JobsBlog Rewind: Does a failed startup on your resume count against you?
This article was originally posted in August 2008 and remains both a popular post and a poignant question.
Does a failed startup on your resume count against you?
This is a great question. In classic recruiter style, I’m going to be very definitive and say: I think that it depends. :-)
Startups are great because they force people to wear multiple hats, work in a resource-constrained environment, and think about how what they work on interacts with other pieces of the puzzle rather than of owning a very narrow project or piece of code. While that entrepreneurial flexibility is highly desirable in any size org, a pattern of several in a row might unfairly brand someone as a serial startup person, likely to bolt every year or so.
Speaking of patterns, how many failed startups are we talking here? I love people who take risks and follow their passions, but if your resume lists a series of short stints at failed startups, I think it’s natural to question a person’s career management skills.
I’m always curious to get my candidate’s take on why the company failed. Were there adverse market conditions at play? Was the product ahead of the need? Was it unforeseen technology gaps, poor product or shady business dealings? I think it’s fair game to find out what role the candidate played in contributing to the success or failure of any venture.
Another thing to keep in mind is that building and scaling provide different challenges and not everyone is good at (or wants to do) both. During the interview cycle, you might be asked about whether you are solely a "V.1 person" or if growing a product/service is something you’d find as intriguing as building from scratch.
Lastly, it’s worth mentioning that failure is not an absolute. Microsoft LOVES to ask questions around what one has learned while failing. We’d be foolish to discount valuable lessons learned in defeat. I think it’s funny that I’m answering this question because my whole "pre-Microsoft" career had been finding candidates for small startups in the Bay Area and Puget Sound. During that time I learned a lot of lessons that have helped pave the way for future successes.
Anyone have a good "lesson learned at Startup X" story they’d like to share?
- Matt
6 Comments
said:
Here's what I've learned.
1) Get things in writing
2) There will be amazing days and horrible days
3) Remember to keep a work life balance, it will be more work in the beginning but make sure to allocate time for yourself.
4) Keep yourself and work separate. Don't lose your hobbies and your own interests for the sake of the company, or you will dread it later.
5) Be ready to accept that over time, things will change.
6) Keep your taxes under control. It WILL catch up to you.
7) Keep an eye on those expenses, breakfast and McDonalds, Lunch at Teriyaki place and a quick burger on the way home. It adds up on a daily basis
8) Gas is expensive. If you have the ability to commute do so.
9) Don't work for friends or family. It's a line that shouldn't be crossed. There are problems it brings into a business relationship you do not want.
10) If you have a stake in the company, make sure it is getting paid out on some sort of regular basis. Or there is at least some accounting of it.
Cheers all
Sean
silvius said:
This is something I wrote on my blog too and I will share here as well. What I have learnt in six months after launching first Romanian jobboard focused on IT: <a href="<a rel="nofollow" target="_new" href="http://www.joobs.ro"">http://www.joobs.ro"</a> title="joburi it">joobs.ro </a>
- if you have an idea, make it happen, even if it's not finalized. You launch and improve on the way.
- nobody will steal that idea from, don't keep it just for yourself
- your blog is for sure a tool for promoting
- keep walking. most of the people out there will see all your faults and will not encourage you
- gather all friends/buddies around your product
- establish goals for small periods of time
- expect for troubles in terms of balance between your personal time and work
- sell more than an application. sell a need, an emotion, a word
- wait, patience sometimes works best
- having your own project is a great oppotunity to learn new things
- look even for "strangers" help
- none of above is ok if you don't manage correctly your time for yourself, for balance, for family and friends, love and dreams.
yaskil said:
Sometimes dignity, customer satisfaction might become more important than money. You can turn any resource to money at any time, it could be difficult to turn your resources to dignity.
I always tried to apply modern marketing conseption in my startup. Customer is the king. If you need to make long term plan this approach works well, unless you have fluctuating national economy. Fluctuating economy makes things more difficult and sometimes you will sweat a lot to manage your company assets.
One of the world's most difficult thing is having employees. Although I belive there are people who fits Douglas McGregor's Y theorem, I worked with people who fits on McGregor's X theorem.
In your own startup, you have to have different skills. You need to be strong in, management, in public relations, in human resource management, (if you are running software company) in development skills in case someone quit on unexpected time and so on.
Also you need to be ready to face tough competitors who don't have any rules.
But in general it has different kind of feeling when you have fully working own startup. You made and setup all the gears of the company. You know everything (almost everything :)) about your company. Seeing it finally worths everything ;).
I strongly recommend for newbies who has no startup experience to start one. Go ahead and chase your passion. Try to read management books, try to learn your competitors, try to read market, see what changes, where products are going, where technology is going. Try to find your potential customers. Try to create your own kernel development team. In the future you will see that these experiences will become much more important than your Bsc. or Dr. degrees (pray to meet wise recruiters who aware of this if you get unemployed in the future).
If you fail you lose only money, but you will learn a lot. I disagree with Matt. If you fail several and several and several times I will not unfairly brand you as a serial startup person. Contrary I respect your stability, determination, passion, desire to succeed. It really could be very difficult to make a new startup after you failed badly. If you have strength to face failure again go ahead and try it and don't give up.
Tyson said:
I wouldn't say so. As an independent/entrepreneur employers look at your individual experiences etc rather then if the company went down the tubes.
guile said:
matt did a great article, but everyone has their failure differences, some goes on a positive side but some goes more on negative, i guess he is right about failures and more people and applicant perfectly made a better choice of career upgrades because of failure history.
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