After YC launched workatastartup.com earlier this year, we decided to relaunch an in-person expo and career fair of sorts to go along with it.[0] The expo consists of keynotes by Sam Altman and Justin Kan on the topic of working at a startup followed by presentations by 40 YC companies of various sizes and industries. We're live-streaming for anyone that's curious to follow along.
I liked Sam's rubric of how to evaluate a startup to work at. Same one that investors use. You invest time for equity, they $ for equity, so makes sense.
I also liked Sam’s point about how it’s easier for startups than big companies to work on non-consensus ideas. At a big company, you need manager 1 and manager 2 and manager 3 etc. to approve a project. Whereas at a startup you need investor 1 or investor 2 or investor 3 etc to fund you. At a big company, a single no kills you. At a startup, a single yes saves you.
(Not sure the point is entirely true - like, Sundar Pichai is not approving every small project at Google - but there is a very different structure to ‘and’ problems vs ‘or’ problems.)
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17367707