I have one offer as SDE from early stage start up. The founders' backgrounds seem good. The initial work is also good. I am afraid whether it will survive in the market as I don't think there is much innovation in their product. I want to ask some experienced(in start ups) folks who can help me evaluate this start up and its offer. #startups #tech
More details on the company and offer
Can't because of obvious.
Lots of startup experience here. Calculate the runway: total cash on hand/operational costs That’s how much time you can expect the startup to be around. Rounds of funding extend that of course but that’s not a factor until the money is in the company’s account.
Even then it’s not a given. VCs May pull out money any time and company will fold. Have seen a few
I was at a startup that was funded monthly by the investor. It sucked, because there was no way to do anything without having to beg in advance. No marketing campaigns, etc.
I have worked in a few startups. Make sure the founders are well known folks in their community. To sell, you need PR Make sure their profit is 10x increasing yearly. Also make sure that your base salary on good enough so that you dont swear for rest of your life in the event that the company eats dust
What is PR? The company might not have profit as of now. They are very early stage right now.
Modi has a great PR. So what can it be?
I came up in the startup mileau. Very hard. Ask the questions a good VC would. How does the business make money? How does that process scale? What is the market and its prospectus, what are we betting on happening, is it likely, and why is it underpriced? Are the execs actually better than the people they're competing with? What's the company's cash flow, how long is the runway to either realistic positive cash flow or exit, and how does it compare to their runway for funding? Will they be able to raise enough on good terms to bring those together? What potential exit paths exist, is the market captured worth a lot to an existing business, is there defensible IP that other business will pay a lot for, is there enough rare in demand tech talent to be an acquihire target, etc? What's the moat to hold off competition, or could any skilled person walk into your market and make you compete away your profits. Are the founders well connected and do they know how to play the game? Etc. Realistically, the business is a gamble, so some other questions might matter more. Will you learn a lot and grow? Will you give a shit about the business and its vision, or is it just a paycheck? Is the business oriented in the direction you want to embed yourself into? Is the team solid and comprised of the kinds of people that will invest in you and make you better?
> Could any skilled person walk into your market and make you compete away your profits Little off topic but how does a startup prepare against such impending threats, if the startup’s business model though unique it can’t be protected.
The best way is to not have a business model that can't be protected, say by having your service have some kind of inertial value and a nontrivial switching cost that keep users locked in, or pretty traditiomally by having the value of your service compound by #users to keep people locked together on your platform. Companies have all kinds of moats, just look at successful companies and think about why they were able to dominate their market. Stripe for example had a moat that they were the only skilled software entrepreneurs that understood good APIs and would deal with the bureaucracy of the financial system, and then afterwards they developed a moat in developer mindshare, where engineers just defaulted to using stripe. FB locked people together through the value of the networks people built on it. And initially your startup should have a wild advantage in speed against large companies, which is invaluable in untested markets, so early on you really only have to worry about other startups.
We are heading towards a recession soon. If you're on H1-B I wouldn't risk joining an early startup now. For any reason if you're H1-b is rejected then you're in deep trouble. Moreover, USCIS has just stopped doing premium processing last week.keep all this in mind before making a bold decision. If I were you, I would join a stable company now and do a switch after a couple of years
Sure, I did let go this offer due to this only.
Would the risk be the same if the company were willing to wait until full approval (however many months that would take)?
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If you are on H1B, proceed with caution. GC situation is slightly tricky with startups.
What in particular is tricky about them?
I think the process of applying for immigrant visa (green card) will be significantly difficult especially when you are in the later stages of your 6 year H1B limit. Consider a scenario when your startup is trying to file a labor petition to DOL (initial stages of your GC), during the advertising and recruiting period your position is very likely to be contested by American citizens. More so, when you are well paid and your startup’s prospects look very promising. In such cases if a qualified citizen applies for your position, the company will have to hire them and can’t pursue your GC (technically pursue it again after some recommended cool off period). In case of bigger organizations there is often a pool of open positions with same minimal requirements in terms of education and YOE. So let’s say if there were 50 open positions in same pool and only 20 eligible Americans can be recruited at the end of recruiting window, the company is able to process rest 30 positions for GC. Again this is my understanding, get an immigration attorney’s opinion to help through your decisions.