SaaStr Annual 2025 is May 13-15 in SF Bay!! See You There!!
Looking for a job in tech? 🙋♂️ My #1 bit of advice is just this: when you do meet with a startup, make them feel like you're all in. That you really, really want it. That you already know the product, the customers, the value prop cold. Or at least, reasonably well. Like on Day 1, you'd truly, honestly hit the ground running. Not need months of training. This almost always works -- at least at start-ups. 👉 First, you will stand out from 99.5% of all candidates. Especially today, in the age of robo-applying and AI cover letters. 👉 Second, no one has resources or time to train anyone in a start-up. Don't be the person that needs it. Don't just show up doing zero research, and a week later, email: "Hey, I'll wait for next steps."
It's an interesting perspective because I've also seen this backfire. I agree with everything you said, but just yesterday, I talked with an old colleague who interviewed for a Head of Sales role at a well-known "digital sales room" provider, and I heard the CEO couldn't have been less interested. He used the room to navigate through his experience, using voice, video, references, key points, etc, and it had the opposite effect. I saw it and thought it was fantastic. So my question is: Should the approach change depending on the seniority of the role? Or is this just a poor example of leadership from the CEO?
If you’re not actually all in don’t work at a startup. You’re going to run fast and hard and everything you learned for that interview might be obsolete by the day you start. Expect to pivot completely from your initial ideas. Expect to do tons of work that will be thrown away. Expect fast paced work with minimal supervision. Expect to wear multiple hats sometimes ones way out of your comfort zone. Startups are not the place to be if you’re just wanting to cruise for a paycheck. They’re rewarding but they are damn hard work
Tune up before you turn up. Last Christmas we had someone offer to build us a widget for fun and to show his enthusiasm for our platform. He’s now an awesome part of the team, and we even monetised his widget for him.
To expand on this concept, when a friend is applying to startups, one of my favorite suggestions is to help them find a public roadmap or social media posts from the startup's users. Then, identify the feature or bug they'd be most suited to work on and use that as a discussion point during the intro call. This demonstrates that you don’t require constant handholding and can hit the ground running from the very beginning, which is crucial for early stage startups.
Certainly agree, but what’s hidden in your message here is the need for startups to SELL the s__t out of their vision, their momentum, and their team Meaning, your post is candidate-centric which is well portrayed, but I too often see start ups (even promising ones with talented founders) underwhelm in attracting top talent because they simply don’t know how to sell (themselves) well enough
Start ups are funny in that as an employee if you are a self starter, willing to figure things out, you'll almost always be successful if you are 1000% committed. In a start up, how bad you want it, makes up for a lack of experience and knowledge, but that isn't always the case in a more established company.
We had a great example this week, two different candidates preparing for the case study to join a start-up One of them asked 10 detailed and well researched questions in order to prepare for the case The other one asked "what should I prepare?" Guess who got the job
Startups need doers. That includes doing the research and learning about the business before the interview. It reduces the need for the interviewer to explain, and as you said, it indicates you’ll hit the ground running in the role.
researching the company beforehand shows genuine interest and readiness to contribute. how many candidates actually do this?
Founder @ CaratX | Supply Chain Leader | Bring Value to Stakeholders | Sold software to SMBs & $1B+ companies | 2x founder
1dIf it’s sales, support or ops related, I’d go even further and just hit the field for a day or two after you interview - if you think you understand their core offering and customer. Boots on the ground, in the mud style…get them a customer they didn’t tell you to get. Whether you got the ICP or customer persona right or wrong tells the company one hell of a statement. Imagine going back to your contact and saying: I think I have a customer for your pipeline. Who do I send them to? I did this at a previous venture, in 2012 and became Director of Sales in 1.5 years. You’ve gotta be different nowadays. Everyone has a pretty resume - few can execute.