Category: Entrepreneurship How to Tell you Work at a Start-Up
Going from Intel (100,000+ employees) to Facebook (250+) to Mint (6+) I have experienced a lot of different cultures, teams, experiences and more in just under 3 years.
The easiest way to tell if you are working at a start-up is:
Give that line a few seconds…ready? Okay, so let my recap some experiences:
Intel:Had an obituary section on the intranet that highlighted people who died recently.
Facebook:An engineer died in a freak bicycling accident. A few minute talk about it and then back to work.
Mint: If something happened to anyone on the team (knock on wood) the company would be severely crushed.
Yes, I realize this doesn’t hold true if Steve Jobs dies but this is why I like start-ups. I feel like I matter at the company I work at. How do you feel?
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Noah Kagan wrote How to Tell you Work at a Start-Up on March 28th, 2007 and there are 21 comments. There will be one more after you add yours, though. Read more posts by Noah Kagan.
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21 Responses to “How to Tell you Work at a Start-Up”
March 28th, 2007
12:31 pm
Better question: if you died, was it most likely the companies’ fault from overworking you?
March 28th, 2007
12:32 pm
Noah,
You did a good job putting it into perspective. Working for a large company, your job does go on without you, you are a dispensable commodity (for the most part, unless of course you are Steve Jobs)and that is part of the territory. Only when you are non dispensable and the company relies on you to contribute to the monthly revenue stream does it become apparent how valuable you are.
Will
March 28th, 2007
1:25 pm
hmm…interesting. The only motivation for me to work at a start up
1) Potentially working for a cool company
2) Good experience
3) Potential IPO money
4) Easily heard
Downsides:
1) If you fuck up, everyone will know
2) Cant afford to be lazy…u know..one of those days where u just go in to work and surf the web the whole day…and next thing u know..its 3pm..then u realize its too late to start any real work so u continue surfing or looking for long lost friends on the internet. Then u email that long lost friend only to have them reply back to you after like 2 months….and they dont seem to be too interested in your ‘discovery’. (This is not a confession by the way…heard it from a friend)
March 28th, 2007
1:26 pm
That’s exactly why I enjoy working at start-ups. Well, not because the company would come to a halt if I died, but because it keeps me motivated knowing that my work is essential to the company’s vitality. I worked at a start-up and was a must-stay-aliver for a while, and as they slowly shifted (or shafted) me into a few-minute-talk position, I lost my motivation.
But at the same time, you don’t want to be a blocker. That’s no good for any company.
March 28th, 2007
1:38 pm
Don’t die. I have bad finances, I need mymint.
March 28th, 2007
1:51 pm
I push pixels and copy edit at Azureus. All this post does is make me realize I want to contribute to the revenue stream. I don’t do that at my day job. Maybe it’s time for a new job. Who wants to hire me for product management or business development? :o)
March 28th, 2007
2:03 pm
i think it’s all relative. i work at a huge company, but I work in groups. If I died, my group would be pretty screwed. Yes, the Company will find somebody to replace me in time, but that person wouldn’t have the understanding about the work I was doing or be able to click with the team as well as I had. So, the project would take longer to complete and probably not turn out as well. The same goes for a start up company. Noah, if you died, I’m sure Mint could find another Marketing guy in a few days, probably not as good, but they could
Have you ever read “One minute manager meets the monkey?” One of my favorite ideas from that book is that you are not doing your job properly if other people can’t readily take over your job once you’re gone. You’re being inefficient if your Company “needs” you desperately.
March 28th, 2007
3:41 pm
I would hire you at Mint Angie!
Shivani, I thought for a second you said the best people are the ones who can’t be replaced. I 100% agree with you if you are doing your job correctly you are sharing it with others and making your self dispensable to do other things. It is kind of backwards but that is what I have read and learned in my short career.
March 28th, 2007
6:26 pm
I love this kind of stuff Noah.
I think you can also tell you work at a startup if the team wants to handle all customer/user support themselves. Most realize that the initial product feedback is priceless and they want to stay close to their users all long as possible. Support is just another hat everyone wears.
Google somehow is still able to give that kind of touch to their customers. When I need some advanced AdWords support I can send them an email full of geek speak and half-thought out ideas, and the reply I get makes me think I’m corresponding with one of the AdWords engineers or product managers; it’s perfect support. Yahoo on the other hand, *brick*
March 28th, 2007
8:23 pm
I owned my own small, grew to medium, company for 9 years.
The crew consisted of between 11 and 12, and yup, if anyone of them died, or me, the company would have been whamO’d.
I now work for a much larger company, and, I like not having to worry about the ‘what ifs’, I’m totally enjoying the anon-factor.
Of course I also know, if I had to fly solo at any point in time, and I mean any point, I can. Why? because I’ve done it, can do it.
Go out and do it, make yourself the ultimate count in your company…..it has mental perks you aren’t even aware of.
March 29th, 2007
2:49 am
Noah Nice point!
I love working with Start ups primary due to the following:
It’s a small team so everyone is absolutely connected and in sync
The feeling of Freshness is amazing like starting something from scratch
Most of lunch, dinner , tea, coffee, wine is with the core team (this is where out of the box ideas are discussed)
There is no bullshit from HR, Accounts, CFO, etc
In a start up we normally tend to work with people whom we love and even more love there skills and so on…
It’s a absolutely positive and a optimistic environment…
March 29th, 2007
9:56 am
Thats it, I quit…. j/k
That is a VERY interesting post Noah. I think your value is really on your impact and influence which typically are much higher in a smaller environment.
Cheers!
Christie
March 29th, 2007
10:18 am
I think it would definitely cause short-term issues at the company because the team tends to be pretty tight. That being said, the company would probably be ok long-term because they still have to move forward w/getting someone to take the role over.
After all, PayPal didn’t collapse after I left…hahaha (I guess we weren’t a startup anymore).
March 29th, 2007
4:06 pm
So when’s this Mint coming out? I need a way to manage my spending and Excel just isn’t doing it
March 29th, 2007
4:07 pm
Sign up for our beta, mymint.com and check out our mymint.com/blog
We are coming out shortly. I can let you play around with it when you come up North.
March 29th, 2007
4:54 pm
You bring an interesting topic. I hopped around quite a bit and I saw that small companies in general bounce back much quicker than you would expect after someone leaves.
What would happen to Apple if Steve Jobs died today? When Jobs got his surgery a while back, the stock price fell instantly as soon as the news got out. On the other hand, if anything happens to Bill Gates right now, MS will be just fine.
March 29th, 2007
4:56 pm
Mohammad,
Is MS okay now? =)
March 29th, 2007
5:06 pm
I do miss that start-up energy from time-to-time… Sri’s downsides are my upsides when it comes to having co-workers.
P.S. Aren’t you going to have a problem with Mint?
March 29th, 2007
10:25 pm
What I like about startups is that they tend to implement technologies that are actually fun to use. I’ve got my eye out on a couple of local startups that are looking for Ruby on Rails developers (student positions too! score). Hacking at legacy PHP4 just kind of.. sucks.
March 29th, 2007
11:37 pm
[...] I was just reading Noah’s blog about his career path. Lets just say he’s working in smaller and smaller companies (Intel to Facebook to Mint) as he grows up (thot this sounded better than “ages”, Noah =) [...]
April 11th, 2007
1:25 am
question is:
what happens when you die, and you’re the only person who knows ALL of the passwords.
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