Applying to a startup is completely different than applying to a large company. You’ve probably keyword-stuffed your resume to get through the HR screening. At a startup, everything is about value.
1. Understand Your Value Proposition
At it’s most basic, a value proposition is the benefit (or value) someone gets from something they pay for. Like a company trying to sell you a new product, you need to understand your value proposition to a startup.
If I was applying to work at Select Start, my value proposition would be:
- Designed, architected and developed 20+ iOS, Android and BlackBerry applications.
- Practiced Lean Startup principles to take multiple products from idea to market and deliver a revenue run rate of over $2M annually.
- Experience developing customers, testing ideas and validating markets prior to building a team and committing resources to a product.
What value can you bring to my startup today?
2. Tell a Story with Numbers
Great startups run lean and question everything. Every dollar out needs to equal more than one dollar in for the company to grow.
Using concrete numbers, tell a startup how you can add value. Explain how past experience may help a future startup:
Bootstrapped from $0 to $1M in revenue our first 18 months. Lead Select Start to our third year of 300% growth.
How does your value impact my top and bottom lines, products or customers?
3. Be A Generalist
There’s nothing more valuable to a startup than someone who understands the challenges every startup faces. Do you:
- Bring a broad array of skills outside of the role you were hired for?
- Know how your decisions impact a company’s burn rate?
- Understand how you can help create a sustainable competitive advantage?
Where else can you add value to a startup besides the role you were hired for?
4. Value Outside of a Startup
I Google everyone who applies to find out if they add value to the startup, engineering and design communities.
Make it easy for a startup to find your value. List your:
- Personal website.
- Social profiles like Twitter and Facebook.
- Creative profiles like Github, Stack Overflow and Hacker News.
Where could a startup investigate the value you create?
5. Be Valuable To Others (Get Referred)
A rule of raising investment is to get a referral from someone who the angel or VC respects. The same is true of applying to a startup. Find a way to connect with the founders via a mutual friend. Your odds of being hired are infinitely better than submitting a resume to the pile.
Who will vouch for the value you create?
25th April 2011
Notes: 6
On the web, “Contact Us For A Quote” offends my sensibilities. An all-to-common occurrence is to land on a website and say “Oh. This looks great! How much?”. You end up spending the next 30 minutes searching for a price but finding countless “Talk to a Sales Representative” links.
SaaS to the rescue. Most SaaS companies freely publish pricing on their website, sometimes in multiple tiers. Hopefully there’s a price that works for everyone.
So what about enterprise software? Adaptiv, our mobile healthcare software company, walks a fine line. It’s enterprise software from a team with Web 2.0 DNA. Should we publish our pricing, or is “talk to a sales representative” a better idea?
Let’s look at the benefits of each approach:
SaaS Sales
- Reduces sales friction
- Immediate conversion to beta or paying customers (shorten the sales cycle)
- Reduction in expensive sales staff
Enterprise Sales
- More price flexibility on a per-client basis
- Less risk of leaving money on the table
- Additional profit from SLAs, overages, etc
- Hide pricing information from competitors
What do you think? Should we publish pricing on our website and reduce sales friction, or have our sales staff work out the best deal for each customer?
Prototyping the future of mobile healthcare (Taken with Instagram at Select Start Studios)
@aSadhankar snapped a 270 degree panorama of the Select Start office. Breakthroughs happen when it’s 1:30am and no one else is around.
A friend received a letter from a company recruiting for Amazon. It’s a thing of beauty, really. Let’s look at “your brain on recruiting”.
My name is [REDACTED]; I am a Partner with [REDACTED], a new firm that partners with early stage startups and leading companies that are at the forefront of disruptive technologies. We’ve helped build amazing technical teams at Apple, Microsoft, Netscape, Amazon, Google, and Ning, and love the energy and passion of high growth companies that are working on software that changes the world. With [REDACTED], that’s all we work on.
Between 2003 - 2006, our team helped build out Amazon’s first revolutionary technology movement, which we now know to be Amazon Web Services, Personalization & Recommendation Systems, and the Kindle. We are partnering with Amazon once again to build the next generation of industry disruptors which will make a massive shift in digital media. Video is the next big movement, and Amazon is revolutionizing not only the ability to watch any video across any device, but also how movies are being made in the industry. At the heart of this movement is Amazon’s Video On Demand engineering team which is comprised of 6-8 small, agile teams working on issues around scalability, performance, security, UI development, quality, mobile, data analytics, all at Amazon scale. This is Amazon’s next bold bet, and we think this could be a fantastic opportunity for you, and that comes along only once in a lifetime.
This Amazon engineering team will be in the Montreal and Ottawa areas in late March to meet with Software Engineers who are interested in joining the team. What is a good time to connect this week to discuss this opportunity?
Thanks for your time, and look forward to speaking.
1. Establish Social Proof
We’ve helped build amazing technical teams at Apple, Microsoft, Netscape, Amazon, Google, and Ning, and love the energy and passion of high growth companies that are working on software that changes the world.
They’ve worked with great companies. Chances are you love one of them, so you should love Amazon too.
2. Establish Credibility Using “Sexy” Success
…our team helped build out Amazon’s first revolutionary technology movement, which we now know to be Amazon Web Services, Personalization & Recommendation Systems, and the Kindle.
This makes candidates associate with something from Amazon they know, respect or even love.
3. Make It Personal
…we think this could be a fantastic opportunity for you…
Hundreds of people will get the same letter. Each one of them will think Amazon is speaking directly to them.
4. Make It (Artificially) Scarce
…and that comes along only once in a lifetime.
Forget that they said that Amazon has been creating revolutionary products for the last six years. They want you to consider this a scarce opportunity.
5. Make It Inevitable
What is a good time to connect this week to discuss this opportunity?
The letter makes it seem like the process is already in motion. It’s easy to go with the flow.
Does this make you want to work for Amazon?
I’ve been spending the week in San Francisco with @aSadhankar and @Gahzi, immersing myself in everything the Bay Area startup scene has to offer. A critical part of running a startup is finding out how others do it.
So why is this place such a startup launch pad? Three things became incredibly clear at the street level:
Startup “Spots”
Founders know where to find other founders. When we got here, we knew to immediately hit Coupa Cafe in Palo Alto, Red Rock Coffee in Mountain View, and the Epicenter Cafe in SOMA. Sure enough, we were immediately surrounded by young founders pitching engineers to work with them and angels talking term sheets. We thought we’d have to walk into a VC’s office to find it. No way. It’s out in the open for everyone to see, and people gravitate towards it.
Employees are the Brand
Employees are branded, and they wear their brand proudly. Everyone has a t-shirt, zip-up or hoodie with their startup’s name on it. They wear them to coffee shops, restaurants and even to class. I found myself Googling startups I had never heard of, only to see a landing page hoping to grab my info. This is viral marketing at it’s core, and I was incepted.
(edit: As I write this, one of the Yobongo guys walks into Epicenter.)
Risk = Reward
In Ottawa, I’ve spent the last month convincing friends to leave their “career” jobs and try something a little more rewarding. It’s been a struggle. Even with competitive pay, amazing growth, a killer office and rewarding work, young engineers are reluctant to join a startup right out of university.
The opposite is Filip Mares, arguably one of the best students to come out of Carleton. We ran into Filip by chance while sitting at the Coupa Cafe (see point #1). It turns out he was picked up by Alphonso Labs, the creators of Pulse. Filip took a risk, moved to SF and is now has an equity stake in a great company. He’s clearly winning. This place attracts a different breed of people; arguably the right ones.
S3 v2.0 - more incredible people (Taken with Instagram at Select Start Studios)
Things have been going well lately. My company is growing, another is starting, and I work with most of my best friends. We’re at the inflection point every startup hopes they hit. It’s the difference between a small five-person company and a renowned studio like Teehan+Lax or Big Spaceship.
I was looking through my safe for my passport and was reminded me of something my dad said to me seven years ago. Well, he didn’t say it, but we understood it.
My dad passed away in October, 2009 when I was 24. He was terrifyingly smart. He dropped out of grade 12 with one credit left due to sheer boredom. He started working three jobs, bought and paid for my parents’ house in his early 20’s.
Years later he trained as a pipefitter at Atomic Energy where he had a near 30 year career. Although not one himself, he worked alongside PhDs in nuclear physics and engineering, building what they designed. I don’t doubt he could have been a PhD himself, but I suspect he always resented that he wasn’t.
My dad’s fatal flaw was that he would never ask for help. We used to have intensely technical conversations about the inner workings of nuclear reactors, or debate articles from the business section of the Ottawa Citizen. Conversely, he found it difficult to talk to me about past mistakes or his health. It wasn’t in his nature to discuss “personal” things, or to burdon anyone else with problems.
My parents weren’t wealthy people, so at 17 I left for university in Ottawa with only few thousand dollars I had saved. I had no idea what I was going to do for money in a few months, but I knew I could figure it out.
As I was unpacking I found a small note from my dad. It simply said:
A boy becomes a man when he realizes he can do on his own. A man is truly a man when he realizes that he cannot do it alone.
Taped to the note was a quarter. We never talked about the note, but we had an implicit understanding that I had read it. There would come a time when I’d need to ask for help, and that would be okay. A quarter was his way of saying to call, even if it’s not what he would have done himself.
Flash forward seven years later. We’re treading into waters I never thought we’d deal with: negotiating multi-million dollar contacts, trying to disrupt entire industries and helping friends build their careers.
To borrow from my dad: A good entrepreneur thinks that they can do it alone. A great entrepreneur knows that there is no way they can do it alone. Thanks for all of the help. You guys know who you are.
Once a year I leave a coffee meeting thinking to myself “Holy shit I’m doing it wrong.” Today was one of those days.
For those of you who don’t know Rob Woodbridge, he’s a serial entrepreneur, advisor and tech executive here in Ottawa. Rob emailed me offering his advice about our company, team and our success. Having been in our situation numerous times before, I wouldn’t dream of saying “no” to the chance to have someone like Rob as a friend.
Without getting into the private details of our conversation, one thing became crystal clear: Success is about surrounding yourself with the right people. This statement is obvious, and we do our best at this. We have a wonderful board of advisors and actively participate in groups like Fresh Founders and events like Democamp. But there is a difference between talking at Democamp about your latest wins and speaking openly with peers at YCombinator “Founder Dinners” or Techstars’ private dashboard reviews.
So what? Well I’m proposing something I’m calling Founder Food.
I’m looking to assemble a group of 5-6 founders/entrepreneurs to have a long dinner once a month. The idea is to share a meal together where we can speak openly, share dashboards, new product ideas, wins, pains and learn to help each other.
There are only two rules:
- You have to attend monthly. The date and time is set in stone.
- You have to openly contribute.
The idea is to find the right 5-6 people who all approve of each other. If you’re interested, send me an email or DM me on Twitter.
Disclaimer: Credit for this idea (and several future ones) go to Rob.
My Xcode4 theme, a modified version of Enormego’s Xcode 4 theme and Ryan Bates’ Railscasts Textmate theme.
