A Guide to Surviving Your First Startup Role
I was 20 years old, a second-year business student, and suiting up for my first startup position. I remember my fingers shaking a bit while I buttoned up my shirt (nerves? Excitement?), the steady thump of my heart serving as extra bass to my music as I headed for The Notman House, a startup incubator located in Montreal, Quebec.
Down a hallway, and situated in an all-white office, sat the beginnings of my new life: a desk, some folding chairs, occupied by a few interns and the company co-founder, Janet.*
Us interns exchanged ill-confident hellos, sat down and opened our laptops. Janet began to lay out the expectation for our positions in quite some detail. We’d have to be on the ball to learn and move quickly. Being a small fashion startup, we didn’t have much money, and we didn’t have the luxury of time. Not knowing what to expect, but full of excitement, we (the lowly interns) couldn’t wait to get started.
(A Few) Things I Wish Someone had Told Me Before Working in a Startup
I knew there would be challenges along the way, and I thought that I would be able to overcome, purely by the merit of my smarts and the level of my gusto. Of course, this wasn’t the case.
What follows are a few key points I wish someone told me to help me better prepare for this particular form of employment.
1. Be Prepared to Work with Nothing
When you’re a small company with no investors, you have nothing: no money and no brand recognition. In order to grow your brand and be heard by potential customers, you have to get scrappy with all of your outreach efforts — we had to learn how to turn 0 dollars into revenue.
How do you create buzz with no capital? You research low-hanging fruit that can easily be tapped into. Look at what competitors are doing, what companies in different industries are doing. For example, many small-time publications are willing to write about your business in exchange for product or service. There are alternative options for getting the word out about your business that don’t cost an arm and a leg.
2. Mistakes Can Sink Your Startup
All actions have repercussions, but the difference between a startup and an established corporate presence in this arena is the ability to absorb these mistakes. Big Corp can probably afford to brush it off, maybe fire someone(s), or pull you in for a chastising. Little Startup may very well just go bye-bye.
Weigh your decisions carefully and don’t just rely on whim or instinct to bring you down the right path.
3. Learn to be Creative and Strategic Without Data
Some early-stage startups have no historical data to tap into; this begs the question: “How do I launch campaigns from nothing?” Unfortunately, that means you’ll have to learn how to reverse-engineer the initiatives of others, and take the time to come up with some cool, creative ideas.
I was taught to audit popular campaigns, pick it apart to see how it was run, what worked, what didn’t. This meant dissecting for content strategy, the effectiveness of certain influencers, which channels gave us the most feedback, etc. Once you have a handle on what they were doing, you can tweak it to make it work for you. After you’ve done this a couple of times, you can use your collected data to enhance your next campaign.
4. You’ll Play Many (Many) Different Roles
Oh, a task is not in your job description? Too bad. Working for a startup can mean wearing many hats — sometimes all at once. Be flexible and willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done.
I helped with shipping, quality assurance, sales, errands, copywriting, graphic design, customer service — none of which were in my job description.
If there were unfulfilled roles, I — or another intern — was voluntold to fill them. You had to learn to bring a “let’s just get it done” attitude.
Which leads me to my next point…
5. Your Greatest Asset Can Be Your Attitude
In a startup, things get hard and emotions run high. Yeah, some days suck and you’d rather crawl back into bed instead of going into the office.
It is important to understand that your morale can affect everyone around you: happiness and a positive outlook is contagious. Having a good attitude when everyone else is complaining is one of the greatest assets you will bring to a team.
6. You Will Have To Grow a Thick Skin
The fashion industry is known to be cutthroat, but that can increase tenfold when you work for a fashion startup. Unfortunately, this means that you’ll get a lot of no’s and some not-very-nice-words thrown at you.
Being a young student, I had never experienced it to this degree. At first it is hard not to take it to heart, but unfortunately, a startup means you have a small, very overworked team. This begets short tempers, which means that bad words and raised voices may be the norm.
This isn’t personal, and though it may take some time, you’ll learn to ignore it, fight back, or get better at your job to avoid getting negative feedback.
7. Put your Ego Aside
Being young and fresh, I wanted to prove myself: I was more than just an intern, I was the very best, and all my ideas needed to be taken seriously. Well, you have to earn those stripes — check the ego at the door, it’s not helping you; I learned this the hard way.
Being humble, asking questions and admitting when you’re wrong is all a part of personal growth. The desire to prove yourself and be ambitious is great, but let yourself go through the learning process. Soak in the knowledge of the people around you and do not try to be bigger than you are.
8. What “The Grind” Really Means
The Grind has become a romantic term that young entrepreneurs like calling any form of hard work.
What The Grind actually is: Working 6AM to 9PM, pulling all nighters — really anything and everything to get the job done. It means sacrificing personal time, friends, family and hobbies in order to make a business successful. It is grinding yourself into the ground for the good of the entrepreneurial dream.
While this concept isn’t necessarily the norm at most jobs, The Grind becomes just A Regular Day for us. You’re constantly short on staff, short on resources — and since reliable cloning is still a long way off, you have to make up for lack of hands with more of your time.
9. 9–5 Doesn’t Exist in a Startup and Burnout is Real
Some people dream of obtaining a cushy 9–5 job that provides after-hour time for personal growth and hobby exploration. In a startup, this reality does not always exist.
If you’re needed on weekends, you work weekends. If a big client wants to talk at 3AM and they have no other time in the next 6 months, you take that call. For a startup to be successful, you have to be flexible, alert, and ready when needed.
With an ongoing schedule like this, burnout can set in. It is important to take care of yourself and listen to your body. Some days, it’s easy to never get up from your office chair. Time and time again, it can become routine to make the excuse that you don’t have room in your schedule for a break.
But, there’s a breaking point, there always is. If you push yourself too hard, it becomes difficult to put in the quality of work you need to perform your best. It’s important to know your limits and not ignore the signs of burnout such as: fatigue, loss of appetite, forgetfulness, insomnia, anxiety, and depression.
Don’t let this happen to you — take breaks, get up out of your office chair and move around, meditate, exercise, and take a full lunch hour.
10. There’s No Room for Imposter Syndrome. Be Resourceful or Go Home.
We millenials talk about imposter syndrome all the time: the impending self-doubt and persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a fraud. The constant pressure to not slip up is looming as you don’t want to let your team down or be viewed as the weakest link. This is a very unfortunate reality with startup employees entrepreneurs, and it sucks.
In a startup, there is no time to let it drag you down. Be grateful for the position you earned and remain humble about your level of knowledge. You will be surrounded by individuals who are learning as they go — just like you — even the founders. Be resourceful: If you don’t know something, ask questions and/or do your research.
11. Structure Doesn’t Always Exist.
In established companies, there tends to be rigid structures and formalities. Tried and true, there are ways things have always been done — it is likely not your role to define business processes.
In a startup, processes are ever-changing as business goals adapt and evolve over time to fit the status of the market. You need to be flexible and proactive to keep up, this means establishing your own processes and workflows, and being ready to swap it out at a moment’s notice — nobody else has the time to do it for you.
Was it Worth It?
Working in a startup changed my perspective as I moved through different jobs. It helped me grasp the big picture of how a businesses work and operate.
In large companies it’s easy to lose sight of of how different elements of the business work together, especially if you’ve never taken the time to think about it. Working in a startup really helped make me appreciate the role I play in every company I’ve worked for since then.
*Please note that names have been changed to respect the privacy of those mentioned.
I’d love to hear about the things you learned in your first startup role. Please send me an email, or comment below!
Marcelle Saulnier is a UX Designer and Researcher at Boompah, a Customer-centred Design and Development Agency.
This story is published in The Startup, Medium’s largest entrepreneurship publication followed by 358,974+ people.
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