Don’t waste your time in crappy startup jobs

https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/07/08/dont-waste-your-time-in-crappy-startup-jobs/

by igonvalue • 11 years ago

13 3 11 years ago

michaelochurch.wordpress.com

I agree completely with this article.

So many people I know stayed way longer than they should have at a startup job and worked unpaid overtime for a chance at a payout. None of them got any such thing.

-One friend was a lead developer. He built the project from the ground-up and then hired and managed the team, which continued to work very well. After one round of funding, the VC installed their new COO and he promptly replaced the manager with one of his own guys and used dirty politics to boot him out of the company. The COO was also kind enough to tell my friend that if he wanted severance (which he needed at the time), he would have to sign a letter saying he was 'grossly incompetent", which I think was just to cover his own ass.

-Another friend was a founder of a company and eventually got his shares diluted to less than 1%. His Co-founder used his relationships with the VC to do this. It's sad, because even on the company website, the co-founder and all the VC are listed as the management team and my friend is listed as an employee. Personally, I would have quit if this happened to me.

The last company where I worked gave me shares in addition to my pay check. The owner created a new LLC a few weeks after I quit and my shares are now worthless. I never really counted on it anyway, but it's just another example of why you need to be careful.

I think I'm too old to be a startup employee. I can see through the Fooseball tables in the lunch room and free Red Bull in the fridge. If I'm going to push myself to the limit working on anything, I better have a 50% or more stake in the company.

This is my motivation to start my own company (which is what I've been doing for the past 3 years).

smt88• 11 years ago

Along the lines of these anecdotes: many acquisitions are "small" (10-50M) and end up leaving founders with very little. Many of them make less than they would in the job market.

So it's not just employees who get screwed in these situations. Startups are a terrible way to get rich.

mg1982• 11 years ago

Long, but worth a read even if you're not in the field. It helped bring into focus a lot of the things that didn't feel right about startup culture (if it can be called that), but that I couldn't quite put my finger on.

Don’t waste your time in crappy startup jobs

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