3 Reasons to Work at A Startup That No One Talks About
Hint: you’ll become a better person.
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Is a startup worth joining? This is a popular topic many people debate over.
When you think of startups, do you think of a comfortable office with modern decoration? A group of passionate young people earning high salaries? Flexible working hours with a work-life balance?
Or do you think of the bad? Startups are not organized, messy, crazy, unstable, and too risky?
These are some common stereotypes I get from feedback when I share with others that I’m working at a startup. Both sides are true. But there’s something missing in the discussion. Something that’s more subtle but worth as much importance as convincing yourself to work at a startup.
You’ll become more compassionate
Work at a startup for 6 months, you’ll know why people say 95% of the startups have to shut down their business in 5 years.
Building a startup is difficult. I’m not talking about those lifestyle startups where you write blog articles and publish videos to gain income. Yes, building a lifestyle startup is difficult too, but there is a limit to what you can do with one single person. Its success and failure all depend on yourself alone.
Hyper-growth startups are the type of startups we’re talking about here. Usually, these small businesses make products, services, or software with limited resources.
At this type of startup, you’re not only working as a marketer, designer, or engineer but a slasher. You need to do multidisciplinary work so that your boss doesn’t need to spend extra money on hiring another employee. Everyone becomes a project manager. Everyone handles many projects at the same time.
When you don’t understand something, you go find resources to learn. When you want to get a tool but it costs too much, you build connections with your public relations skills. Otherwise, you find your company more money for you to spend.
With limited resources to work with, you understand how hard it is to build a business. Once you know that, you think twice before criticizing or making complaints about poor services and products you get. You know there could be some inevitable reasons that caused it to happen. You also know that how one bad review from a single customer would impact the morale of the company, or even worse, destroy a company.
You’ll be willing to pay for better quality
If you’re working at a huge company, a high chance is you don’t know the manufacturing processes of a product, service, or software. You might be a small screw of the huge business operation.
At startups, you will be able to join the whole process, from product planning and product launch. This way, you learn how much amount of work is required for a small upgrade in the product. The work that wasn’t visible on the front before becomes obvious now when you’re in operation.
The next time you’re tempting whether to make a purchase on software, you’ll come to the conclusion that the money is worth spending more than ever. You know there are a bunch of people working 12+ hours a day to get things right.
You learn to fail
Think about all the fascinating stories about “Unicorn Startups” that you read in news. These startups worth a value of over $1 billion. It’s not as glorious as you think.
Behind each success are tons of failures.
Failures in managing human resources, negotiating with investors, writing codes that work, dealing with legal documents… and more.
Everything can go wrong in a startup. Success is rare. We celebrate failures. As you fail, again and again, you learn failure is normal. You also learn that only by failing you can find your success.
In life, you’ll become open to all the possibilities. You start getting interested in learning skills and knowledge in different fields. Because by failing numerous times, you know you’ll ultimately reach where you want to be. You know every impossible mission can be turned into a possible one by countless trial-and-error.
Working at a startup in this past year has made me changed a lot. My mindset towards learning has changed. My formula and definition of success have changed. My perspectives of viewing people and business in real life have changed.
These changes took placed for me to become a better person. A more understanding and compassionate person. A more resilient person. A person who can see what might be behind the curtains. Don’t work at a startup only because of money. Work at a startup because you want to become a better person.
