Applying for a jobLooking to get into the startup world? Get your first grown up job or maybe just looking to move onto bigger and better things in a new job? No matter the goal, writing a great CV and cover letter is key to securing that next job Those aren’t hard rules, but following […]
Applying for a job Looking to get into the startup world? Get your first grown up job or maybe just looking to move onto bigger and better things in a new job? No matter the goal, writing a great CV and cover letter is key to securing that next job
Those aren’t hard rules, but following these guidelines is a good start.
Read the advertisement I know this sounds obvious, but a surprising amount of people don’t read the job ads they are applying for. That results in not providing enough information to the employer or applying for something you are wildly underqualified for.
Aside from understanding the job you are applying for,
reading the ad properly makes tailoring your CV/cover letter so much easier.
Startups for example might need their front-end developer to do something more
than just programming. If you only want to do programming that job might not be
for you.
Create an easy to read CV Keep it clean, keep it simple. Put yourself in the shoes of a hiring manager that might have to go through 100+ CV’s that day, make finding the key information easy. This is especially important if you are applying at a startup that might have limited manpower to go through your application.
Try to focus on your strengths that are relevant to the job,
if you are applying for a back-end developer role, your summer job at a grocery
store is unlikely to help. It might however help if you are looking for a
customer facing job.
Quality > Quantity, a hiring manager would rather receive
one-page CV filled with quality than a three page one with irrelevant
information. Keep that in mind and focus on information that supports your
application.
Cover Letter The easiest way to start is by creating a generic cover letter with some background information and the hard/soft skills that apply to any job outlined. You can then use that base to create a tailored cover letter for each job you apply for.
Use the cover letter to explain how and why you are the
right person, the job ad will be asking for certain skills and attributes. You
need to show that you have what they are looking for and provide support for
your claims.
Avoid using generic keywords like hard worker, multitasker
and great team player if you can’t provide any examples to support it.
And never lie.
Follow up Sending a short follow up message one or two weeks after sending in the application reinforces your interest in the job.
Veo is our second subject in our new sustainability series where we will be talking to startups focused on a greener future. We asked Joe Darwen who founded the company some questions. Tell us about Veo! How did it all start and what are your goals? In a nutshell, Veo is an online shopping community […]
Veo is our second subject in our new sustainability series where we will be talking to startups focused on a greener future. We asked Joe Darwen who founded the company some questions.
Tell us about Veo! How did it all start and what are your goals?
In a nutshell, Veo is an online shopping community for people and businesses to connect, shop, and change the world. It started when I was working at the UK Government’s Department for International Trade delivering the ‘Ecommerce Export’ programme. This programme worked in partnership with over 40 of the world’s leading marketplaces (including Amazon, Ebay, Alibaba), and working with these global leading platforms it was evident that not one considered the ‘Real Bottom Line’ = profit + people + planet. I founded Veo as a vital future-facing alternative to other platforms that fall short of these ideals. A marketplace to connect sustainable brands and conscious consumers. We’re seeking to solve huge real-world problems, empower ethical and sustainable brands, and are on a mission to ‘make earth friendly mainstream’.
How are you engaging your employees in your sustainability efforts?
We have a Wellbeing & Culture Officer in the team who ensures that the vision and the mission is at the heart of what we all do individually and collectively. Whether this is from the technology to create incredible UX and features for our users, to the Marketing finding the best creative ways to engage our audience, the team understands that People & Planet are just as important as Profit.
Joe Darwen
Do you set any goals for improvement and aim to make yourself more sustainable?
We’re continuously looking at our internal policies, along with improving our approval mechanism for new brands and vendors who join the site to sell with us. We are also now underway with the B Corp certification that is giving a great chance to capture all the areas we want to capture in the business related to our positive impacts, and through our business and operations, “to have a material positive impact on (a) society and (b) the environment, taken as a whole.” The goals we set and regularly review are part of a roadmap that seeks to become an entirely carbon positive organisation, and promote a move to a ‘circular economy’ system aimed at eliminating waste and the continual regenerative use of resources. This is the value we seek to pass on to the consumer, to do the ‘hard work’ for them in respect of having everything in one place, and all products approved to be high quality, sustainable and as ‘earth friendly’ as possible. We particularly keep in mind the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, particularly number 12: “to ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns.” Our mission in this regard is well underway because Veo is the No.1 rated ‘ethical online retailer’ and ‘Amazon alternative’ by Ethical Consumer. Working with independent research associations like ECRA also ensures we are accountable to our customers and our vendors to retain and improve our processes and policies.
What tips could you give other startup businesses to promote sustainability and have sustainability at their forefront?
By adopting the Real Bottom Line this is a great way to immediately start seeing each business activity in a new way. It would be expected that the first point ‘Profit’ is already considered, by having a product or service that is in-demand and generates revenues. Then businesses can look at their offering from the perspective of positively serving the community, it’s supply chain, and its customers (People). Then looking at the environmental impacts of its product or service delivery (Planet). This could start with small but impactful incremental changes, from joining a carbon offset scheme, to providing a ‘cycle to work’ for staff, and scaling up to larger organisational wide impacts (e.g. switching the entire group over to renewable energy suppliers). Tons of ways to be a champion for sustainability, and it’s a great way to engage your customers and suppliers (back to ‘Profit’).
What have been your biggest challenges that have come exclusively from starting a green business?
The main challenge was ensuring that the end product had the ability to reach a crossover audience and break through beyond being seen as another ‘eco business’. This mainstream appeal is the fun bit of the business, as it is seen across all departments (tech – marketing – finance – HR – operations). Essentially, reaching the ‘critical mass’ tipping point where general consumers are empowered to make the better choices without it being perceived as a dramatic lifestyle step change. It’s made simple and rewarding: Veo helps transform your spending power into a force for good. We’ve covered all bases.
The pandemic has obviously affected a lot of startups both in positive and negative ways, how have you guys dealt with it?
Since March 2020 we used the time for Research and Development, to create our new platform 2.0 launching soon. During this time we all saw online retail become even more vital, to the point where even UK Business Secretary Alok Sharma MP urged UK retailers to get trading online “as a vital lifeline” for the nation amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Business leaders including Ao.com founder Jon Roberts and UK Retail magnate Theo Paphitis, also believe that COVID-19 in just “5 weeks accelerated the shift to online commerce by 5 years”. From this we spent our time building out our product, we applied for and won an Innovate UK grant for our technology and raised our 2nd angel investment round. We’re now preparing for re-launch and looking forward to what 2021 has in store for Veo and beyond.
Greener Beans is our first subject in our new sustainability series where we will be talking to startups focused on a greener future. We asked Josh Ford who co-founded the company with Peter Wortsman some questions. Tell us about Greener Beans! How did it all start and what are your goals? Greener Beans is about […]
Greener Beans is our first subject in our new sustainability series where we will be talking to startups focused on a greener future. We asked Josh Ford who co-founded the company with Peter Wortsman some questions.
Tell us about Greener Beans! How did it all start and what are your goals?
Greener Beans is about accelerating the shift to more sustainable food production and consumption. We help shoppers to easily identify sustainable swaps to the grocery items they buy in the supermarket.
Having worked in the food industry for many years we are concerned about the damage our food system is causing the planet. Greener Beans gives shoppers easy and convenient guidance on sustainable food, making swapping rewarding.
Co-Founder Peter shared his initial idea with me in March last year, and we formed Greener Beans in April. Since then, we have built out how we score products and validated this with industry leaders.
This year we plan to launch our online sustainable swapping platform and measure the environmental impact these swaps are making. We know it is possible to remove millions of tonnes of carbon from our food consumption, along with equivalent savings of water and other impacts. We are actively growing the team to achieve these goals, so please get in touch.
Josh Ford
How are you engaging your employees in your sustainability efforts?
I guess you could say it’s in our DNA. Everyone involved is passionate about sustainability and believes what we are doing will have a real difference to changing our food system . We are supported by a talented group of advisors who have been instrumental in building our model and gaining traction with our stakeholders. We are fundraising and recruiting for a number of roles, and alignment to our values and cause is key to our search.
Do you set any goals for improvement and aim to make yourself more sustainable?
I found it’s important as individuals not to put too much pressure on making everything you do “perfectly sustainable” . There will always be a more sustainable way of doing things. It’s about making swaps where you can. I try to pick off easier items and make small incremental changes along the way. Recently it’s been a focus on less, but better-quality meat and fish, and repurposing old items into toys for the cat.
For Christmas this year, my wife and I did a “try something sustainable” advent calendar. We had to give each other something new to try each day, from shampoo bars to re-usable ear buds. We’ve tried a lot of new things not all of which will be here to stay, but some will.
As a business we have the opportunity of building things more consciously from the beginning, and in many ways operating a new start-up forces you to consume less. Being a tech company, our key output is digital and we are considering how we consume data, build efficiently, and the sustainability of our providers.
Peter Wortsman
What tips could you give other startup businesses to promote sustainability and have sustainability at their forefront?
Just make a start somewhere easy for you. Find the low hanging fruit in your operation and identify incremental improvements. The momentum of the collective learnings will grow in time. Engage your team and listen to and reward great ideas, celebrating the achievements in the same way you would with
other goals. One suggestion that timely is being purposeful on meeting up and office space. It’s a great way to reduce impact on travel, time and resources.
What have been your biggest challenges that have come exclusively from starting a green business?
I think generally there is a degree of confusion around the topic of sustainability. These days most people believe it’s important, but are unclear on the right action to take, and are wary of potential “greenwash”. It’s an added consideration in already busy work schedules and lives, and so any solution needs to be easy and convenient. We are very conscious of this in conversations with all our stakeholders, and in the service we are building for shoppers.
The pandemic has obviously affected a lot of startups both in positive and negative ways, how have you guys dealt with it?
Greener Beans was formed during the pandemic so it’s all we have known so far. We embraced flexible remote working from the start to allow for the added life challenges. Being a smaller team, it’s been easier to stay connected, and we have learnt an added appreciation for face-to-face interactions. Online shopping has experienced significant growth this year, and consumers are becoming more conscious to sustainability. Both of these have enhanced the relevance of what we are building. I think the pandemic has made investors more cautious and at the same time broadened their consideration set of potential investments.
They are also hiring a Tech Lead at Work In Startups, click here to take a look!
Here at Work In Startups, we’re on a mission to champion the best and most exciting startups in the UK. To support this, we’re starting a new blog series highlighting some of the most innovative and fast-growing startups around. Follow us as we interview startup founders and employees across the country and find out more […]
Here at Work In Startups, we’re on a mission to champion the best and most exciting startups in the UK. To support this, we’re starting a new blog series highlighting some of the most innovative and fast-growing startups around. Follow us as we interview startup founders and employees across the country and find out more about their goals and ambitions, what the future holds and (for all you startup jobseekers out there looking for the inside scoop) what they look for in a prospective employee.
This week we are talking to Rachel Dada the found of Black Talent Space, a platform for black creatives to showcase their work and connect with likeminded individuals.
Tell
us about Black Talent Space! How did it all start and what are your goals?
So
I started Black Talent Space this summer at a really difficult time for a few
different reasons; the COVID-19 pandemic left people struggling to cope, the
murder of George Floyd left people with no choice but to protest for the
protection of Black lives as his death was yet another example that Black lives
clearly don’t matter to a lot of people. His killing, and the murders of others
including Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and many more, also left people
reliving their own trauma and brought about the resurgence of the Black lives
Matter movement. This summer new “allies” were born. We’ve seen friends, family
and organisations commit to educating themselves on systemic racism and racial
justice. For a lot of organisations this was the first time they’ve had to take
a hard look at themselves, acknowledge the disparities that exist in society
and come up with ways they can contribute to long term radical change.
Black
Talent Space is a platform for Black creatives to showcase their talent,
collaborate and build a supportive community. Our goals are to amplify Black
voices, provide a space where people can fully showcase their work and create
meaningful connections with one another – three things many platforms struggle
to promote! Black Talent Space will have membership options for organisations,
businesses and Black talent.
What
are your values as an ambitious startup?
At
Black Talent Space we have a passion for racial and social justice, equity and
equality. Our job is to empower – we are passionate about making it easier for
Black creatives to connect, collaborate and be free from barriers. We strive to
create a safe space where people can publicly or privately speak on topics that
often don’t get spoken about or are censored on other platforms for no
legitimate reason. We are also big on collaboration and will be including
features that will allow users to easily work together.
Rachel Dada
With
your current knowledge and what you’ve learnt so far, is there any advice you
would give yourself back when you were just getting started?
I
am still quite new to all of this but I would tell myself to slow down a little
bit and give myself time to enjoy the ideation process. It can be stressful
starting a business and coming up with ideas but it is also quite an enjoyable
experience. Don’t be afraid to give yourself a pat on the back for the things
you achieve whether big or small. I should add that I have also learned that
this is something that should be done throughout not just at the beginning.
Never stop being proud of yourself!
The
pandemic has obviously affected a lot of startups both in positive and negative
ways, how have you guys dealt with it?
I
think things are a little different for Black Talent Space having started
during the pandemic and being very new, we haven’t had to face many of issues
that other startups have had to deal with. I have been able to have insightful
conversations and make meaningful connections through Zoom and virtual
conferences. It is so important to keep learning new things so it has been
great to be able to benefit from attending virtual programmes and accessing
educational content to help Black Talent Space grow. I do hope to be able to
meet all the new connections I have made during the pandemic, when it is safe
to do so of course!
What
is next for Black Talent Space and what are the goals for 2021?
Our next step is actually building the Black Talent Space platform! We are currently working with web developers to bring the idea to life. We are also looking for a CTO to lead on all aspects of tech development. In order to build a successful platform, we believe it is important to hear from potential users to help us create something useful – we don’t want to build something solely based on our own assumptions. We have created a survey to help with this process and will also be setting up interviews in the new year. I am really excited to get things going and can’t wait to share the Black Talent Space platform with you all.
Here at Work In Startups, we’re on a mission to champion the best and most exciting startups in the UK. To support this, we’re starting a new blog series highlighting some of the most innovative and fast-growing startups around. Follow us as we interview startup founders and employees across the country and find out more […]
Here at Work In Startups, we’re on a mission to champion the best and most exciting startups in the UK. To support this, we’re starting a new blog series highlighting some of the most innovative and fast-growing startups around. Follow us as we interview startup founders and employees across the country and find out more about their goals and ambitions, what the future holds and (for all you startup jobseekers out there looking for the inside scoop) what they look for in a prospective employee.
This week we are talking to Hayri Bulmna founder of QUBS they are making next generation children toys help them understand coding.
Tell us about Cody Block! How did it all start and what are your goals?
In 2015 I was struck by the story of two brothers, Chris and Will Haughey, and how they started TEGU, a toy company that fosters a positive social impact in Honduras. I was not only fascinated by how the company came to be but also by their product, elegant wooden toys with a twist: a magnet hidden inside each piece.
I became obsessed with the idea of exploring how to bring technology and classic wooden toys together. I started working on different concepts and played with a project that was incorporating RFID (radio-frequency identification) technology inside the wooden blocks.
I started QUBS and launched our first toy, Cody Block, on Kickstarter on April 2020. Cody Block is a screen-free wooden toy for children aged three and up, which introduces the first concepts of computational thinking to young children via tangible programming.
What are your values as an ambitious startup?
We want to make toys that are good for children, for parents, and for the planet. As a company, our aim is to create toys that will be long-lasting, made of natural materials, and that can bring hours of play and learning for kids everywhere around the world.
With your current knowledge and what you’ve learnt so far, is there any advice would you give yourself back when you were just getting started?
The company is still very young and there’s a
lot to learn, but the team is very experienced and passionate. Probably we
should have waited a couple more months to launch on Kickstarter, as we started
selling our product in the midst of a pandemic, but luckily it all turned out
well!
What is next for Cody Block and what are the goals for 2021?
We are now in pur production phase and we want to ship Cody Block to all our backers in Q1 of 2021. We also already have some distributors interested in the product so we’re planning to expand to different markets next year. Of course, we are also developing new products to launch, but these are all a secret for now!
Any plans for the next stage of programming for kids?
We believe that the current generation of children will need to be literate in technology in order to understand the world they live in. Understanding the basics of coding will not only help children to learn logical thinking but also to develop fundamental problem solving abilities, creativity and resilience. The team is of course already discussing how to expand Cody Block’s world and its learning outcomes. When we think about the future of our products, we also want to make sure we stay true to our principles: making educational toys that are fun and playful, and that can integrate technology into timeless designs.
Here at Work In Startups, we’re on a mission to champion the best and most exciting startups in the UK. To support this, we’re starting a new blog series highlighting some of the most innovative and fast-growing startups around. Follow us as we interview startup founders and employees across the country and find out more […]
Here at Work In Startups, we’re on a mission to champion the best and most exciting startups in the UK. To support this, we’re starting a new blog series highlighting some of the most innovative and fast-growing startups around. Follow us as we interview startup founders and employees across the country and find out more about their goals and ambitions, what the future holds and (for all you startup jobseekers out there looking for the inside scoop) what they look for in a prospective employee.
This week we talked to James the founder of Bearable.app a handy app that has the potential to change your life. Putting all facets of your wellbeing under one app, making keeping track and communicating with your doctors a breeze.
Tell us about Bearable! How did it all start and what are
your goals?
When I was dealing with my own health issues a few years ago, I became tired of being sent from consultant to consultant to diagnose me, frustrated that I was not able to give them a clear, overall picture of my health for the last few weeks or months. I started tracking things in a spreadsheet, which was useful, but not convenient, and it was not easy to gain insights from this mass of data or send reports to doctors.
I searched for a mobile app to track my symptoms, but many of these seemed limited in customisability, and felt cold and clinical to use, it was almost like filling in a medical form, so hardly enjoyable to use regularly. There was nothing seemingly built around the patient. On top of this, I didn’t want to have to use 6 different apps to track my symptoms, diet, medication, mood sleep and exercise. Not only is this overwhelming, but why would I want to keep all these things in separate apps when each can impact one another?
So I set out to make a mobile app which helped people with chronic conditions to keep all health tracking in one place. By doing so they could not only come more prepared to doctor/therapist appointments, but could also gain unique insights as to how their mood and symptoms are affected by their daily activities and health factors such as medication, exercise, diet, sleep, and even their social life.
Most importantly it is built around the patient, so we have made it as intuitive, customisable and user-friendly as possible. It ultimately needs to be enjoyable to use if someone is to make it a daily habit.
The app can show you how social interactions affect your mood.
What are your values as an ambitious startup?
I want to empower people to feel more in control of their health conditions. Studies have shown better outcomes for that patients who are more actively involved in tracking and managing their health conditions. This could also potentially yield efficiency savings for countries’ health systems through more personalised commissioning and supporting people to stay well and manage their own conditions better. Privacy is also incredibly important to us, hence why we don’t ask for lots of personal information like other apps – only their e-mail address. All health data is encrypted on our servers, therefore only only readable by the user. We want users to have full control over their data, therefore we’ve made it easy for them to delete and export everything from our app.
With your current knowledge and what you’ve learnt so far, is there any advice would you give yourself back when you were just getting started?
We got a lot of feedback from the users, via surveys and posting on our community on Reddit, however qualitative analysis is not enough. Looking back, we should have done more quantitative analysis and gained more insight into how people were really using the app, as often this is different to how they say they are using it.
Somewhat connected to this, we were also guilty of falling into the “Next feature fallacy”, i.e. that the fallacy that the next feature you add will suddenly make people want to use the entire product. Simply throwing new features at your users will not work if you don’t have an understanding of your user lifecycle.
What is next for Bearable and what are the goals for
2021?
We hope to become the best comprehensive health tracker available. We not only want to help millions of people with chronic health issues to better manage their condition, but we also want to work with research institutions and clinicians to create a separate app specifically for them. The goal of the Bearable Pro app is to make studies and diagnoses more efficient by making it easier for researchers and clinicians to collect a richer data set from their patients and then manage/interpret this data. With our user friendly, patient-centric app, we know that we will be able to improvepatient engagement. It’s crazy to think many researchers and clinicians still give their patients paper forms to fill in.
What are some of the top things people seem to be
learning about themselves using your app?
Our users are often find that, since tracking their health regularly they actually have more good days than they first thought. In that sense it’s given them a real sense of perspective over their well-being. Many have also discovered some useful insights using our app, such as correlations between health factors such as medication, sleep, diet, exercise and their physical and mental health. For example one user discovered that the more caffeine they had, the worse their headaches were. While another user discovered that regular meditation appeared to have a prolonged effect on both increasing their productivity and reducing their anxiety levels.
Here at Work In Startups, we’re on a mission to champion the best and most exciting startups in the UK. To support this, we’re starting a new blog series highlighting some of the most innovative and fast-growing startups around. Follow us as we interview startup founders and employees across the country and find out more […]
Here at Work In Startups, we’re on a mission to champion the best and most exciting startups in the UK. To support this, we’re starting a new blog series highlighting some of the most innovative and fast-growing startups around. Follow us as we interview startup founders and employees across the country and find out more about their goals and ambitions, what the future holds and (for all you startup jobseekers out there looking for the inside scoop) what they look for in a prospective employee.
Tell
us about SentiSum! How did it all start and what are your goals?
SentiSum
is an AI-powered platform that helps organization’s dig into their customer
feedback data and understand the root cause of customer pain points.
We
started in late 2016 when we realized brands are either not leveraging their
customer feedback data or spending days/weeks manually sifting through the data
to understand customer expectations and sentiment.
This
led to Sharad, SentiSum’s founder, quitting his investment banking job and to
build the first platform and AI models (leveraging his machine learning
knowledge acquired at UCL and years of software engineering).
The
power of the SentiSum platform is that it can consume high volumes of free-text
data and makes sense of it. Whether an organization has 100,000 surveys field
in a month or 1,000 customer support live chats, emails and social media
messages a day, we can automatically uncover multi-level topics and the
sentiment of each.
This
is an exciting year for us at SentiSum, we’ve landed a few big size clients and
lots of high-profile brands are responding well to the product. So, we’re
accelerating our growth and making our name in the customer support analytics
space.
What
are your values as an ambitious startup?
We
haven’t really done one of those official value statements yet, but we have a
strong internal culture, so I’ll give you the top three.
Self-responsibility: Everyone is trusted to
do the thing they’re expert in, empowered to do it and given authority to make
decisions. Furthermore, if you’re feel “bleh” you don’t need to make excuses,
take the day off. We work hard, so we respect each other’s needs.
Ambition: Everyone at SentiSum works very
hard and I think it comes down to ambition. We all have a passion about our
role, want to improve, learn and succeed, and SentiSum is our vehicle to do
that.
Be kind: We’re quite loving as a team.
Birthdays, drinks, support when needed, and rewarding excellent work.
Pursue happiness: It might be a bit cliché
but I think there’s a clear ‘why’ behind building a successful company, and
it’s to be able to be free and happy.
With
your current knowledge and what you’ve learnt so far, is there any advice would
you give yourself back when you were just getting started?
Invest
in marketing early, a mistake most tech founders make and focus on proving
value with customers instead of revenue.
What
is next for SentiSum and what are the goals for 2021?
We
have ambitious goals to be the category leader when it comes to CX insights and
automation. 2021 will be all about laying the foundations for growth by investing
in customer success, brand building and product innovation
The
pandemic has obviously affected a lot of startups both in positive and negative
ways, how have you guys dealt with it?
A
few of our clients have been hit hard (we lost a couple who suddenly lost their
budget). But others have needed our help more than ever. As the eComm space
accelerated, so did their customer support ticket. Making sense of them has
become a priority for growth and retention of users.
Internally,
we’ve been lucky to raise a little money and responded by hiring a
revenue-focused team and more NLP and AI expertise in-house.
Why is AI customer insights the next big thing?
Delivering outstanding customer service has never been more important. The likes of Amazon have set the bar high and customer expectations have met that. Understanding why a customer is unhappy as soon as possible, and correcting that mistake, is the future of proactive customer experience. AI enables us to do that automatically and at large volumes, so companies can make clear data-backed decisions.
As
I mentioned in the last question, the shift to ecommerce has accelerated faster
than ever recently. Every piece of friction in the customer journey reduces the
conversion rate or creates churn to a competitor, so understanding this
friction at a granular level has never been more important. Luckily for us,
with the rise of new customer contact channels replacing phone calls, we have a
ton of free text to analyse. Support
ticket analytics across
Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and on-website chats has never been more
important.
Working at a startup is different than working at a traditional large corporate company but different doesn’t have to bad. Different might be exactly what you need or want to take that next step in your career. Equity While most startups won’t be able to pay you top salary, they often offer equity. Equity gives […]
Working at a startup is different than working at a
traditional large corporate company but different doesn’t have to bad.
Different might be exactly what you need or want to take that next step in your
career.
Equity
While most startups won’t be able to pay you top salary,
they often offer equity. Equity gives you feeling of ownership as well as
giving you motivation to do well, after all its your company too.
If the company does well and goes public the financial
upside could be large, in some cases life changing. So, it’s definitely
something to take into account, but also important to remember that not every
startup makes it big.
Smaller and different culture
A startup company will be smaller and more intimate than
your average company, you will therefore have a bigger say in how things are
done. There is a reason most startups are looking for a someone that’s an
autonomous self-starters, as you are likely to have more responsibility and
more autonomy, which for some people is perfect but might not be for everyone.
The startup culture is fast paced and always trying to move
forward. You’ll work closely with your co-workers and get to know them well.
You’ll most likely be surrounded by highly motivated people working towards a
common goal. A larger corporate company is likely to have lots of rules and
procedures that often slow down the work, at a startup its less about that and
more about embracing change and moving quickly
Learning experience
Working at a startup will force you to learn, and usually
means you’ll have a lot more responsibility than you might do at a larger
corporation. You’ll be encouraged to
think outside the box and be experimental. The upside of this being part of a
smaller team will make sure your efforts are noticed. It will also likely mean
you take on more than what your initial role intended, for example a front-end
developer might have to take part in the marketing. While the marketer will
work so closely with the front-end developer he will gain better understanding
of the process.
A side effect of that is you will likely develop your
interpersonal and teaching skills, both of which are transferable skills that
can be valuable further down the road in your career.
Creative opportunities
Chances are an early startup might require you to get
creative when it comes to solutions. This can be due lack of expertise in a
given subject, or simply that the company doesn’t have the funding to use more
traditional solutions.
You are also most likely working on something new that
hasn’t been done before, so thinking outside of the box to solve a problem
might be necessary. So, if you have a creative mind and want to be able to
input your own ideas, a startup could give you the opportunity to do so.
Growth opportunities
Working on the product from the beginning automatically
makes you an expert on it. With that, and in combination with the extra
responsibilities you are likely to pick up along the way makes you an ideal
candidate for a management position when that time comes. Being involved early
on in a startup is likely to result in a faster career trajectory than in a
traditional larger corporation.
The extra responsibilities will also look great on your CV
when the time comes to move onto the next chapter in your career.