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I want to get into startups, but I don’t know where to start

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Re: I want to get into startups, but I don’t know where to start

#51

Post by rubiquity »

angersock wrote: post #31
ryandrake wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

> 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.

Re: I want to get into startups, but I don’t know where to start

#52

Post by wasd »

angersock wrote: post #4

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…

I think your post is mostly on point but I think a lot of people underestimate the importance of picking the right problem. Is the pain point big enough that someone will pay for a better alternative? Is the addressable market size large enough? How you can reach these people? I think these three questions are very important.

Re: I want to get into startups, but I don’t know where to start

#54

Post by 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."

Re: I want to get into startups, but I don’t know where to start

#55

Post by a8da6b0c91d »

scarecrowbob wrote: post #40
personlurking wrote: post #20

"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…"

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/herse…

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.

Re: I want to get into startups, but I don’t know where to start

#56

Post by delluminatus »

sayemm wrote: post #48

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... ). So no regrets, I'm really excited about the future and I'm thinking long…

Hmm, start a profitable bootstrapped business with 7 figures of revenue right out of college? And it's much lower risk. Why didn't I think of that?

Re: I want to get into startups, but I don’t know where to start

#57

Post by 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?

Re: I want to get into startups, but I don’t know where to start

#58

Post by angersock »

rubiquity wrote: post #51
angersock wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

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.

Re: I want to get into startups, but I don’t know where to start

#59

Post by midas007 »

untog wrote: post #14

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…

That's motivation to find a business model that can support a healthy work environment from day 0 and mentor folks coming up.

http://www.virgin.com/richard-branson/run-businesses-like-ho...

Re: I want to get into startups, but I don’t know where to start

#60

Post by midas007 »

xfax wrote: post #50
untog wrote: post #14

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…

To your comment about working at a big company not being a mistake (I agree), I think the art of learning through 'apprenticeship' is getting lost in the whole 'hacker' hullabaloo. My first job out of college was at a large company and I worked with some old timers who had been in the industry for years and on code that, at least parts of it, had been written almost 20 years ago. Learning from my colleague's experien…

Open source needs more of this. I've seen FreeBSD's model but I think there's room to maturely optimize.
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