Founders usually know what they’re signing up for

Sharing frustrations with starting up a business. In my career I have raised over $30m over multiple rounds. Co-founders in non-business roles get pushed out by politics. Sharing control with co-founders is messy, inconvenient, time consuming. Money lets you hire people who have to answer to you. If you are not the main ‘Business person’ in a startup high chance you are disposable, no matter what skills you have. And it sucks to spend so much effort only to get bullied out and left with nothing. Some investors will follow you on social media, if your business is not growing QoQ don’t post anything on social media that implies you are not working every weekend. They will ask why you are not working. If you are CEO, be ready for every random person to tell you how to run your business. Not in a ‘friendly advice’ kind of way, if you are the CEO you have a target on your back. Investors don’t know about your industry or have very dated knowledge. Some will just say random tips like ‘try web3’ or ‘try SaaS’ and blame you for following their advice when it fails. Your progress is measured against fraud companies who fake numbers, or the 1 in thousands who succeed. Get made to feel like you are failing to live up to super high expectations constantly. Employees work half your hours, off sick usuall one day a week, deliver next to nothing and expect 20% hikes every year because that’s what their friends make, or they read some dumb startup hires freshers at 20LPA. Smooth talking people with the same idea as you, no traction, never shipped a product in life, will raise a huge seed round due to 'pedigree' and spend it all on self promotion. You will always be compared to these clowns who find ways to lecture others while building nothing of value.

Having worked for both early stage startups and large corporations, the work satisfaction I get by working for startups is unmatched. I’m currently identifying few of the startups to work for as an experienced software engineer. What are the metrics and parameters to look for? There are some brilliant minds here who share their awesome knowledge, your thoughts will be appreciated!

Hi All, what can help me join an early stage startup and grow up to the top close to the founders within a year? I want to be in the middle of the action Has anyone here done it before?

Soonicorn founder Shoot your questions!

I work as a Product manager at a series A well funded startup. This company is run by a solo founder/CEO. This is a wannabe tech and product startup that does not care about their product at all. The internal review meetings get 5 minutes on product and 55 minutes on business and operations on a good day! All they care about is how to run operations and tech just works on automation instead of building the product for the end user. Every OKR cycle runs for two months where OKRs are set for product but we end up building internal tools because things get "re-prioritised" and operations "can not miss targets". The worst part is that the strategy changes every 2 months and every week, the CEO keeps adding new "wants". Almost like a baby seeing shiny new toys. At this stage, the product has become a mess with no identity at all! This baby always says "But is that even do-able" acts critical and tries to seem smart in front of their employees while lying to the investors and board every other week that we are a tech and product company. I don't know if this happens at other startups in India. Would love to hear what y'all have experienced.

IIT grad here building a venture backed startup. I think 99% of folks here believe that venture backed founders are super entitled and in a much "cosier" position than employees Just sharing a few facts about our journey so far if it helps anyone improve their perspectives- 1) Paying ourselves 33% of our campus salary & 60% of what we are paying to our employees (Talking about Pure Base Salary here, not including ESOPs) 2) Insane stress - You basically have to raise money to build (esp if its deeptech because of the high fixed costs) and there are predefined metrics you have to always chase, sometimes just beyond yourselves. Your product will be copied if it's good because well, they always have more money than you. You work 7 days a week for insane hours, chasing metrics required to be "afloat" 3) 99% of venture backed startups result in 0 liquidity gain for founders. So basically in all likeliness, everything is for a net negative return compared to if we took the campus job So, when you wholeheartedly bash founders as if they are sitting On a goldmine while you are toiling for THEIR gold Treasure, just understand that more likely than not, there is not really any gold but rather an irrational hope they are clinging to Also, Yes-we pay above market to our employees (100% hike for the last one) but the truth is some startups just Can't afford it. And ironically, there is a much higher looking down on these startups with meagurely paid founders rather than giants like Tech Mahindra paying peanuts to their employees while having a 1000% salary hike for the executives. Yeah, most startups need to do better but please appreciate if someone is atleast trying to do better because trust me, it's INSANELY HARD.. The number of posts I see about Flipkart making hundreds millionaires is way too less than the ones I see about pinpointing at every single mistake early stage startups do & I just wanted to express my opinion on it Peace!

Saw someone commenting on a founder with 5-6 yoe hiring for 8+ yoe employee. As founders you have to be able to hire and work with people smarter and more experienced than you, in domains that aren't even your expertise necessarily. It's a huge gamble for founders and involves many hiring mistakes before getting it right and locking down long term employees interested in working at least 3-5 years with some hope of ESOP exit. Most won't stick around for more than a year or two, and even founders know that very well, hence they offer realistic terms that work for them but might not work for potential employees. The thing about good employees is that they will call you out on anything that needs improvement in the business/product point blank. They have high standards for themselves and founders both. And they bring an outsider's perspective that the core team starts losing over time unless they are involved in customer support actively. And ofc, gotta be respectful towards them if you want them to stay and not leave too soon. But also gotta keep them in check in case they cross lines. Very difficult to balance imo. I can only imagine how AI coworker agents will change the dynamics and team sizes in the next 5-10 years.

What questions would you ask to evaluate if you should join an early stage startup in this market? The objective is to ensure job longevity, avoid getting laid off and experience a reasonable amount of growth. Is there anything else that we can do apart from asking questions to the company folks?

I'm seeing so many posts where startup employees are cribbing about things like layoffs, work culture etc etc. Doesn't seem like they have perspective on everything it takes to build a startup. I've built a failed startup myself and have immense respect for founders who are grinding it out there in such difficult recessionary circumstances. And then you have so many of the engineers and PMs cribbing about basics without talking about important things like learning growth, building for the future etc. Why such myopia? I work at a big tech and envy the speed at which startups move, the big responsibility everyone gets to handle, the fast career growth. All these things are being cribbed about. They crib about founders wanting more. Their job is to ensure success, not to give lifetime jobs to entitled people. They have more headaches you can imagine. In my small startup I had a million headaches. I can only imagine how hard it must be to run larger ships. Is everyone joining a startup these days looking for a get rich quick scheme?

Hear me out here, Starting up is much more than idea PMF MVP CAC capital etc There are so many basic paperwork questions - how to register company, GST, what all funds can government help with, how to get them, what startup programs Or behavioral questions - friends coming to build business, insecurity, anxiety, non - business backgrounds, job to business journey The top customers are here Many founders too, people who have built companies from scratch Founders who have failed and yet not given up First time founders who built it big, navigating inevitable issues These basic questions could be very helpful