By Stephanie Lonn, Recruiting Manager at Expect Labs
Choosing a job in Silicon Valley can be as overwhelming as selecting which college to attend. Do you go with a small liberal arts school or a large public university? Are you more comfortable in an intimate workshop setting or a 500-seat lecture hall? Settling on the programs, professors, people, and locations that matter to you is a critical part of making that final decision.
When considering your next company in the Valley, many run down a similar list. Is Dropbox’s mahogany whiskey bar calling your name? Can you see yourself trying out Facebook’s sushi on Tuesdays, and BBQ on Thursdays? Would you get more work done with wireless quiet time shuttling to and from Google?
With all these choices, why would anyone go small & scrappy (i.e. <25 people? No cafeteria, no penthouse office, no shuttles – just a laptop and a vision. After working at gigantic to mid-sized companies, I purposefully sought out an early-stage startup that I could help grow from the ground up. The journey so far has had both celebrations and challenges, but I’ve managed to fall in love with the process of watching our caterpillar cocoon into a butterfly. At this point, it’s hard to imagine going back to something big. Hopefully after reading the pointers below, you’ll learn why an early-stage company might be right for you too!
Ownership
When you join a company that has less than twenty-five people, odds are the product is either not yet created, or not fully baked. The future success of the company often rides on you making deadlines and contributing your vision to the greater whole. While this adds a layer of pressure, there is also huge satisfaction in seeing something come to life that you created from scratch. Maybe it’s building your company’s IT infrastructure for the first time, or closing that first big business development deal. Regardless of your job function, at a startup, you can see the impact quickly and often. Being the first to build something that may eventually be used by thousands, if not millions, of people leads to a high that can only be explained by those experiencing it.
Equity
When a company is just getting off the ground, they depend on your skills to drive the business forward. Being one of the first twenty-five employees often means receiving a percentage of ownership in the company that is measured in generous stock option grants at very low purchase prices. This scenario is scary for many as the number is intangible upon your start date. Unlike public companies where your equity over the next four years is a known entity (assuming the market cooperates), a startup’s stock is worth an ‘estimate’ based on a series of projections. So why choose options that have a hypothetical value vs. market value on Wall Street? The best investors in the Valley are banking on a 5-10x return on their initial contribution. Assuming your startup is funded by one of the pros, you can hope that your hypothetical value has a similar return. The earlier you join, the more options you are granted. This is an allure that draws many to join as one of the first employees. Like they say in Vegas – you’ve got to bet big to win big.
Building a Culture
Remember your first day of summer camp, when your assigned tent resembled military barracks? Over the course of a few days, this blank slate eventually morphed from just bunks and metal tables to your personalized fortress donned with canoeing trophies, a wall full of homemade macaroni necklaces, and remnants of toilet paper left over from your neighbor’s midnight ambush. Similarly, startup offices generally begin as blank slates. While most are on a seed-friendly budget (think Ikea tables and Nespresso machines), the culture is yours to build. The décor, team building events, and favorite snacks are yours to choose. At Expect Labs, we’ve started the tradition of celebrating everyone’s birthday with their favorite food. Whether it’s cupcakes or deep-dish pizza, your indulgence of choice is ordered in advance and arrives equipped with a birthday song and storytelling time.
Exposure to C-Level Executives
If you’ve ever worked for a bigger company, you may remember your excitement when seeing the executives for the first time. Maybe it was hearing Zuckerberg speak at the Friday Q&A sessions, or rubbing elbows with Larry Page at a tech conference. At an early-stage company, you see the CEO every single day. In fact, in most instances, you are reporting to them for your first couple of months. The chance to have a seat at the executive table, and share your input during 1:1 and team meetings is also an opportunity to learn from some of the best players in the league.
Devil’s Advocate
Of course, it’s not all fun and games at an early-stage company. For example, when solving a problem that’s never been demonstrated before, sometimes the teacher is you. While larger companies have leaders in their field educating and training fellow team members, startup employees are often seen with their noses buried in textbooks, taking online classes, and running off to meet experts for coffee. Further, at most larger companies you are probably driving a specific function within a team; whereas, at a startup you’re often leading that entire team yourself. For those uncomfortable paving their own path, this can be daunting.
Flexibility is also a necessity. Anyone that has worked for a company just getting off the ground is all too familiar with the word ‘pivot.’ It’s a death wish to become too married to an idea. Having the ability to scrap a project you’ve been working on for three months and start a new project as if you’d already been working on it for three months, all while having a smile on your face, is not a nice-to-have — it’s a requirement.
Despite all the sweat and tears, joining an early-stage startup can have tremendous rewards. At Expect Labs, we’re building a technology platform that powers intelligent voice interfaces, which were thought to be of the “futuristic” and “Star Trek” genre just two years back. To pioneer a space that is now being recognized as the future of technology is both scary yet thrilling with each milestone we hit. If you’re into pushing yourself to the limits, having a measurable impact, and learning more than you can ever imagine, it may just be the place for you.
P.S. We’re hiring : )
