Freaking out story that will make you want to work in a startup… or not.
An extended metaphor of the startup life.
TL;DR. Be adventurous, or leave.
Believe it or not, working within a small startup is like being part of a crew of pirates looking for treasures. The brand is your flag, and you want to plant it in every piece of soil.
First, ride on the boat
So you are walking from piers to piers and you see several wonderful shinning little boats (remember, you are here to paddle), wondering if you want to join one of them to discover new territories. Obviously, you should ask some questions to the teams ahead: do they have a motor in case there is no more wind? do they have half-full tank of fuel? or worst, is there already a hole in the boat hull?
Keep in mind that there is no bad answer to these questions. One question you should ask yourself though: are you ready to build a motor, find some fuel or plug the hole (at night during a storm) with these guys? Are you confident you can cross a river, a sea or an ocean with them? You’ll need to face your most terrible fears, take it as a chance, it’s what will make you stronger. Be as careful as you want to be.
If you think you are ready and you felt in love with their road-map, jump on the boat and learn from each failure (write them down in a logbook, known today as Medium :) )
I wanted to go to Nassau, they told me that they were going to Tortuga…
Not so long ago, I decided to draw my bow and jump on another boat. I applied in many startups to pursue one last 6-month internship. I was hungry for new adventures. My idea was to go back in San Francisco, which is obviously one place to go for any respectful pirates, for one last experience before the big jump. I also wanted to work on something new, with new people that could mentor me to learn and apply new things faster. I finally agreed to join OpenBike, a company that wanted to make smart bicycles. I was very happy and excited to join this project which was really young (I’ve never put a foot on a sailboard!), but the thing is, they never proved enough traction to continue and had to pivot. Thankfully, they warned me soon enough and I had the choice to stay with my current crew. I can’t blame them as I initially took the risk to jump on their fragile “boat” to live an adventure going in a pleasant destination, and I was aware I was taking this risk, but they decided to head somewhere else and leave the OpenBike boat behind.
Working in startups goes with accepting that you are taking risks with the whole crew.
Ready, set, go!
When you are on board, be prepared. This experience will not be in vain.
Overcome the storms
Be ready to help any of your mates going through the many difficulties along the way, with a hammer and nails (if you need more, build more).
Facing difficulties is great.
Difficulties will help build strong relationships and it’s actually very important for the group on board. Ones may think that a brilliant idea will lead you to the most beautiful islands on earth, but it’s false: you can’t go anywhere with one direction. Execution is the most important part when you live under bad conditions and strong relationships will lead to a better communication, thus a fast execution and collision avoidance. Remember the Titanic? The team is (still) the first part for conquering the world. Remember that you are not alone on the ocean!
Have you ever wondered how many people it took to bring that shiny new product you purchased from an idea to the actual object in your hands? It likely took the team effort of many more people than you might have imagined. Industrial design, mechanical engineering, manufacturing engineering, graphic design, packaging design, and more all come together to turn a great idea into an even better product. from Fictiv’s blog here.
The many difficulties make you live under uncertainty. You will need to be creative to find workarounds to the day to day troubles, that how your bring innovation. Cooking innovation is exciting because you learn the recipe along the way, by trying and breaking stuff, which involves making errors which involves learning. It may sound fun and it is fun, but keep in mind that in the middle of the ocean, you still need a heading otherwise you’re dead.
All roads lead to Rome.
Right, but you don’t have all the resources you want and mistakes are costly in startups, that’s why you need to learn.
Learn.
Working in a startup leads to put on the market very new technologies that you still have doubts about it, because it’s too expensive or not reliable enough. Sometimes, the contrary occurs, you want a technology to be part of your product but it doesn’t depend on you and partners want to stop working with this technology (think 2G/3G for M2M communication, what’s the best compromise nowadays for M2M communication?). But still, you are on this boat and you better have to go somewhere, make mistakes and learn than going nowhere, doing and learning nothing that can be valuable. I understood at some point that people wanted me to take my responsibilities and think through the difficulties of putting a product to market. It also showed me that people are trusting each other; no matter the degree of expertise. When you have a mission to complete, it’s walk or die, but remember, your are not alone.
Worth it?
Working behind a project on a totally new product is an addicting challenge, and it’s even more compelling when the team is small. I surely would love to work on new product in the R&D department of a big company, but you have less chances to make your company known for what you have done. It’s like trying to move a huge boat if you are the only one paddling, inertia is simply too significant [that said, I’ve never really worked in a company bigger than 20 people].
As for me, I’ve always worked in startups because I love the true value of the missions I had to work on, it has always been challenging. I was involved in a wider range of subjects than just technical ones, from business development to customer support. I also like the degree of responsibility that I have had. And last but not least, I like beers (IPAs are the best ones for us, find out why?). Behind this true fun fact, what really matters is the relationships that I have with the team. We are more than just coworkers, seeing each other from 9am to 6pm, we are friends and going forwards together on this boat.
I don’t have any kid so I don’t know the pleasure of seeing a kid grow, but when you work for a startup, you see month after month a growing baby, carrying all the good and bad things with him. Equisense has been growing like many startups and still has lessons to learn. We are now a new actor of the equestrian scene and gained traction with Equisense Motion. We raised 3 millions last summer and get mature in a bunch of areas along the way. The boat has some shiny parts now. The crew is about 20 people now, some joined the ship for a limited time, that’s what it takes to be a pirate…
It’s also clear that we don’t have the same maker spirit that we had at the beginning. Building our first product was a great first step as it was easy (see how stronger I am, I couldn’t have tell this one year ago). We have bigger projects today that bring other fears. For these particular kinds of projects, the maker spirit is not enough anymore and we need a deeper understanding of the sensors and the things sensed. True innovation comes here and we don’t know which kind of boat we will end up with but we are adding a hull, for sure.
There are probably two kinds of people, some that want to take the wind and splashes right in the face to enjoy the true pleasure of comfort. One consequence is that your comfort zone is growing, and so are you. Some would prefer to jump on bigger boats to be sure that they have access to an actual bed and a shower. They will live wonderful things for sure, from vista points to vista points…
For the only reason that I want to grow as a person as much as possible, working in startups fits me perfectly. What about you, do you want to grow faster?
Then, take more risks.
I’m not the only one making metaphors with boats. Here is one from Sideways Dictionary about Agile Software Development:
It’s like finishing a ship while at sea. You first get the minimum you need to make it float: a hull and maybe a mast. Then, instead of finishing it before you launch, you go ahead and launch it and finish building it while it’s at sea. This way you have to focus on the most important things. By Allen Coin
And yes, I really like it! It defines pretty well the startup way of life.
We are hiring pirates! Check out http://jobs.equisense.com/
