
I want to get into startups, but I don’t know where to start - jaf12duke
http://blog.42floors.com/want-get-startups-dont-know-start/
======
untog
_It’s no surprise that Alex mistakenly chose a big company over a startup
straight out of school even though he was already interested in startups._

That was not necessarily a mistake. As a fresh college grad (and particularly
as an engineer) I'd argue that you are ill-equipped to judge a good startup
opportunity from a bad one. There is absolutely nothing wrong with spending
time at a large company, benefitting from their experience in graduate intake,
learning a lot of good, sensible practises, then applying them to a startup.

I've also recently become deeply skeptical of working for a startup as
anything other than a founder or a very early employee. You don't benefit
monetarily (low pay, bad stock options) and the work environment is frequently
toxic and incredibly demanding. The only difference is you'll be making your
bosses rich instead of making stockholders rich.

~~~
mbesto
I started my career at SAP. Although I feel like I'm behind the "startup
curve" because I spent 4 years there, the lessons I learned about managing
teams and understanding complexities in a large company are absolutely
priceless. I don't believe it was a mistake whatsoever. You and I are probably
being too pedantic, but I agree, it was a poor choice of words.

Lately, I've noticed a meme from investors about discerning founders who can
start companies and those that can grow beyond 250+ employees. The generally
consensus is that there are very few entrepreneurs (Zuck for example being one
of them) who possess the capability to scale. I'm not talking about scaling
servers, I'm talking about scaling organizations as quickly as their revenues
grow. Looking at it through the lens of an external person, this may seem
trivial at first, but having been in the professional world for 8+ years now,
there are some key challenges _all_ companies hit when they hit certain growth
(for example, hitting 50 and 250 employee milestones). Working for a big
company _can_ (notice I didn't say will) prepare you for that.

~~~
rhizome
By and large, I suspect the only Internet companies that would ever need to
exceed Dunbar's number[1] are those that have to implement advertising and
sales functions. What is the largest subscription-based or one-time-purchase
site?

1\.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number)

~~~
mbesto
> _have to implement sales functions_

So, pretty much any business? There are so few companies out there, especially
venture backed ones, that the employee headcount hasn't scaled with the
growth. We just hear of the Instagram/WhatsApp acquisitions with low head
count so often here in the echo chamber that we assume it's norm. To take that
further, how many companies are at FB/SalesForce/WorkDay/Twitter-level that
don't have over 500 employees (much less 1,000s)? I can only think of very few
- 37signals, Valve, etc?

My larger point - VCs in SV want to fund billion dollar businesses and
founders who can create billion dollar businesses. These billion dollar
businesses need large amounts of headcount and a CEO who can take them there.

------
angersock
This is going to be rough, but here are some scattered thoughts in a Q/A
format:

 _I want to get into a startup, where do I start?_

Find a problem and sell a solution. Not rocket science.

 _But I can 't find a problem!_

Try getting outside of the hedges of your university and _talking_ with normal
people, business owners, and civil servants. I will give you a hundred bucks
if you can't find _anyone_ with _something_ to bitch about.

 _But I don 't have a solution. How can I build a solution without being
technical/having money/knowing a programmer?_

Where did I say anything about building solutions? Customers don't care about
tech, they care about results. Find something somebody else has already done,
maybe several somethings, and string them together, and sell them. Charge
arbitrage--think of it as a laziness tax for the customer.

 _I 'm a programmer, and I have this neat idea to solve a problem I have._

That's not a question, and besides, nobody gives a shit anyways.

 _Well, what I mean is, how can I turn this into a business?_

You probably can't. You probably don't have the business/people skills yet--
find somebody that does, and try to sell them on the idea. If that doesn't
work, find somebody else. Once you've got one, get them to do the sales stuff.

 _But my solution to this problem is awesome /elegant/clear/in Ruby!_

Again, nobody gives a shit. Go Tell HN or /r/peoplewhogiveafuck.

~

It's not some magical process making a startup/breaking into the ecosystem:
find people who know more than you, and ask them questions--or even better,
try to find a problem people will pay you to solve.

Being a _successful_ startup, now, that's a whole 'nother problem entirely.

~~~
angersock
Elaborating with some direct personal experience:

If you find a customer, and find a solution, and make a tentative sale, don't
go wander off and do something else. An otherwise bright young lady I worked
with last year has all three things: problem, solution, and customers. She's
going off this summer to intern at Deloitte instead of building her business,
because she "wants to learn more about business".

You know what else teaches you about business? _Running a fucking business_.

Presented with this fact, she said she wanted to learn more about the
"strategic side of things...mergers, acquisitions, aquihires, etc.". Those are
all issues that are pretty far off if you're just starting out as a business,
and you won't likely worry about them until you are big enough to care. And if
you're expecting to worry about them at another company, you are going to be
hired in as a junior employee _anyways_ so you won't even have anything useful
to say on the topic.

The tech guy on that team is trying to find tech jobs at other startups--
again, despite having a problem, a solution, and customers.

It's baffling.

~~~
ryandrake
How many customers, how quickly was she growing? If you can't turn 10
customers into 1,000, then 100,000 quickly, you're wasting your precious time
and are probably better off at Deloitte.

I've sold apps and had customers, but not at the scale that would let me quit
my day job.

------
sayemm
I've been working on startups more or less for most of my 20s (both as a
founder and an employee at a venture-backed startup), I've learned a great
deal from it, lost a lot from it and endured a lot of hardship, but I think
the journey also transformed me and cut me out of wood
([http://max.levch.in/post/36289276742/strengthen-your-
startup...](http://max.levch.in/post/36289276742/strengthen-your-startup-
skeleton)). So no regrets, I'm really excited about the future and I'm
thinking long-term.

I disagree with this post though, if I had to start all over again out of
college... my recommendation would be to start a profitable, bootstrapped
business. Build that up to 7-figures and be financially independent. You'll
earn your first stripes way earlier than most, at much lower risk, and once
you attain that black belt, then you'll be ready to consider swinging for the
fences with a startup. And people around you will want to bet on you too with
your track record.

I'm 28yrs old now and that's my gameplan for the next few years. I'm tired of
being poor.

Worth reading: [http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/06/paths-
to-5m-for-...](http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/06/paths-to-5m-for-a-
startup-founder.html)

~~~
swainner
I'll throw my hat in the ring. I started an eCommerce enterprise SaaS focused
business in high school as a hobby, sold it for $4M at age 21, bought it back
for $32k, built it again into a $6M/year revenue (profitable) business, and
sold it again in 2012 to Answers.com. All of this was 100% bootstrapped with
revenue, no debt, no outside funding. In neither case, round one or round two,
did I self-fund it, other than the $32k -- the revenues from the business
funded the business, it wasn't me funding anything. Sure, it was a long slog,
but worth it.

~~~
sayemm
I really admire that... props to your success and track record, thanks for
chiming in. If I was an investor, sounds like you would make a good bet and
someone to keep an eye on.

Starting out, the best way to learn entrepreneurship IMO is to just do it and
build it organically like you did.

------
jusben1369
Maybe it's me but it feels like it should take _some_ initiative to find work
with a startup. Startups are (usually) more demanding than regular corporate
jobs and require a higher degree of self sufficiency and initiative. You can
end up at a corporate job and sort of realize over 6 - 12 months it's not for
you and the whole experience and moving on is pretty soft. You'll know in
about 4 - 6 weeks if the startup live is not for you and it'll be intense and
emotional. So better it's not handed to you on a plate lest you make the
mistake of signing up without enough critical thinking.

------
davidw
It's a few years old at this point, but this book has a lot of good advice:

[http://www.amazon.com/Start-Small-Stay-Developers-
Launching-...](http://www.amazon.com/Start-Small-Stay-Developers-Launching-
ebook/dp/B003YH9MMI/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=&qid=&tag=dedasys-20)

Between people like patio11 and Rob Walling, I'm pretty convinced that that
sort of business is where it's at for people who don't want to do the whole VC
style startup.

------
changdizzle
Another point that should be brought up is to not overvalue yourself. I
remember asking Justin (from JTV/exec/socialcam) in 2011 for some advice - I
was working in the corporate world and was ready to make the jump to a
startup. At the time I was an IT consultant and was looking for PM roles at
Dropbox/Foursquare/insert hot startup here.

He gave some much needed but harsh feedback, essentially asking "Why should
they hire you? <hot startup of the month> has their pick of the litter, why
would they gamble on someone unproven?" I've never really been told to aim
lower, but it made me think -- if you really want to work at a startup, you'll
start somewhere and prove yourself. Justin used the example of Aram, who
started out as an office manager for JustinTV and ended up founding ZeroCater.
I now work in BD and haven't looked back.

Justin ended up writing a guest post for TechCrunch (I'd like to think
partially inspired by me) here - [http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/28/how-to-get-
a-job-at-a-start...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/28/how-to-get-a-job-at-a-
startup-if-you-have-no-skills/)

~~~
sanderjd
Isn't a reasonable answer to his question along the lines of "I _am_ proven; I
worked for X years on these Y projects". I'm not sure why so many startup
people seem to think that non-startup experience is worthless. It limits the
points of view and types of problem-solving experience you have available in
your company if you're only willing to hire people who fit into a limited
bucket like that.

~~~
changdizzle
Very good point - I should probably add in my story - I ended up not wanting
to take an APM or AM role that would pay me 30%+ less and was a perceived
gigantic step back in my career, so I was on the verge of taking a director of
systems engineering role along the lines of what I was doing at the time but
at the last minute a really awesome BD opportunity opened up at a friend's
company and I took it.

My main point was just to be realistic about your opportunities

------
elijahgold
My problem is not finding a suitable role within a startup, it is getting the
opportunity to interview. I have been in commercial real estate in NYC for the
past three years. While my role is that of a financial analyst, my day-to-day
responsibilities encompass brokerage, client relations, analytics, and
research. I have applied to many different both early and late stage startups
for both sales and business development roles and have had a very difficult
time getting an interview. I once called a hiring manager that did not get
back to me and asked why it was that I did not get the interview. I was told
that my experience was not in tech sales; thus, they didn't think I would be a
good fit. Do you have any advice for current members of the work force looking
to break into the startup realm?

------
tedsanders
Honest question: does it make sense for startups to hire inexperienced but
smart people? Unlike big businesses, startups have less time to
train/develop/mentor talent. They also usually have one focus: shipping
product. Because of that, it seems better for startups to hire older, more
experienced people who can be productive immediately. Of course there will be
exceptions, but I think that on average big firms should hire fresh grads and
startups should hire experienced workers. Is my thinking wrong?

Edit: I suppose the main benefit of hiring smart inexperienced people over
smart experienced people is that you can hire more of them for the same price.
Plus, maybe inexperienced people tend to be young, and young people tend to
have more hours to devote to work? Are there other benefits I'm missing?

------
rayiner
On the issue of having a presence on campus: if you're not one of the really
hot start-ups, putting up a fall recruiting booth at Harvard probably isn't
going to sway those kids who have offers at Goldman or McKinsey as an
alternative. However, it can be quite valuable to cultivate relationships with
professors at local schools a rung or two down. There are brilliant kids at
those schools who won't get the time of day from pedigree-conscious Wall
Street, and professors are often quite well placed to identify them, based on
interactions over a semester. It's a win for them, because they love being
able to hook someone up with an inside lead on a good job, and it can be a
great way for a start-up to get pre-vetted candidates.

------
johnrob
Don't forget the most important skill for any startup employee: learn to pick
the right companies to work for. It pains me to say this, but choosing the
best company will pay off more than any other skill on that list (of course,
you need those listed skills to get that job). Joining WhatsApp at an early
stage probably led to a bigger payday than many founders see after successful
exits.

------
reality_czech
Start by working for a startup. Preferrably a doomed and mismanaged Web 2.0
startup on series F. That way you'll be embittered and cynical, and ready to
negotiate correctly with your next employer, startup or not. Finally, finish
up by writing fluff articles for TechCrunch about Elon Musk's new hairstyle.
Congratulations, you are now "into startups."

------
donretag
For me personally it is more like: I want to get into startups, but I don’t
want to give up my large paycheck and 40 hour work week.

The article does not address the money issue.

~~~
untog
Then you don't want to get into startups. That's not really what this article
is about, though.

~~~
mikeg8
It's still an important filter though and I think should have been mentioned.
For people that _think_ they want to get into startups but are unaware of the
realities of the salaries, benefits, bonuses, number of raises etc, becoming
aware of that is more important than deciding where you can help.

~~~
jusben1369
I think the idea here though is you're straight out of college. Whatever you
make is more than you were making last year. Better to give it two hards years
now vs even a few years later when you have established a higher cost of
living.

------
personlurking
"unless it was a large startup and the founder herself had gone to that
school."

Small gripe, but "herself"? Better as "and the founder had gone…" Even
him/herself is a good option.

"Finally, our sector is on top and these young people want to come and join
us."

It's like saying "and these young women…"

~~~
scarecrowbob
Former university English instructor here; the usage you are critiquing is
widely regarded as a good tradeoff between deferring to the gendering baked
into our language and recognizing the integration of a population.

It's often much easier to write and read pronouns, and it is my opinion
(though far from an accepted truth) that alternating him/her when contextually
appropriate is less clunky than using the him/herself construction.

As a writing instructor, I personally have no problem with "himself" being
used in a broader, non-gendered construction... and for the same reason have
no problem with a similar usage of "herself", though as I say, opinions vary.

~~~
a8da6b0c91d
In English the male pronoun is the generic and has been for centuries. Every
time somebody misuses she/her as the generic I'm knocked into a moment of
confusion wondering who this sudden specific chick is.

Let's cut the crap; when people write she/her/womankind for the generic it's
about PC. It's not standard English.

~~~
codr
> "In English the male pronoun is the generic"

Indeed.. and that's the problem.

The times, they are a changin!

~~~
mitochondrion
Sorry, but why is that at all a problem?

------
peter303
The key points of the article are "Engineer" and "side projects". The
engineers are an important and fun part of startups. Side projects are
applications and code you can show people outside your company.

One sugggestion is to look for public developer groups in your area in
meetup.com. Type keywords "java" or "mobile" and you get a number of them. Go
to those meetings and hear about interesting things people are developing
either as part of a company or a hobby. Get involved in an open-source type
project, generally on github. Just downloading, building and runnng such
software is a significant hurdle. Probe it to see how it works. Maybe thre are
a group of people in the project with lots of side projects they dont have
time for. Many of these projects are weak on the testing and documentation
side. So if you improve those aspectd, that shows understanding of such
projects without interferring with core development.

Then when you interview for a small company, you can show people what you have
done. Maybe get references from others in the projects.

More likely some of these projects may become a company. The company may
support the open source with production strength versions, fill gaps, etc.

~~~
failed2
Sorry but in practice side projects usually don't mean much at most companies.
Companies generally hire by one of 2 things:

1\. Track record (i.e. you worked at a big name company and/or shipped
_product_ that's public facing/commercial). 2\. Interviewing ability.

The former don't care if you built something on the side and the later are
going to hire you based on your whiteboarding ability.

------
dsk139
Shameless plug. We are trying to solve this. We started off by doing 1-to-1
web development tutoring bringing clients from 0 to backbone apps & beyond.

Recently, we got connected with two top CS students from "mid-tier" schools
who were about to join large corporations in technology consulting roles. We
were able to place them in some awesome startups in SF. And we were thrilled
to have such a huge impact on the trajectory of their careers. We want to
continue to do this.

If you're interested in hiring top CS students, teaching web development, or
if you're a current CS student please e-mail me. david@techcareerhq.com

------
Xdes
>negotiations, there are plenty good books out there.

Such as? As a programmer that can't negotiate a decent salary/consulting rate
I would find this useful.

~~~
Edmond
The best and most valuable class I took in B-School was my last class, which
was on negotiations. Nothing earth shattering but bits of wisdom when
assembled together can really change your perspective on how to approach
things.

The basic problem is that whether due to culture or nature we tend to approach
transactions as zero sum games (aka distributive), ie if I get something you
must lose something. Negotiation is about thinking in terms of widening the
pie, ie creating a win-win for all (integrative). Even in situations where it
can appear there is no win-win, there often is.

Want a better rate? determine the value of what you are bringing to your
client, then price your service accordingly. If they balk, then you make your
case based on your analysis.

The text we used in class is this: [http://www.amazon.com/The-Mind-Heart-
Negotiator-Edition/dp/0...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Mind-Heart-Negotiator-
Edition/dp/0132543869)

I believe it is suitable for pretty much anyone who can read.

~~~
ForHackernews
> If they bulk, then you make your case based on your analysis.

Minor nitpick: it's balk (or baulk)

[http://grammarist.com/spelling/bulk-balk-
baulk/](http://grammarist.com/spelling/bulk-balk-baulk/)

~~~
Edmond
lol..thanks.

------
mindcrime
Interesting article, but I'd ignore the entire section labeled "Marketing". I
don't buy any notion that "traditional marketing" is any less important today
than it ever was, nor do I agree that "growth hacking" in any sense whatsoever
replaces, or competes with, "traditional marketing". Growth Hacking (to the
extent that it even has any meaningful definition) is just one part (or a
couple of parts) of an overall marketing mix[1]. And anyone who doesn't know
the term "marketing mix" should go take a class in... wait for it...
"traditional marketing".

Or to put it another way... if you're talking to a startup and the founders
say anything like "we don't need marketing, we use growth hacking" then run
away, as fast as you can.

[1]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing_mix](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing_mix)

------
brit200313
Do you want to work at one or start one?

Nothing is better than going to a hackathon or a Startup Weekend. My first
Startup Weekend is where I caught the startup bug.

If you want to work for one, check out Readyforce if you are a student or
Angel.co if you are experienced.

www.readyforce.com www.angel.co

------
basicallydan
_And we have nothing. Startups are nowhere to be found on campus colleges,
maybe with the exception of Stanford and MIT._

Here in the UK we have a startup job fair called Silicon Milkroundabout [1].
At the moment it's London-based, but it attracts a huge amount of college
grads. I suspect they'll soon be moving into doing or taking part in job fairs
at Universities around the UK, because they're growing pretty quickly at the
moment.

Maybe they also need to start making their way into the US, too.

[1] [http://siliconmilkroundabout.com/](http://siliconmilkroundabout.com/)

~~~
srcreigh
That part of the article didn't resonate with me, either.

I go to the University of Waterloo in Canada and as a second-year (sophomore)
have already worked at a startup for an internship. I got that internship
because of the co-op program at my school --- startups often hire from it. I'm
not alone, either: several of my friends at UW are or have been startup
interns. One friend is interning right now at a YC startup.

That's not even to mention the huge hackathon movement that has swept
technical schools across North America. Startups have a huge presence in
hackathons at UMich, Yale, MIT, UPenn, UW, University of Toronto, McGill
University, and many others.

------
kayman
Start with building stuff. Polishing your skills and becoming a full stack
kind of person, tech or not.

------
wudf
Haha, I identify with Alex. Even from Boston too.

------
a3voices
Just start making things, and telling people you're making things. Eventually
you will become connected to like-minded people.

~~~
angersock
It's that second part that's important--even if it's just a github.

If I can't see your code, I can't tell if you're just bullshitting really well
or actually pretty cool. And no, forking a bunch of other people's repos
doesn't count--I will check your commit history.

~~~
ryandrake
I've never understood this obsession with public source repositories. What is
the difference between experience writing proprietary code and experience
writing code that happens to be published on GitHub? Both kinds of experience
are valuable.

Most tech employers own everything you do, even on your free time. So a large
GitHub history can send the message that you're not employed all that much.

~~~
angersock
So, here's the deal.

I don't think it is fair to expect you to talk about your old company's
codebase in an interview--I'd love to have that conversation, but I understand
if you wouldn't feel comfortable doing so.

So, I can ask you questions in person, and get some response. Maybe you
interview well, and you can answer things easily; maybe because you know your
shit, maybe because you crammed with "Crack the Coding Interview"-like books,
maybe because you have inside information on what'll come up in the interview.

Maybe you interview poorly, and if I ask you to whiteboard something you have
a panic attack even though you know it cold. Maybe you are having an off day,
or our conversation just flows the wrong way and you don't communicate to me
the experience I'm looking for that you already have.

By contrast, if I have your github (or sourceforge, or bitbucket, or
whatever), I can infer certain things about you: I know what languages you
write in, I know whether you roll things from scratch or make little changes
to other people's projects, I know how much you care about code quality and
commits, I know what sorts of projects you like to work on in your free time.

In an interview, I can (and will!) ask you about some code that you've
written, both good and bad, and I can see how you respond--are you defensive,
apologetic, humble, humorous? I can ask questions about specific projects,
work through your thought process, and get a much better feel for how you are
on a team.

As to your question "What is the difference between experience writing
proprietary code and experience writing code that happens to be published on
GitHub?"

The difference is that I know for certain you can use git, I know that you
aren't hiding behind your team on that project, and I know what lines of code
you did and did not write (barring certain corner cases). Proprietary code is
also usually pretty fucking dull, honestly: you're usually patching or hacking
in some business logic for a legacy app that isn't that great to begin with.
If I cared about that, I'd just hire some legions of code monkeys from India
and be done with my problem.

~~~
rubiquity
> I know whether you roll things from scratch or make little changes to other
> people's projects

I'm curious as to what your thoughts are on the difference between these two
things. Rolling from scratch seems like more work, but sometimes gathering
enough knowledge and understanding about someone else's project to be able to
make a change to it is even more work.

~~~
angersock
So, it all depends, right?

If you have little commits that just change some config settings in your fork
of a common jQuery library, that's not a big deal.

If you have little commits that change some deep magic in sizzler, okay,
that's something we should talk about.

If you rewrite a software rasterizer, just for funsies, that's something to
talk about.

If you write yet another web framework in Ruby, or lightbox plugin for jQuery,
I'm going to call you out on wasting time.

If you can explain _why_ your implementation of half of the functionality of
Rails is desirable, and satisfy me that you're doing it for
engineering/business/safety reasons, I'll be really impressed. If you admit it
was for the lulz or to learn or because you didn't know any better, I'll
admire you for your honesty. If you did it because async is srs bsns guise
also activerecord more liek activerecrud amirite, I probably will let somebody
else have the joy of breaking in a cowboy coder.

It can be very, very hard to commit work to other people's projects--I skipped
even the modest task of putting out a Visual Studios make system for
somebody's Minecraft clone, for example, because I just didn't want to have
the "Cmake? Fuck cmake!" argument.

~~~
testrun
One thing you can do, is fix your ssl certificate, It expired.

