As a founder of a company that has 3 separate products and divisions, I have had some brush with recruitments now. I’m going to talk about my favourite recruitment myth here:
“I’m quitting my corporate job to join a startup because I want an easy life and a strict 5 day week”
Sorry to burst the bubble — Life in a startup is as hectic as a corporate job, if not more.
While pop-cult, movies and TV series glamorize the pizza, beers and FIFA as part of a typical startup environment, what they don’t tell you is the insane amount sweat, tears, and blood the founding members put to give shape to a product or a service.
If you want to become a core member of a promising startup team, to challenge yourself, to think out of the box and to give birth to something incredible, be prepared to let go off luxuries.
I’ve been asked this question often: But Aanchal, if life is so hard in a startup too, why should one leave the “stable” corporate, probably take a pay cut and join forces with a small new organization?
My answer to this is: Each start-up employee has to be entrepreneurial in his or her own way. If comfort, stability and less work is what you’re looking for, startup isn’t the place for you.
Sure, startup jobs can be risky. But always remember: higher the risk, higher the rewards. As an employee joining a startup, either as a fresher or with experience, the kind of responsibilty and challenges that you’d be exposed to would be exponentially higher than in a cushioned corporate. You’d be trained to rub shoulders with the founders and be expected to lead and pivot at a relatively much younger professional age.
You do not expect the founders to micro-manage you. I push my team to take initiavites based on their interests, I feed them with stories of disruption and at the same time guide them to be supremely realistic and ruthlessly pragmatic in their execution. I request them to discuss or even argue with me. Even with all crazy work routine, a good startup will ensure the maximum intellectual returns for the team. Be it an intern or a full time team member.
If as a core member, you can’t commit to adopt the startup as your baby, you’re wasting yours as well as the founders’ time.
If you’re just running away from the corporate chaos to lead a peaceful passive work life in a start-up, your expectations will likely mismatch in an ambitious fast growing start-up.
It takes some serious balls to leave a comfort zone to experiment with a startup’s positively abnormal growth chart. If you place your trust in the right founders and their idea, your so called gamble will play out well.
Where there’s smart hard work coupled with dreamily disruptive yet practical ideas, money follows too.
