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Work at a Startup

workatastartup.org

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Re: Work at a Startup

#61

Post by starkfist »

nivi wrote: post #50
pg wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually the investors, founders and board members fuck around with the corporate structure, option splits and preferred vs. Common stock so that the employee options are worthless, anyway. That's not common in successful startups. No successful startup would want to alienate their employees this way. It wouldn't be worth it, just to recapture a few percent of stock. Common stock only gets massively diluted when a com…

Work at a Startup is a brilliant move and I'm looking forward to learning from it. I don't agree that "usually startups in trouble end up dying, or getting bought in a fire sale." I don't know if anyone has a big enough data set to give us the "correct" answer. But if you talk to thoughtful, experienced VCs and entrepreneurs who have seen many companies through their whole lifecycle (birth to IPO and beyond), I think…

They don't die, they become zombies. The last startup I left 3 years ago is going to limp along forever because the investors won't kill it. At this point I believe the entire corporate entity has been restructured so that none of the original employees nor even the founder will make money in the unlikely case of a liquidity event. This isn't the only "startup" I know of in this situation. Im not really sure what the point of this is other than to give members of the SV subclass of professional startup executives and EIRs something to do...

Re: Work at a Startup

#63

Post by pg »

aristus wrote: post #55

A question I'm surprised isn't on here: what's the motivation to do this? Is it becoming harder for YC companies to hire, or a way to share resources, etc?

Hiring tends to be issue number 1 for all startups that get over the initial threshold of raising significant funding. Now that so many of the startups we've funded are over that threshold, we were hearing more and more about it. So we started to think whether there was anything we could do to help them, and it seemed like the best thing we could do would be to make the idea of working for a startup more real to more programmers.

I think most programmers apply to work at big companies largely by default. They know what to expect when they do that. They know that startups exist, of course, but if they haven't met many in person, the idea of going to work for one doesn't seem like a real possibility. So we thought that if we could make the idea seem real, by (a) explaining all about it and (b) introducing people to a lot of actual startups, at least they wouldn't simply go to big companies by default. They'd actually weigh the two alternatives, and that would probably cause more to work for startups.

Re: Work at a Startup

#64

Post by zackattack »

pg wrote: post #21
sayrer wrote: post #16

This comment will sound a little confrontational, but here it goes. Why would anyone competent enough to work at one of these companies choose that path instead of being a founder?

That's actually a good question. There are several answers. One is that being a founder is not merely a matter of competence. It's also financially risky, and very stressful. So someone who was just as competent as the founders but wanted less risk or stress might prefer to be an early employee. You can titrate the amount of startupness you get in your job by the size of the company you join. If you're the first pers…

Okay, what's the appeal of "changing the world" for its own sake? I often hear things like "entrepreneurs endure the stress because they want to change the world."

Re: Work at a Startup

#65

Post by patio11 »

pg wrote: post #21
sayrer wrote: post #16

This comment will sound a little confrontational, but here it goes. Why would anyone competent enough to work at one of these companies choose that path instead of being a founder?

That's actually a good question. There are several answers. One is that being a founder is not merely a matter of competence. It's also financially risky, and very stressful. So someone who was just as competent as the founders but wanted less risk or stress might prefer to be an early employee. You can titrate the amount of startupness you get in your job by the size of the company you join. If you're the first pers…

You can titrate the amount of startupness

I think this is my favorite metaphor ever. (I'm titrating it all the way down to homeopathic levels myself...)

Re: Work at a Startup

#66

Post by justin »

sayrer wrote: post #16

This comment will sound a little confrontational, but here it goes. Why would anyone competent enough to work at one of these companies choose that path instead of being a founder?

I've been asked that during a hiring presentation before, and the answer I gave was that starting a startup was the most fulfilling thing I've ever done and you should definitely do your own if you have the inclination.

However, if you want to get a bit of experience working at somewhere where you can work on many systems at massive scale, want to jump a few levels ahead on the risk curve, or are interested in first seeing what a startup is like from the inside, then Justin.tv, Airbnb, Weebly, Scribd, Dropbox or any of the others are some pretty good places to do that.

Re: Work at a Startup

#68

Post by justin »

jf wrote: post #10

Will all the people needed to make a hiring decision be present at this event? I postulate that running a hiring event would attract some very talented people if the one of the stated goals of the event was for people to leave with signed offer letters. I helped run the "Reverse Job Fair" at the Hacker Dojo several months ago - some job seekers flew in from the East Coast and LA just to attend. From what I've heard a…

I can only speak for our company, but I run technical hiring at JTV and will be there presenting. On the other hand, to say that we will hire you "on the spot" is probably disingenuous: I think both candidates and our company are better served when we make people go through the full interview process of doing a technical problem, coming into the office for technical interviews and to see what the culture is like, and then giving both the candidate and our company a day or two to think about it. That being said, of course it is our full intention to move as quickly as possible.

Re: Work at a Startup

#69

Post by justin »

pg wrote: post #63
aristus wrote: post #55

A question I'm surprised isn't on here: what's the motivation to do this? Is it becoming harder for YC companies to hire, or a way to share resources, etc?

Hiring tends to be issue number 1 for all startups that get over the initial threshold of raising significant funding. Now that so many of the startups we've funded are over that threshold, we were hearing more and more about it. So we started to think whether there was anything we could do to help them, and it seemed like the best thing we could do would be to make the idea of working for a startup more real to more…

Using YC's influence and reputation to bring talented candidates in the door at the investee companies is always something I'd hoped for, so I'm super happy to see this. Quality deal flow has always been our bottleneck for hiring (like all technical companies, I suppose we like to think we're super picky :D).

Re: Work at a Startup

#70

Post by nagrom »

MLnick wrote: post #67

Any chance of something like this in London?!

I'd also be interested in an event like this if it was held in the UK. If it's on Justin.tv, will the stream be made available as a video later?
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