21–30 of 43 posts
TLDR; nothing different IMO.
My startup failed last year. It wasn't the greatest feeling to be back searching for a job. I did find a good job and I'm at a good place now. I joined as a developer. I was the CTO of my startup and was a senior architect looking across multiple domains in my previous job. Now, I'm more a specialist, looking at one single thing while it's expected that someone has the responsibility to solve a different problem. To…
i think this is the reason most companies fail. people do too much, and aren't able to do a good job at any of it. people lie to themselves and think it's even remotely possible, when it's not. you're going to do a shit job at every one of those 4 jobs if they're all your responsibility. i think companies that raise or make money quickly are able to actually dedicate people to very, very, very critical shit, and will…
But there's always a point at the beginning where a company doesn't have a ton of money laying around, and at that stage, I think your advice is bad. It's better to have those jobs getting done poorly than to have them not being done at all.
On the other hand, if all you talk about are mistakes and failures to learn from them, or suggest that you'll be leaving at some point to do it again, a recruiter is likely to worry.
It's a really small sample size, but we've had several people join us after winding down or leaving their startups and they've been successful.
From my experience companies only look at your objective skills when they hire you. And a lot of large companies actually respect that you have worked on your own company even if it failed.
So don't worry about what it means, if you're trying to find a job, study for the interview really. That's one thing I messed up when I shut down my company and had to get a job for the first time in my life. I didn't even know "preparing for an interview" was a thing and failed miserably at some of the early interviews I did, but later figured out there's a formula and then I aced everything, ended up getting multiple job offers and chose the one I wanted.
As someone on the other side of the table at a startup, I always ask, and it depends on the answer. -- Con: flight risk, collaboration risk -- Pro: for valid reasons, they don't want the founder stress, risk, focus, whatever (say due to family, time, whatever), but love the environment. Such people are amazing: a classic "barrel" ( http://firstround.com/review/Keith-Rabois-on-the-role-of-a-C... ) . We've been working…
Leave it off your resume.
"Leaving it off the resume" means lying, and they will most likely ask what happened during that time. Even if they don't ask it's a bad sign since it means you come off as someone who's been unable to get a job for whichever duration you worked on your startup for.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you are going to be a CEO then it is important to wear many hats in the beginning. It is important to understand the basics of accounting, law, sales, etc so that you have some idea what is going on with those aspects of the business when you are able to delegate those jobs to experts.
yeah, a lot of entrepreneurs learn this stuff through a bunch of failed businesses where they do everything themselves. keyword: failed.