On Startups, and the con of awesome

After working in startups for the majority of my working life, I’ve come to realise that they’re a bit of a con. We’ve been introduced to this idea that you have to work at a cool, edgy startup these days, someone that’s going to disrupt an entire vertical.

You’ll be introduced to this at first by articles promoting working in a startup, or talking about how great companies X, Y, and Z are. Perhaps you’re with an agency, so you brush these articles off with “nah, I’m cool with my agency job”, and continue on with you life.

Or, perhaps you’re a graduate, and not so long ago you were studying, now you want to put all of what you’ve learnt to use. You’ve seen all the articles in techcrunch or valleywag, the upvoted posts on Hackernews. They’ve captured your attention.

They’ve captured your attention.

At job fairs, everyone was talking about startups, you’ve seen investors speaking about them, and, of course, you’ve seen the big exits like Instagram, Whatsapp, and many others. You’ve also been told about the flexibility you’ll have, the wide range of things you’ll get to work on, how you’ll be pushing a new frontier, and how exciting it all will be.

…and how exciting it all will be.

So, you decide to look around at what these startups are. You find a bunch of cool companies all hiring people, looking for graduates just like you — yes, you — to hire. Deciding to give it a shot, you fill out a few Jobvite or Resumator forms, and apply to go work in a startup.

the pay is negotiable, for the right candidate

You’ve read their job description, you’ve seen that the pay is negotiable (starting at £30,000, for the right candidate), and you’ve looked excitedly about potentially owning shares in a company.

This excitement is great, suddenly the job search isn’t boring, you’ve got options other in life than to wear a suit every day to an office where no one knows your name. Maybe you’ll even buy that new pair of vans you’ve been needing, just to celebrate your first day, if and when you get that job at a startup.

However, I feel that I need to inform you of something, dear reader, as they’ve not told you the entire story. Working in a startup is all of those things that I described above, it is exciting, it can be very rewarding, you do meet some great people.

Working in a startup also comes with the also comes with an emotional roller-coaster of extreme ups and extreme downs. At times you’ll be able to work flexible hours, and do drinks after work, but often you’ll find yourself absolutely rammed, working massively long hours because planning went askew or you’ve got that big investor pitch coming up.

Massively long hours as planning went askew or there’s that big pitch coming up

Working at a startup also often features taking a salary where your stock options factor into this. So, you’ll accept £30k, because, hey, it’s your foot in the door to working at a startup. Or maybe you’ll get £35k plus 10k stock options. Oooh, stock, that means you might end up a millionaire if this startup goes big, how awesome would that be!

However, what is often missed is that your peers working around you doing contracting earn between £180 and £500 per day, or that there’s that job at a fairly established company that employs a fair few people which is offering £45–60k.

What you also aren’t told is that the stock options often never appear, yet, often you’ll be negotiated on salary for stock. Stock is like a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow — It might be there, it might not, we just hope it will be. Other times, you’ll take that cool startup job, thinking that you’ve gotten a great deal, but then when things get tough, you realise that you’ve not actually received any stock in the company, no silver lining for the extreme lows that can strike with startup life.

Or, perhaps, you didn’t understand how options fully work, and that your ten thousand options only exist if your with the company for the entirety of the vesting period (typically 3–4 years).

Or that those ten thousand options really represent just 0.001% of the company, due to there the company really has 10 million total shares.

I’m not at all wanting to say that you shouldn’t work for startups, they can be great and extremely rewarding, but just know exactly what you’re getting yourself into. They aren’t all roses.

Maybe that roller coaster of variety and potential wealth isn’t one you

Maybe that roller coaster of variety and potential wealth isn’t one you want to ride, because you don’t want to face the stress and eventual burnout, post working for a startup?

To cap off this article, I’ll leave you with this lovely quote that James Seymour-Lock just tweeted a while ago, from Seth Godin, which to some degree, I highly agree with:

“Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, maybe you should set up a life you don’t need to escape from”

Footnote: This article was first drafted shortly after I’d left one startup which was absolutely amazing, but I got burnt out, and then I had to bail some because I wasn’t the right fit. I now happily contract for startups and small businesses, accelerating them towards their goals, whilst still being able to live my life to the fullest.