Want to found a startup? Work at one first • Hacker News Board

Re: Want to found a startup? Work at one first

#31

Post by sausagefeet » Wed, Aug 31, 2022, 11:54 AM UTC

lawrjone wrote: post #12

sausagefeet wrote: post #7

> I believe if you want the best chance of succeeding as a founder, first join an existing high-growth start-up where you can learn what good looks like, before you start something yourself. We're all entitled to our beliefs, but this seems very specific to me. Why doe sit have to be "high-growth"? What if your startup isn't meant to be "high-growth"? Why do you specifically have to work at a startup? I believe getti…

Specifically, high growth is useful because you can spend a few years there and get experience of doing many things at several different company sizes. It means you get several opportunities to learn how to do a specific thing, and see how different attempts yield different results. At a company that grows more slowly you'll need to revisit things less frequently, which reduces your opportunity to learn. You're right…

> You're right though, I don't have experience doing things other than what I've done. I can only speak to how useful my experience has been when going back to very early stage as a first employee, which has a lot of overlap with founder.

I think you're missing the critique: you don't know how useful your experience has been just because you experienced it. This is why systematic studies are necessary: to collate a lot of experiences to see what works and what doesn't (and even those are hard).

Re: Want to found a startup? Work at one first

#32

Post by lawrjone » Wed, Aug 31, 2022, 11:54 AM UTC

urthor wrote: post #21

Most successful startup founder I know is north of 60. He's been at it a decade. He recently got handed multiple billions to expand from 500 HC. Secret ingredient: two decades at Mckinsey. Biggest trend other than experience is TIME. Most businesses take a DECADE to really get going.

I think I failed to communicate this nuance in the article, but my major point was how to most quickly develop the experience you'd need to start your own company.

I'd imagine McKinsey is a great place to see loads of companies and be exposed to a lot of useful stuff. But it probably won't pack as much relevant experience into as short a time as several years in a start-up 5-10x'ing in size.

Hiroki Takeuchi and Matt Robinson – two of the GoCardless founders – both left McKinsey to start GC. I'd imagine that experience was incredibly useful, though you'd have to ask them if they think it's more or less valuable than seeing things at a different start-up beforehand.

Re: Want to found a startup? Work at one first

#33

Post by lawrjone » Wed, Aug 31, 2022, 11:58 AM UTC

atlasunshrugged wrote: post #30

lawrjone wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think these programmes are awesome! We have a few people who are explicitly at incident.io to gain experience of how to build companies. It may be that they won't go to do this, but their time here will put them in a great position to do so, if they ever want to. I've seen some companies who have a standing offer to angel invest in your start-up too, though I was never sure how I felt about that.

On the angel investing, I was thinking that was the next logical step too but rather than building an internal mechanism and pulling focus I wonder if you could just partner with an early stage vc to give them first look in return for special consideration and earlier mentorship or something. Tons of early vc's with dry powder and minimal differentiation to lean on!

Chris (one of our founders) just pointed out that we (incident.io) are signed up to the future founder promise:

https://github.com/StellateHQ/future-founder-promise

So we are doing exactly this, which is cool! I think the primary value is in leveraging the investor network, as you say, though the angel investment is a nice bonus.

Re: Want to found a startup? Work at one first

#34

Post by geeny777 » Wed, Aug 31, 2022, 11:58 AM UTC

How do you pick a high-growth startup that makes it through several stages? It's like saying the best way to make money is to pick stocks that beat the market.

Re: Want to found a startup? Work at one first

#35

Post by tsss » Wed, Aug 31, 2022, 11:58 AM UTC

sausagefeet wrote: post #7

> I believe if you want the best chance of succeeding as a founder, first join an existing high-growth start-up where you can learn what good looks like, before you start something yourself. We're all entitled to our beliefs, but this seems very specific to me. Why doe sit have to be "high-growth"? What if your startup isn't meant to be "high-growth"? Why do you specifically have to work at a startup? I believe getti…

Because startup companies are by definition high-growth. The term has become significantly overused by clueless journalists and business types looking to pad their resumes with buzzwords.

Re: Want to found a startup? Work at one first

#36

Post by lawrjone » Wed, Aug 31, 2022, 12:01 PM UTC

sausagefeet wrote: post #31

lawrjone wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Specifically, high growth is useful because you can spend a few years there and get experience of doing many things at several different company sizes. It means you get several opportunities to learn how to do a specific thing, and see how different attempts yield different results. At a company that grows more slowly you'll need to revisit things less frequently, which reduces your opportunity to learn. You're right…

> You're right though, I don't have experience doing things other than what I've done. I can only speak to how useful my experience has been when going back to very early stage as a first employee, which has a lot of overlap with founder. I think you're missing the critique: you don't know how useful your experience has been just because you experienced it. This is why systematic studies are necessary: to collate a l…

Totally accept this as a critique of the article!

I think the content is still useful, though. Especially as it gives some examples of the type of challenge that appear routinely when scaling a company, and why experience seeing this before can help you avoid similar mistakes if you ever start your own thing.

I'd personally love to see people write competing posts from other angles, even if they too will be limited by the author's own experience.

It would be great to hear what type of stuff you can learn from working at a large corporation was particularly useful when starting a company. I'd read that in a heartbeat!

Re: Want to found a startup? Work at one first

#37

Post by Cthulhu_ » Wed, Aug 31, 2022, 12:03 PM UTC

geeny777 wrote: post #34

How do you pick a high-growth startup that makes it through several stages? It's like saying the best way to make money is to pick stocks that beat the market.

Look for the phrase "scale-up" instead of "start-up", these are usually well-funded, up-and-running companies that still have some of the start-up mentality but without the financial worries.

Of course, some of these are already a decade old and may employ hundreds or thousands of people already, so YMMV; they might just be like older, boring enterprises, just not as formal or fixed in their ways.

Re: Want to found a startup? Work at one first

#38

Post by KingOfCoders » Wed, Aug 31, 2022, 12:05 PM UTC

Work in a startup where the founder has done it before and top management has some experience. I've worked in many startups and seen many more, and if people are not knowledgeable enough, you can't learn a great amount of things.

Re: Want to found a startup? Work at one first

#39

Post by Jgrubb » Wed, Aug 31, 2022, 12:05 PM UTC

polote wrote: post #19

lawrjone wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm first employee at a start-up now, and while not a founder, the experience I have from seeing this stuff in previous companies totally changes the game. When we decide to do something, such as make key hires, build new teams or invest in infrastructure, we have way more confidence that we're doing it at the right time. And when we do it, it's 90% what we need, skipping so many of the painful intermediate stages I'…

Yeah so what you explain is that you have more confidence about what your do, but that says nothing about the success rate of previous startup employee vs success rate of others

Yes, having experience in a domain can help you be more confident in your decisions. Are you trying to argue that experience plays no role in long term outcomes of building businesses?

Re: Want to found a startup? Work at one first

#40

Post by lmeyerov » Wed, Aug 31, 2022, 12:07 PM UTC

As a tweak:

Follow a top CEO/CTO as person 2-10 with a market you like...

... And then:

* Learn how 0->1 , product market fit, and overall process works, which you miss by joining growth-stage

* Grow from working with customers hands-on to becoming an area owner with responsibility around customer journey, revenue, hiring & firing, etc. VP Sales, early CTO/Dir of Engineering, CTO where you are heavy on sales/solutions engineering flow in big enterprises, ... . Working for a VP/director/manager is different from owning a part of the business, especially where you have a teneous & sales-oriented external aspect like revenue or customer success. Likewise, not owning the customer journey hides a lot, which is easy to miss in a growing company as specialization happens fast, esp in engineering.

* Pick carefully on enterprise vs consumer, which market within that, and which internal teams you work with. That's the customer persona you need to live & breathe later.

Not easy!

Also, fwiw, there is a big class of professional startup people who are 'scale up' experts that can take a working product, VC capital raised by other people, and help that grow faster. The OP's advice is more for getting on that track. And from a founders perspective: you can just hire them, everyone wins. Just don't confuse that with a 0->1 skillset, not inherent..