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Want to found a startup? Work at one first

blog.lawrencejones.dev

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

#11

Post by lawrjone »

daenz wrote: post #9

I've worked at several startups, but my experience has been that I've been relatively siloed in my work. Maybe I wasn't taking advantage of the startup experience, but aside my limited view at standups, I didn't know how the sausage was made in different areas of the company. I couldn't see how it all fit together, because I had an incomplete picture.

Yeah, this recommendation only works if you can make the most of opportunities at whichever company you've joined.

I got lucky, in that GoCardless gave me a load of opportunity and I grew a lot with the company, which opened more doors.

Not every company is like this, so that's a significant caveat to this advice. But ideally you'd find companies that are.

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

#12

Post by lawrjone »

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 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.

And in that sense, I'm continually thankful I have the experience I do in my current position. I think it means I'm materially more impactful, and I can only imagine performing significantly worse without it.

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

#13

Post by fma »

invitrom wrote: post #5

Hmm I feel like most founders I know just started companies after college without much experience. While people that want to get experience first seem to never end up starting a company. I think it mostly comes down to risk adversity.

Doesn't match the data...

https://hbr.org/2018/07/research-the-average-age-of-a-succes...

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

#14

Post by eatonphil »

invitrom wrote: post #5

Hmm I feel like most founders I know just started companies after college without much experience. While people that want to get experience first seem to never end up starting a company. I think it mostly comes down to risk adversity.

I think the average US founder age is 40s. But I'm not sure since most statistics focus on successful founders. This link seems to look at all of them.

https://www.zippia.com/founder-jobs/demographics/

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

#15

Post by eatonphil »

fma wrote: post #13
invitrom wrote: post #5

Hmm I feel like most founders I know just started companies after college without much experience. While people that want to get experience first seem to never end up starting a company. I think it mostly comes down to risk adversity.

Doesn't match the data... https://hbr.org/2018/07/research-the-average-age-of-a-succes...

That says "successful". If you're just talking about all founders it may be different.

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

#16

Post by lawrjone »

invitrom wrote: post #5

Hmm I feel like most founders I know just started companies after college without much experience. While people that want to get experience first seem to never end up starting a company. I think it mostly comes down to risk adversity.

I am absolutely not saying you can't do this. In fact, GoCardless is an example of a company started by very young founders with little start-up experience, and is now a unicorn.

The difference is that if you have this experience when starting a company, it can help you avoid so many stumbling blocks, and you can skip forward to more mature company stages.

While you can't really compare two companies, I think it's interesting that the company I currently work at (incident.io) has only taken a year to go from me joining as the first employee to 40 people + series A + hundreds of customers now.

There's no way we'd have moved so fast if it wasn't a case of replicating what we already knew worked, tweaked for the environment we found ourselves in.

So yes, it doesn't mean you can't be successful as an inexperienced founder, but I do think it makes a difference in terms of execution.

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

#18

Post by losthobbies »

For me, it was good to see that the person who started the start up I worked at was just a normal guy. He hired this CTO though that was amazing to work with.

Unfortunately, my impostor syndrome (along with my inexperience) became quite crippling and I had to leave.

Looking back, I probably should have left sooner or been comfortable with standing up for myself.

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

#19

Post by polote »

lawrjone wrote: post #10
polote wrote: post #4

If you lack the confidence to start a startup then working at one can help you gain than to create one in the future. But I'm not confident it increases the chances the company is going to be successful. Actually if you had the chance to work at a company that became a unicorn, you will have better chance to get founding which increase the chance that your company is going to work, so yeah. Except for that confidence…

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

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

#20

Post by mritchie712 »

We have a "Founders Program" for people that know they want to start a company in the next few years. I think it's better to have full transparency on both sides:

As the company: You get highly motivated, amazing talent

As the employee / future founder: You make your intention clear to leave in x months to start your own thing and can openly discuss strategy for your company with the current founders instead of hiding your side projects.

I took this idea from Mighty / Supabase.

Application process is simple, pitch me at mike@luabase.com. Tell me what you want to do to grow Luabase and what you're thinking of doing for your company.

0 - https://luabase.notion.site/Founders-Program-16f8d963328a47d...

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