This Is Why You Shouldn't Join A Startup #scottsthoughts

Hey, it's Scott here. Today, I'm going to break down why you shouldn't join a startup. Why a startup is definitely not for you. It's another episode of the success story podcast. So today in Toronto and Canada, where I'm out right now is the holiday. It's family day. It is February 15th. And anybody who's, you know, anybody who's in Canada right now is, at least in Ontario, excuse me, is probably not working. But I am working. And why am I working? Well, because right now I work essentially for a startup. And I want to talk about in this video, some of the myths, misconceptions, things that are sort of over exaggerated. Some of the things that probably aren't discussed enough that you should consider if one, you're going into a career, you're pivoting in your career and you want to go work for a startup. And you like the idea of working in tech and disruptive industries, really like making a difference and you feel like you want to take your career in that direction. Or if you're looking to start your own thing and you're looking to be an entrepreneur and run the company and found the company. Over my career, I've worked in the largest organizations in very large enterprise organizations. So some of the largest companies in North America, I've worked for the telecom giant Bell Canada, which is in Canada one of the largest, one of the largest publicly traded companies. So, you know, for my American friends that are watching similar to the Verizon's or the AT&T, so that level of company. And if you've only worked in that type of company, the startup life or the entrepreneurial life can be very persuasive. It can be very, it can be very sexy where you want to try something new. You see all the people in, you know, SF and San Francisco, Silicon Valley, the great jobs, the great pay, the kombucha, the ping pong tables, the bring your dogs to work, all this fun stuff that you see in startup culture. And it's definitely glorified. But I want to, I want to sort of, you know, I just said at the beginning of the of this episode, I'm working on a holiday and why am I working? But let me give you a little bit of context and a little bit of background about what, you know, what's going on in my life and why I have a little bit of a say and an authority to speak on this. So right now, I do a lot of stuff, but in my actual nine to five in my career, I had sales and marketing for a startup within a much larger organization. So what does that mean? Well, if you go and look on my LinkedIn, you'll see two companies. You'll see Grass Valley, which is a 60 plus year old company. They do millions, hundreds of millions and revenue, very large organization, thousands of employees, and you'll see another company. Excitem. So Excitem is an OEM and an affiliate of Grass Valley. So we produce a lot of their software solutions and SaaS solutions for broadcast, as well as for other a couple different software solutions for them. And my job is to basically champion and bring to market through Grass Valley, as well as through our own Salesforce, all of these all these software solutions. So think about it as like a startup within a large company. And it's a lot of fun, a lot of work, but you still have, you still have, you know, when you're when you're a startup within a large company, you still deal with the same things that a lot of people in startups deal with, which means a lot of the time you have to figure stuff out on your own. Because when you're building a startup, when you're building any sort of new company from the ground up, you don't have the resources. And I also want to add this on. Right now, of course, we do have the ability to take items and take products through Grass Valley and leverage their resources. But at the end of the day, we're still very much siloed. And a lot of this stuff we do, we move very quickly. We're very agile. And that means that we work on our own a lot. And I've also worked previous to this right now. I ran my own consulting company with with two other individuals. So that was a startup as it got, you know, building that from the ground up. And part of what we did was we consulted with startups. So a lot of emerging tech startups out of the university of Toronto. We worked with them to build some of their marketing strategy. They take the market strategy to help founders really discover their brand and their voice and their founder's story. And I was doing that for about two years. But I've worked with a lot of startups, worked with a lot of different types of entrepreneurs from the ground up as well as on my own thing from the ground up. And then again, now it's sort of like a startup within a large company. So still a lot of figuring it out. And not always having the resources or other people to count on to do the work. You just have to do it yourself. You have to figure it out yourself. So I wanted to speak on this topic because I've gone through the entire gamut of types of companies you can work for basically I've worked with the largest I've worked for my own. And now I've worked for a startup within a large company. So I've seen the range of support and the range of types of work environments that you can basically be in. And startups are tough. Starting your own thing is tough. So I don't want to give you too much, you know, I don't want to waste too much more of your time before we get into it. But I really do want to highlight some of the biggest misconceptions of startups so that when you do choose to make a career pivot or you choose a change where you're working, you can be educated. Now first let's speak about the benefits of startups. Why you should join a startup? And then I'll speak about some of the drawbacks or perhaps the misconceptions after. So the benefits of a startup. Well, when you join a startup, I would say the financial or the monetary benefit would be that you can get equity in that startup. So what does that mean? Well, when you join a large company you're just working for a salary or a paycheck. Usually when you join a startup, they don't have as much money as a large company would which makes sense. So what they'll do is they'll give you the opportunity to have a piece of the company. Now, it depends on how early you get in and some startups. Startup is a wide range of organizations as well. Startup could be a founder who just has an idea all the way through to a series B or C company that has significant capital and is venture backed. But there is a wide range of what is considered a startup and how much money they have. And that being said, there still is usually a really strong opportunity for equity, especially if you come in at more senior positions or if you come in earlier on, meaning they're like a younger company, you can get a piece of that company. So what that means is when the company raises more money or perhaps the company sells or there's some sort of exit event or there's another round of funding or another series of funding. When that happens, that means that if you have a piece of the company or you have equity or you have shares in the company, technically you should be able to get a payout. Now, I could go on a whole video about equity and shares and types of shares and preferential shares. And what you should look for if you're actually looking to join a company that's giving you equity because a lot of the times, there's different types of shares and different types of equity. And if you join a company and you don't know what the company is giving you when they raise more money or when they sell to a larger organization, you may not actually get that much of a payout. But the Holy Grail would be you join a startup, you get the equity and you get the right type of equity or right type of shares. And then when they sell, you get a lot of money. And that's something that people look for. But I'm going to shift this into the misconceptions about startups. A lot of companies don't exit. A lot of companies fail. And if you're looking to join a startup just for the payout, there's a really good chance it's not going to happen. And that's the reality. It's very hard to get an exceptional payout from a startup. You have to be lucky. You have to be working for the right company. You have to be joining them at the right time. You know, stars have to align for this to happen. So I would say that's why people like to join startups. It's very sexy. The opportunity, but don't make that your only reason for joining startups. Second point, a reason why you would join startups. You will do more. You will wear many hats. You will be able to have access to all areas of the business. When you join a large company, you do your job and that's pretty much it. You stay in your lane. And some people like that, some people don't. But if you want to learn a lot, if you're younger in your career, if you want the type of education that probably is even better than an MBA that you could get from school, definitely better than any undergraduate degree. If you work in a startup, you will learn an immense amount. You will learn everything from sales to marketing, the finance, HR to fundraising, trying to think what else. Legal negotiation. You will learn absolutely everything because you'll see it all. And you may just obviously any good founder will still make sure that you have very dedicated roles and responsibilities so you can be successful as an employee of a startup. But if you want to learn more and you want to discover more, nobody's really ever going to stop you. And you have direct access to literally all aspects of the business. Again, it depends on how big the startup is. But let's assume you say, you know, sub 50 individuals, sub 50 people, you have pretty much the ability to communicate network and learn from everybody who's doing every function within a company, which is a lot of fun. And it can really help you level up in your business acumen, in your career, in your general understanding of how businesses work, which can be beneficial if you ever want to advance in your career. Because if you do want to advance your career, even at a larger company, it is smart to be able to have intelligent conversations about business topics that perhaps aren't specifically in your field. But with other executives in the organization or with other decision makers or stakeholders outside of your company, also if you do ever choose to start your own thing, working for startups probably the smartest thing you'll ever do. Because you will see all the functions of a business in theory how they all operate properly. And that will give you a full 360 of what you're going to have to know when you're going and starting your own business. So I would say those, I would say if we're going to compare those two things to the payout and then the opportunity to learn, the opportunity to learn is probably the most important and the most valid reason to join a startup. Because the payout is a very small chance you're going to get a really significant payout. But the opportunity to learn will always be there. And that's something that you really can use earlier on in your career. If you have the energy, you have the time to invest, invest that time in a startup and learn. And that's going to be the biggest benefit you're going to take away. And I'd say the last perhaps item that people like to use as a reason as to why they want to go and work in a startup would perhaps be the cloud. They want to say they're working for something innovative, something, you know, forward thinking, bleeding edge. I would never make a career decision based on the sexiness of the industry. I think that's setting yourself up for disappointment and failure. If you work for Google, if you work for Facebook, yeah, it may be exciting to get the job, but just give it a month, give it three months. And if you don't like your manager, if you don't like the work you're doing, it'll be just as shitty as if you're working for a less sexy company where you also don't like the people you work with or you don't like the work that you're doing. If you like the work that you're doing and you enjoy the people you work with and most importantly, you align yourself with a group of managers, peers that can elevate you and a lot. And basically, you want your work to align with your personal and professional goals. That's where you're going to be happy. That's where you're really going to succeed. That's where you should be working, not just because the name of the company is the sexiest because I know people that have gone into large companies and they leave because they got the job for the wrong reasons or they worked for the company for the wrong reasons. So, out of those three reasons, money, education, opportunity, learning, and cloud, the only valid reason that you would ever work for a startup would be learning. Also, I spoke a little bit about if you go and start your own thing. I would say that those probably those three reasons are very similar to why people start their own businesses, money, education, and perhaps cloud. Entrepreneurship is a whole other beast, but I would say that if you aren't ready, if you're starting your own business for money, that's the wrong reason. You probably won't be very successful. If you're starting your own business for cloud or for just to perhaps elevate your own professional status with your peers or whatever you want to look cool with your friends or family, that's the wrong reason to start a business. If you're starting a business knowing that you will be learning and that's going to be the core of what you do, and you will only be successful if you learn to embrace and love learning and love the process, and that's why you want to start your own business. That's also that's a good reason to start your own business and to become an entrepreneur. But the other reasons just don't pan out. Now that we've covered some of the reasons why people join startups, let's speak about the reality of working within a startup versus working in a large company. And remember, I have worked in companies that were zero when it was just me to about three to five people all the way through to around 50,000 people. So I've seen the gamut of places you can work. In a startup, it will be a grind. You will have to put out the fires. You'll have an extremely broad set of roles and responsibilities. There's a good chance that you won't have the same budget or the same perks that you get in a large organization. It's tough. It is tougher. Yes, there's competing opinions because in a startup, it's broad. You do everything. Your roles and responsibilities are very diverse. In a large organization, you are coordinating across multiple different teams and multiple different stakeholders. So there's a lot of specialization that you're responsible for, but simultaneously roping in other specialists around the organization. However, on average, in a large organization, there will be less headaches, less all-nighters, less after five o'clock, less before nine AMs that you have to deal with. In a startup, those are pretty normal. Unfortunately, that's the reality. Again, this is not gospel. This is not something that is an absolute rule across every single startup or large organization. However, I have seen, and I've lived through both, and the startups definitely trend to more sporadic, more work, and a lot more stress for less reward than the work-life balance, the stability, and perhaps a little bit less stress and more support that you get at a large organization or a large company. Another common myth is that you're joining perhaps a more forward looking or fun dynamic culture. The reality is that you're probably helping craft the culture. So your influence on the company is exponentially more important and valuable for the startup, but also you have to know that what you bring in, the energy you bring in, and whatever you add on, detract, or change in the culture could become part of that company's DNA. So this leads us to one point where the hiring individuals in the startup have to be highly, they have to be very careful about who they bring in to the company. But also, you have to understand that not everything is going to be figured out. Not everything is going to be handed to you on a silver platter. You are going to be contributing, crafting, and molding the culture as it grows. And if for whatever reason you don't see the value in culture or the founder or the CEO doesn't see the value in culture, those are horrible things to say, and that's not the case, that's not true. Culture is incredibly important, even as an especially at a startup level, where you are molding the future of the organization. So if you don't see value in culture, don't join a startup because you're not going to want to contribute and it's going to hurt the company and you're going to feel friction and you're not going to have a good time. If you're joining a startup where the founder doesn't see value in establishing a culture, you are going to feel lost, aimless, and you're going to feel like there's a lack of vision and cohesiveness across the whole team and the whole company. A third reason why a startup may be hurtful or not what you expect is because it doesn't offer clear career growth. It doesn't offer the same professional development. It won't offer a career path. It's incredibly more chaotic than working in a large company. Benefits, schedule, vacations, personal professional development. You will find that some of these things lack in a startup environment, mostly because they haven't had the resources or the time to properly invest in them yet. So know that in a startup environment, you will not have the same comfortable cushy experience that you would have in a large company. Fourth reason why you may not be comfortable in a startup environment, it's because things change quickly and this is entirely dependent on your personality type. If you can work in a chaotic environment, but things will move quick, things will change quick, products, features, roles, responsibilities, what your focus is one week may not be your focus the next week. Not saying this is great and not saying that this is the hallmark of a successful startup, but it is the reality. So if you are going to work in a startup environment, be excited for change. Embrace that it will happen most likely more often than not and that's something that will make you a stronger professional if you can embrace change quickly. Remember what I said, this is for setting yourself up, becoming a startup is a learning experience to help set yourself up for your future career. So use the changes, use the chaotic environment of what a lot of startups are to make yourself more resilient, to make yourself better in any situation so that when wherever your career takes you in five years, whatever, you will have survived a chaotic environment, you will have pivoted multiple times, you will have dealt with all these different factors changing what you do on a daily, weekly basis. This will make whatever you choose to do if you're going to start your own thing or if you just want to be successful in a larger organization or perhaps you'll better understand what to look for when you join a startup and join a better startup in the future. These are all things that will help you just become a stronger professional. And last but certainly not least in something that I sort of alluded to over the course of this video, startups fail and they fail a lot knowing that you have to be okay saying what happens if my company doesn't exist in six months from now. Are you comfortable with that level of uncertainty? Now I know that with COVID and whatnot, even people that had jobs that felt certain found out they weren't so certain anymore. So you know, take this with a grain of salt, but startups in general, if you don't know what to look for when you're joining a startup, you aren't sure of the longevity or the funding or the run rate or the other talent on the team or the experience of the founder. These are all things that you would have to actually look for when you're joining and I'll probably do another interview on how to interview a company that you plan on joining, but say you make a mistake and you join the wrong one, know that it may not be around in six months. So just keep all of these things top of mind. Just keep thinking about them as you look for other career opportunities and these things to be honest are all just magnified when you decide to start your own business. So all the issues are going to be there tenfold, but if you start your own business, depending on whether or not you get funding, you're just going to be 100% responsible for all of this versus if you join a startup where you're really responsible, but at least you have a small amount of support to help you out in your day today. So if you like this video, leave some comments below. Let me know what your thoughts are on joining startups. Are there some benefits that I forgot about? Are there some drawbacks that I didn't bring up and discuss? Do you agree with the fact that maybe a startup isn't the best fit for everyone? Perhaps the learning experience outweighs the negative. If somebody feels like they really want to start their own thing in the future or just be a more resilient, more well-rounded, professional, perhaps regardless of all the work, maybe that actually is a benefit and that's sort of up for discussion.