder to place the employers mind at
ease.

~~~
sjtgraham
Steve, does it really matter? Even if a super-talented developer only stays
with you for say 6-12 months surely they would deliver enough value in that
time to not make it a huge concern? Also, let's flip the question on its head,
if a company can't hold on to talented, entrepreneurial staff, is it
indicative of a problem with the staff or with the company? What's the common
denominator here?

What is better? Being fortunate enough to have a super smart person come on
board, deliver a large amount of value, and then leave after a short period;
or a less talented developer delivering lower quality work, at a lower
velocity over a longer period?

I'm not sure talented but flighty people are a problem. Once they're in the
door, it's the company's job to make sure their staff are happy and want to
stay rather than moan about it.

~~~
Peroni
6-12 months is plenty of time for a talented dev to have a big impact but I'd
much rather hire them on a contract basis than a permanent basis in that
circumstance.

Regardless of how adept a company is at retaining their best talent, you will
never be able to compete with the appeal of running your own business and
being your own boss.

------
bane
Shouldn't just be a question for post-failure, but any sort of post-startup
job. I've bounced back and forth between startups and bigCo my entire career.
Or as I like to call it, moments of stark frenzied terror sandwiched between
years of immense boredom.

One thing being in a small startup teaches is versatility, you can vastly
expand the breadth of your skillset in an environment where you _have_ to
perform, even if some of your core skills languish a bit.

It's hard to get this across in a resume, but do put them down. Are you a
coder than ended up spending a few hours a week on sales? Put it down.
Marketing guy who got roped into server administration? Put it down.

When applying for a place, just simply reorder those various hats you wore in
your old startup to suit the position you are applying for. Put the most
relevant ones at the top of the list and the least relevant ones nearer the
bottom.

It can definitely take some getting used to, going back to working for
somebody else, you feel like you've lost lots of autonomy -- you might even
have to take what feels like a couple steps back. But you can turn that on its
head and use your broad skillset to quickly move up the ranks. You can do the
job they hired you for and, oh yeah, you can do these other half dozen jobs
competently, should you just be in charge of the whole group then since you
know what everybody does and can reach across and down as needed?

 _also get used to befuddling even competent recruiters, at one startup I did
almost every job in the place at one time or another, when looking for a new
job it drove the recruiters crazy trying to place me_

~~~
jmaskell

        also get used to befuddling even competent recruiters, at one startup I did almost every job in the place at one time or another, when looking for a new job it drove the recruiters crazy trying to place me
    

I had this problem - recruiters want a job title to pigeon hole you with.
Their brains explode when they can't do this.

~~~
NDizzle
Yeah, they don't like it when your answer is "everything" to the question,
"What did you do at _____?".

I've since changed it to "Everything, but tell me what you're looking for and
I'll tell you about my experiences in that realm."

------
hobs
The best way to get almost any job is to knowing someone who already works
there. It is old advice, but it is probably the best, it is easier to get your
foot in the door when they already have someone to vouch for you. In other
words, while you are working on that startup, dont forget to keep in touch
with people and look for new friends in your field of interest, it will go a
long way.

~~~
rocky1138
This advice works best when the person you know is directly responsible for
running the company but gets less and less useful the further you get from
that point.

~~~
ttrreeww
Actually, having someone refer you internally will almost guarantee an
interview. It's super useful.

~~~
bgilroy26
You're both right if Rocky meant a range in usefulness from 'virtual lock' to
'a really good shot'

~~~
rocky1138
Yep. Even the person in your pocket at the absolute bottom of the rung is
still someone in your pocket.

------
Uchikoma
It heavily depends on the market. When my startup failed in 200x after popping
of the dotcom bubble, the market for programmers was terrible and I was lucky
to get a job at a state funded research institute.

Comparing this to today, where I get at least one offer a week, this was
completely different.

~~~
jmaskell
Unfortunately I'm not a programmer (I can write enough code to be dangerous) -
but more of an ops/product/sales type person instead, so it was a bit harder
for me to find something.

I was also surprised at how long it took our developer to find a new role - he
was extremely good, got first interviews quickly but it took companies a long
time to make a decision. And we're in London, where those skills are in very
high demand.

~~~
Uchikoma
In Berlin we have two open ops positions ;-)

" but it took companies a long time to make a decision"

Yes, a lot of companies get that wrong, sometimes we do too. But we strive to
have interviews as fast as possible and make decisions within a week, most
often the same day as we do not consider it fair letting people wait on a
decision (and it rarely gets better with time).

------
krmmalik
I'm in a similar situation to the blog author, but unfortunately for me i
really struggled to find a job. In all fair ess, there were one or two pieces
of advice in the post that i hadn't followed, so worth considering, but at the
same time, there are very few start-ups where i live. And i'm unable to re-
locate due to personal circumstances. I've had a little bit of success with
freelance work and consulting however, and i feel that is the way forward for
me.

Well done to the blog author for keeping his chin up and turning things around
for himself so quickly.

------
decasteve
In the process of shutting down my own company. I was bootstrapping a software
startup with consulting gigs for the past 5 years. What killed it was my
inability to expand, i.e. costly attempts to expand dried up my funds.

Though I learned a lot in running a company I feel I lost touch a bit on the
programming side. My bread-and-butter was C/C++/ASM from about 1996-2008. De-
rusting those skills now feels somehow liberating.

------
mfieldhouse
Just for fun and to hopefully one day avoid failing in a startup, I like to do
post mortems. What I understood of Vinetrade is it struggled to make any
income in a market which isn't comfortable right now trading online.

1\. 2/12 Launches vinetrade

2\. It manages wine portfolios

3\. Raises funding

Getting funding so early is an indication that early profitability was
probably not the main focus. Can give a false sense of success and idea
validation.

4\. People already trade wine but are not using an online service to do it yet

If this is your first startup, don't try and revolutionise an industry. Let
someone else blow the money and make the mistakes first. Be a fast follower
instead.

5\. JM talks about building an MVP

Vinetrade should be your product? Another indication of not focusing on
achieving profitability and a good revenue model and pricing structure early
on.

6\. 3/13 Closes vinetrade. Mentions it would have needed more funding.

Funding focus again an indication of lack of focus on early idea validation
through profitability.

~~~
jmaskell
The struggle was more around scaling the business. We had income, and raised
some seed funding on the back of it (in order to go full time on the project).
We didn't take further investment because we knew we couldn't scale and
provide the return that investors would have wanted.

While running Vinetrade, I learnt a lot about testing ideas and getting
validation with minimal effort. The MVP post was about some of these lessons.
If I was starting again, I'd get that validation much more quickly (but it
would likely be the same early validation again).

~~~
mfieldhouse
But if it made enough money to keep yourself and the others in a job then why
ever declare it as a failure? Unless it didn't make enough money?

~~~
jmaskell
It didn't make enough to support the team. There was an argument for running
it as a side project / one man business, but that wasn't something that I
wanted to do (and investors supported/advised when making that decision).

~~~
mfieldhouse
Cool, thanks for being open about it

------
super-serial
Or you could get a $10/hr shit-job...

I think the best part-time jobs are fitness clubs. You're in the right
environment to stay healthy and it's low stress. I used to work part-time at a
racquet club and it was pretty awesome.

If you do go this route - just make sure when you apply to Target (you're more
classy than Walmart right?) you put down "some college" instead of graduating
with a CS degree. Also lie about previous work... all my prior programming
jobs I put down as "Tech Support" jobs. Before I did that my applications
weren't even considered.

I'm at the point now where either I succeed at a startup or I end up being a
janitor at age 40. I couldn't stomach coding for anyone else but
customers/users ever again.

~~~
Swisscoder
Haha.. this cracked me up. Either you must be a genius with a thick skin or a
"do or die" type entrepreneur.

------
joewee
I think I would be an amazing employee. After managing several people in a
startup I can really empathize for what it takes to be a good manager.

I now believe that bad managers aren't bad because they are bad people, they
just lack the right experience. I'm more inclined to give bad managers a break
and good managers unwavering loyalty.

Of course I can be projecting, since I'm still running my own business.

------
D9u
I can identify with the "Networking" advice, as all of my past employment
situations were the result of "someone who knows someone who knows me."

------
rocky1138
Avoiding HR is excellent advice. Find a company you want to work for and reach
the person at the very top if you can.

------
Chanel_Bunnell
I'm four months into a new corporate job after running into financial problems
towards the end of last year. I didn't shut my business down, but things had
gotten very dicey financially, making it necessary to get a regular pay check.
I don't do much work on my own business these days (desktop, not web, and few
support issues to handle), but I do have one product released late last year
that is starting to show real promise.

The day job is driving me nuts. I thought at first that I could easily give it
a year and a half, but now I'm counting the days to when the financial mess
will have cleared up enough to resign - 2 more months. Maybe it's the company
I'm working for (evil banking software), but more likely it's me. I have great
difficulty working for someone else on one small part of a huge, 10 year old
product.

Over the past 4 months I've drawn up a detailed plan for the new product that
I released last year, and I'm sure it's going to work (heard that before).
Roll on July 1st. I feel bad about the company I'm now working for, knowing
that I'll be resigning soon and that I'm effectively using them, but not bad
enough to stay.

~~~
GuiA
2 months go by fast, you'll be back on your startup in no time. When you do,
tell us about it! :)

------
bestest
A whole article about THIS?

How about:

1) Get a job.

Fin.

Or, could it be, that a startup failure descends upon one with such shocking
repercussions, that one forgets how to tend for himself?

Yeah, another shameless rant from me. It's just rather disappointing seeing
such useful material on the front page, that is.

~~~
avenger123
I found the article quite practical and useful.

It never hurts to put oneself in other person's shoes. It's called empathy,
which I gather you may not have for people in this situation.

For someone that has shut down their business, emotionally it is very
unsettling. Having to come to terms with the failure and at the same time
looking at the next steps is not as simple as "Get a job". Granted, perhaps
you would handle this situation without any issues but I would say for most of
us, its good to read another person's experience (even if it seems "obvious").

The biggest issue I see is that as a failed startup founder, you have accept
that there will be another day for another attempt (if that is still what one
wants to do). You just have to reinforce the cavalry (ie. build up the
finances, the mental resolve, etc.) and that could take time.

