Want to be a Founder? Start at a Startup

Founding a successful company takes smarts, guts, and a bit of luck; we hold these truths to be self-evident. What it also takes, and what gets talked about less, is the ability to be a leader and a listener. If you know you want to start a company one day, start your career at a startup. Here’s why.

Learn From Leaders

If you see “founder” as your future title, the best way to get there is to find founders you connect with, and go work for them. Look for founders who are smart, adaptable, and empathetic. Look for folks who’ve done it before. Look for leaders who value the same things you do. At a startup, you’ll be able to spend much more time with your CEO or CTO than you might at a larger organization.

Learn the Languages

One of the best things about startups is that you are almost certainly going to be exposed to projects outside of Engineering. You’ll work closely with Product, and learn the balance between making your customers happy vs. what your product can actually do. You’ll work closely with Design, and in turn learn from people who are brilliant at understanding what your customer wants and thinks. You’ll work with folks on the business side of things, and learn how to be customer-driven. Above all else, you’ll learn how to communicate effectively with everyone within the startup ecosystem. One of my favorite founders was an MIT PhD who had the uncanny ability to be deeply technical with Engineering, but turn around and pump up the Sales org at a sales kick-off. That is some serious emotional intelligence, and makes for an exceptional leader.

A Crash Course in Chaos > Any MBA

Even the most beautifully run startups exist, by their very nature, in a state of chaos. At any given point in time, a smart leader is going to be running at least three experiments to see what sticks -- and if they’re not, they’re probably not moving fast enough. Learning how to operate effectively within chaos is one of the best things you can learn in order to be a strong founder, both for your future company, and for yourself. Leading a company is a marathon, not a sprint. Figure out what you need to do to get into marathon mode; this could be running, yoga, rock climbing, no-meeting-Wednesdays, deleting Slack off your phone, or anything at all. Just figure out what’s scalable for you.

Last thing -- take risks when they’re cheap. Working at a startup is a whole lot less expensive than going to Wharton, and if you find the right team, you’ll learn how to hone your craft while also learning how to be a strong leader.

How to Build a Rocket Ship Mid-flight

(A Quick Talk I Gave at a People Ops Offsite)

Where I Came From

Before I joined Blend, I'd worked with companies ranging in size from 3 to 80,000 people. I'd worked with companies that were three people in a coffee shop, companies going through their very awkward teenage years (usually around 150+ employees), founders whose egos sucked all the oxygen out of a room, and and founders who could make every person in their organization feel excited to be there. Over the past decade in tech, I've seen all sorts of things, and I like to think I can spot success patterns and cracks in the infrastructure.

Why I'm Here

What I see at Blend are the key pieces needed for both a company's success and for me to be happy.

These things are:

1. Strong, empathetic leadership

2. Product market fit

3. An incredibly smart and adaptable team that passes the hallway quiz. (If you were to bump into a teammate in the hallway, or at the water cooler, would you stop to talk to them? Or would you run away?)

The Things I Carry

Now that you know why I’m choosing to be here, I want to share some of the things I’ve learned in my (very) cross-functional time at Blend. As our Head of People Ops would say, we’re giving away our legos -- but we’re also melting reinventing, reimagining, and throwing said legos out the window. Working in a high-growth company can feel like both inventing and building a rocket ship while it's already in motion, but I'd like to share some of the things I've learned and carry with me.

Over-communicate. Keep every party up to to date on progress and blockers, even if you think it’s superfluous. 

Have Empathy. Understand where a person is coming from. They might be in a bad mood because someone cut them off in traffic, because they have a headahce, because they hate the rain, because their boss just yelled at them, or 1000000 other reasons. You have no idea what’s going on in someone’s head. Take a step back and think about what could be going on in their head, what external pressures are on them, and why they’re acting that way. Ask them, and listen, and from that place you can build a much stronger path forward.

Advocate For Yourself. This goes both ways. No one can read your mind. No one knows what you want to work on, what you don’t, or what’s going on in your own life or work. You have to advocate for what you want, what you don’t, for your work, and for your worth.

How to Beat Google (At Recruiting)

In recruiting, if you're doing things right, you're real darn likely to face Google as a competitor. Sometimes it will feel as if it's just you and a Google Recruiter thrown into a sweaty boxing ring, battling it out over a candidate, until, inevitably, Google throws cash at the problem*.

That's okay.

What Google doesn't have is your secret weapon: you. What is it about your story, your company, your project that makes you get up in the morning and do it all over again? Is it a pretty office, kombucha on tap, or maybe all the Lyft credits your heart desires? All these things are wonderful, but so often comically standard in the tech world (Hooli is real, guys). Let's unpack this a bit further.

PRODUCT

This one's obvious - but what product or service are you building? Is it consumer-facing, will Grandma have heard of it? Is it the coolest new developer tool? Is it going to change the world, or, at least, change the world of some specific community? 

CAREER MOBILITY

With a smaller company, internal growth can be as simple as chatting the VP of Marketing and saying "Hey, mind if I take on some Employer Branding projects?" At a bigger company, an internal transfer can take forever and might require machete-ing your way through corporate red tape. Depending on what someone wants out of their career, the opportunity for internal growth could be a huge sell. (Do they want to change fields/roles? Are they interested in exploring a hybrid role?)

THAT MAGICAL IPO

Money is cool, but the promise of limitless money is even cooler. Sure, Google stock is likely to climb in value for, uh, forever. But let's remember Instagram, a company acquired for a literal billion dollars when they had just 17 employees. (Maybe it was 13? I'll feel better if it's 17). This is the dream; this is why people come to San Francisco. (There's gold in them hills, even if the hills are mostly just one down in Menlo Park).

WORK-LIFE BALANCE

The best perk a company can offer to someone with a family is a real 9 to 5 job - not one where optional weekend-long hackathons or 12hr days feel mandatory. There are always going to be delayed releases, angry customers, stressed PM's, and times when you have to stay late. That's fine. But what does day-to-day look like? Can working moms get home in time to have dinner with their kids? Can working dads WFH on days their kiddies catch the flu? (Bloomberg did a great article on this a couple of years ago, read here).

SPACE 

I know I said space wasn't a valid answer, but some spaces are real damn cool. I walked into Airb'n'b and never wanted to walk out. Similarly, the Googleplex can be incredibly overwhelming for an introvert, and it can be hard to find a quiet space to concentrate. If you have something beautiful going for you, share it.

LOCATION

If your candidate lives in SF and is looking at Google Mountain View, map out their commute. Do the math on how many hours they'll save taking a job in the city, talk up all the cool places to grab lunch in the middle of the day, point out how easy it is to run errands on your company bicycle - you do have a branded bike or Vespa they can borrow, right? :) 

PEOPLE

This deserves its own post! At a high level, Google is so big that it can't always guarantee what team you'll be on or who your manager will be, at least for new grads (who sign offers 9-12 months before their start date). Play that up - if you work for our company, John will be your boss, you'll work with Paul, George, and Ringo, and the first feature you'll build will be a collaged album cover for our latest psychadelic endeavor. Or whatever. Get specific, so the candidate can visualize their first day, week, and year.

*FINAL NOTE: $

If you have a candidate whose bottom line is a cash-heavy offer, and you don't have the funds to make them happy, that is okay. They might not be a great fit for the role or for your company, at least right at this moment. Be upfront with them about how much flexibility you have, and everyone will be happier in the end. (And to candidates: just because a company can't match your Google offer doesn't mean they don't love you. All companies have flexibility in comp, but it's important to keep salaries fair relative to existing employees, and to start you at a number it's possible to raise in coming years).

MOMENT OF ZEN

FWIW, I think Google can be an awesome place to work, and will always tell my candidates so. As a recruiter, it's your job to partner with your candidates, and help them sort out what's really driving their buying choices. A good recruiter will also gracefully acknowledge a hard truth: another company might be a good, or better, fit (and a lot of times it's Google). 

What 'The Voice' Can Teach Us About Closing Candidates

For those living under a rock, The Voice is a damn fantastic reality TV show on NBC. Its premise is standard: undiscovered singing talent gets discovered. What makes the show interesting is the rules it employs within its glittering universe; the goal is not to bring talent down, to mock those who lack it, or to increase ratings by increasing negativity. Instead, contestants are treated as royalty, and judges get on their knees and beg to hire particularly talented candidates for their team. Sound familiar? 

And while your goals as a recruiter might not exactly mirror Adam Levine and Christina Aguilera's, their strategies can be great arsenal to add to your weaponry. Let's take a look at some of these battle tactics.

KNOW YOUR BRAND

Blake Shelton gets country - he has an encyclopedic knowledge of the history of the genre and of important artists, and he knows the subtleties found within specific songs. Given this, he has the right vocabulary to communicate effectively with other members of his ingroup in words, terms, and context they appreciate. If you're recruiting software engineers for a company that makes enterprise networking products, learn about networking. Don't just memorize the the programming languages on a req that was handed off to you - make the effort to learn how those languages interact with each other, why someone might use Scala instead of Go, and what products preceded the ones your company created. Know your brand and do your homework, and you'll be able to speak intelligently and honestly about what you have to offer.

SHOW, DON'T TELL

If you really want a candidate, show it. Get creative. Adam Levine climbs onto chairs and yells - a fine tactic for reality television, though, perhaps slightly less appropriate for an office environment. Instead, be your candidate's advocate. Can your CEO and/or a hiring manager call her directly? Can a team lead discuss upcoming projects, maybe even secret ones?

IT'S NOT ABOUT YOU

Sometimes the judges get too excited, and blurt out something pedestrian like "I really need you on my team, because I need you to teach me." This pitch never works. Even coming from Gwen Stefani, this argument just isn't as compelling as "Andrea, you need me and my team in your life, because we will challenge you, respect you, and teach you about X, Y, and Z." 

WHAT ISN'T A CANDIDATE SAYING OUT LOUD?

Perhaps because Pharrell is a producer, he's particularly attuned at identifying nuances and pinpointing what a contestant isn't verbalizing. This sort of emotional intelligence is imperative to being a good recruiter - what does your candidate really want? Are they singing a country song, but seem to have bits of soul peeking through? Have they been hacking on firmware for a decade, but secretly want to explore the mobile space? 

Think about how Marketing folks target customers - they often build empathy maps for different market segments, and create personas for each. They think about what people are doing outside of their 9 to 5. Outside of the office, what are a candidate or customer's interests, hobbies, hopes, and dreams?

MOMENT OF ZEN

Always pick Pharrell. Do you know how many hits he's created? All of them.

DVF

You have to realize that your vulnerabilities are as valuable as your strengths.

                -- Diane von Fürstenberg,

modern Zen master. 

For Those Who Dream in Noir

Not recruiting-related, but, "Finding Marlowe" is a great bit of journalism about the origins of Sam Spade and Phillip Marlowe, written in hard-boiled fashion, best consumed with a stiff Manhattan (via The LA Times).

Read here.