Top three learnings while working in a startup [Guest Post]

Few years back, I wrote an article on Why you should work in a startup and working in two startups was the best thing that has happened so far in my life. I learnt lot of things right from Technology to Business & helped me to understand myself better [I failed at many places but that was all a learning in itself].

[Today we have a guest article from Darren Foong who works in an Israeli startup Startcut.com. In this article, Darren shares his top three learnings while working in the startup]

Many are interested in startups lately; and why not? With Facebook’s highly publicized IPO and recent billion-dollar acquisition of Instagram, startups are the darlings of the media, the next big thing & a great way to make a killing.

It could well be a good way to make a living too; if you have the necessary skills, experiences and contacts to be in demand, why work for an unappreciative boss? Why not make money for yourself? For some, starting their business is a viable – even profitable – career choice, and there’s nothing quite like being your own boss and working for yourself.

But life is remarkably different in a start-up & it may not be for everybody. You should try it out, and decide for yourself if you enjoy it. But here are three of the most important lessons I’ve learnt from having working in a start-up.

You don’t know what you don’t know.

What’s the best way to promote your company? Unless you’re a marketing professional, chances are you only have a vague clue.
In most companies, roles are compartmentalized, and you can focus on doing what you’re best at. No such luck in a start-up, you and your team have to wear all the hats and play all the roles, and that includes doing the marketing/promotion for the company. And you don’t know it, you have to learn it.

Nobody on our team really had any experience with SEO, branding or online marketing; so for much of the time we had to figure things out for ourselves. This meant reading an inordinately large quantity of blogs and online guides, and sitting together pouring over Google AdWords & other PPC sites.

Even if you are an experienced marketer, the resources you have are limited – you can’t rely on media outlets giving you space or engaging the services of a PR/Ad agency. Even Google Ads may be an unqualified expenditure, depending on the life-stage of your startup.

Building a brand from zero is singularly unique & different from anything else, and you need to try and figure things out. We found countless social sharing sites & professional discussion forums which provided lots of useful eyeballs, but we also found plenty of pyramid schemes and snake-oil salesmen – none of which we’d known about (or how important they were, or how to utilize them).
You don’t realize what you don’t know until you realize you don’t know them – and it’s important to realize that that’s okay, because…

Patience is a Virtue.

Things will be hard. In the best case scenario, you strike gold and have to work extra hard to keep up with orders – in the worst case, you work hard but still languish in obscurity. You’ll stay late, for long hours, put in extra shifts, but realize things aren’t quite moving, you aren’t quite seeing the results of your day-to-day work, things aren’t taking off quite as fast as you’d like them to.

And that’s okay.

Things happen at a different pace in start-ups, and you can get frustrated or burnt out if you expect things to take off and fly immediately, or even within a year. (Incidentally, since a significant proportion of startups fail in a year – congratulations! You made one year!)

Patience is a virtue. It’s important to recognize the dangers of burning out and putting too much into a week, especially if it hurts the next week. You’re in this for the long haul – no need to kill yourself in the first mile. Hard work is important, but pacing is equally so. Especially since…

Everything.

You need to do everything.

The lack of a boss means no control, nobody looking over your shoulder checking your work and micro-managing. The lack of a boss also means you are now responsible for everything you do, including managing your own time-schedule and ensuring quality in your work.

But, more importantly, it means you have to decide and prioritize on the things that should be done. You’ll find a lot of things that will need to be accomplished, and the list will get longer and bigger every day. Going through it alphabetically won’t cut it – you need to prioritize, and only later will you find out if you’re right.

In a sense, being in a start-up means freedom: you can focus on what you want to, and deal with the aspects you want to – first. Eventually, though, you’ll need to do everything, and this freedom can sometimes be crippling, if you have too many decisions to make about what to prioritize, or if you keep doing what’s easy and put things off.

You need to do everything; one-by one, prioritized and patiently. And then maybe, you’ll survive.

I am sure there are many.. many more learnings, if you have any learning to share please leave them in the comments section.

About the author

Darren does marketing, blogging, and works at an Israeli startup at Startcut.com, where really he spends most of his time on Quora. He just started writing darrenblogs.tumblr.com StartCut helps you by distributing your videos to over 25 websites and 3 billion viewers. Visit StartCut today, or inquire at blog@startcut.com for more information.