5 reasons why I went working for an early stage startup

And I’m happy about it.

Almost a year ago I met with this young bright entrepreneur and ever since I’ve been working with him and my team in creating something valuable.When we met he told me about his many projects and that he needed someone to follow the day-to-day operations of one of his startups that had just raised a seed round by Business Angels and strategic partners. For the benefit of the length of this post I’ll resume what he proposed to me: “Hey you, here’s the money, you’re going to follow the company operations, see ya at the first million in revenue.” After having thought about it for 2.5 seconds I accepted. A year later here I am and based on my very brief experience, I want to share with you 5 reasons why I’m happy about this choice:

Your work impacts directly on company results

Since we are still a pre-revenue startup, our main focus is to get our product out on the market. My role is to make sure that we do that before we burn the shit out of our bank account. Typically an early stage startup is a small company. That’s why there are good chances that you’re going to work on something that have a direct impact on company results. Isn’t that intriguing?

You Solve problems

When i was 5 y.o. I learned how to multiply (simple stuff, like 2x2, 3x2 ecc.). Ever since I’ve been in love with numbers and problems. That’s one of the reasons why I like my job. In an hardly predictable business environment you can have the coolest-fanciest business plan but, like it or not, when reality and execution kick in you are going to face a lot of unpredictable problems. As one of the greatest boxers of all times once said, “everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face”. If you don’t like finding creative solution to complex problems in short time period then stay away from the startup world.

You have to figure it out

As early stage startup is usually a small company it doesn’t have all the necessary skill in-house to complete every business task. In this case there are two possibility, either you take the time to learn how to do it in-house or you pay someone else to do the task. Even if you’re paying a supplier to do it you have to know what you need to complete the task, for pricing/timing reasons and for control on the output of the work (if it is critical to the core business you need to have that kind of control). So like it or not, you have to figure it out anyway. The more things you figure out the more you learn. And I like learning new stuff.

You grow as the company grows

The more things you figure out, the more problems you solve. The more problems you solve, the more you execute. The More you execute, the more your company grows (there is also a strong component of luck, but let’s talk only about things we can influence). As you’re company grows you’re going to be able to face increasingly difficult problems. I think that this is an incredible catalyst for personal growth. “This is the non monetary dividend that makes the experience priceless.”

You learn how value is created

When setting up a company from scratch you get a better understanding of the process of value creating. That’s because often everyone in the company gets an understanding of who’s paying for what they’re making. The value chain in complex corporate isn’t always as short and sometimes, as some corporate workers told me, you can get the feeling of being only a cog in a machine. This is definitely not true for a startup. In a job market where we are all easily replaceable, learning how to create value is a must have skill that can be always useful.

In conclusion..

Of course it is not a smooth ride, there are a lot of ups and downs and the pressure sometimes becomes too heavy that you just want to be small and take a nap, but if you are ready to face the downs and enjoy the ups it’s going to be one hell of a ride.