AMA - Working in Founder's Office from past 3 years.

Depends on the funding of the startup and your overall experience in strategy roles. But you do make better than most other roles in your company. In my case, my CTC is 12.6 LPA with some portion of it in form of ESOPs. My counterpart in the same role but has some consulting experience earns double of this, although we do similar work.

Ever thought of asking for similar pay if you were making similar impact?

1. The responsibility in this role is of a generalist. Kind of in-line with Entrepreneur in Residence or Chief of Staff. But mostly, revolves around making company wide performance reports, taking initiatives, setting up whole new teams, coming up with implementable solutions when a tough situation arises, etc. Hope you get a gist.

2. Kind of agree with your headcount analogy, although can't fix on the 50 number, as definitely depends on the industry of the startup, number of co-founders, management ability of the founder as well. Coincidentally, 2 of the 3 companies I have worked in, I had joined at the Seed stage itself and the 3rd one was still bootstrapped when I joined. Depends on Founder to Founder.

You can be asked some case solving or solving some problems that arises in their own startup. They will judge you on the basis of your approach on how to look at the problem, how deeper can you think, can you think horizontally (other ways to solve the same problem) and the feasibility of your solution. They might throw challenges to you regarding your solution and will judge you on the basis of how well you can defend or amend your solution. Why do you want to switch from Product Management to Founder's Office?

Thanks for the reply. I have discussed in detail about why I want to switch from PM to Founders Office or similar roles. Any advice or suggestion is appreciated.

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My situation was very very different. It was COVID, so we only had online classes. I used to tune in to the classes and continue my work on the side, basically, not focusing much on the classes 😂 I used to self-study at the time of the exam as earlier when I used to pay full attention, I didn't like the way they taught. YouTube zindabad! I think your situation would be very different from this.

My college is luckily quite lenient on the attendance policy. Major Issue would be exams, preparing and giving exams need one whole month for proper focus, In my previous Internships I used to breaks and stuff. But, unsure how would I be able to manage once I take up the full-time offer? Are the companies lenient wrt this? Do they consider you’re still a student and would be unavailable most of the time?

You need to be able to learn quickly. Each company uses different tools for dashboards and reports. It's a plus if you already know some data analytics and how to draw conclusions from reports, but always be prepared to be challenged with a new tool or new requirements. In one company, we have used Zoho Analytics. In another we used Power BI and Excel.

Thanks for the revert ! This gives me some clarity now.

I'll keep it this way. The companies I have worked for, the founders themself identified a need for this role and hired for it. Still it took some time while I was doing small projects and the Founders were analysing me before handing over bigger projects. Since you are the closest to the Founders, they have a direct eye on your thinking, approach and results, hence gradually trust developed.

There is nothing specific defined. But mostly founders look for some strategy or business experience. Depending on the startup and their hiring criteria, they might or might not look for pedigree if you have enough experience in these roles.

I'm not sure about consulting. Depends on your credentials like post-graduation, which startups you have worked for, etc. but you do a good amount of strategy work in this role. You get to learn new skills on the go as your job requires. Let's say that the founder has decided to give you a project around product management team, and you don't know much around how they work, then you have to dedicate time and learn more about it. You might have to learn new software and tools as there is a requirement from the Founder.