11–20 of 83 posts
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
>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.
We all need a little bit of "I'm good and I'm worth it." Some maybe more than others. Negotiations are all a mental game. People will pay anything for what they feel is worth it, it's your job to frame what a service of product is worth.
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.
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 abou…
He gave some much needed but harsh feedback, essentially asking "Why should they hire you? 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...
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 t…
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.
Just start making things, and telling people you're making things. Eventually you will become connected to like-minded people.
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.
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.
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…"