What it Means to Work for Start-Ups?

Ever since I graduated from IIIT-B, life has been eclectic, restless and on the toes all the time. It’s been over 6 years that we graduated from IIIT-B. After graduation, I landed in a large MNC in a testing role.  It’s always the willingness to do more that had driven me to IIIT-B, the same willingness to do more made me look to greener pastures that had challenging, exciting and a fast paced environment. This made me to land in Mumbai for a product that was recently started where my friend Karthik was spear heading the product. 

No doubt we have moved out of Mumbai, Karthik along with Vikranth having his own start up – dataweave and I moving to another product start up in Pune. It’s been a very exciting , thrilling and one hell of experience to go through. Perhaps the best time to take risks and experiment in life.  There are certain lessons that we learnt along this journey and some important things that we earned in start-ups are

1.Challenging – It’s not only the technical work that must be challenging; the challenges that you face working in a start-up are many fold. 

• Lack of Processes – There are no processes or minimal processes. You need to write the lyrics, compose and sing it too. It’s all up to you what you do and how well you do it.
• Communication Gap – As there is lack of process, people come from varied background there would be communication gap as well.  Handling this is in itself a daunting task.
• Time Constraints – There is a saying ‘what you do tomorrow, do it today, what you do today, do it now’ but in start-ups you always have this ‘you should have done it yesterday’. Time will be the major constraint all the time.

2.  Security – Everyone is aware of the fact that there is no job security in this new modern world. Hire and fire policies are the norms. But, still people believe that working for large companies is secured. But, the fact is that, in large companies you never know when the layoffs are expected. In start-ups, you are always aware of the start-up may fail and you are prepared for the worst and moreover you will never be in a comfort zone. Of course, working in large companies has its own merits.

3.  Camaraderie – Since start-ups have very few people, working in team is quite amazing. And, an excellent camaraderie is formed among the people and they last with you forever even after you quit the company.

 
4.Scaling – You will face a challenge of scaling your product not only technically but also you learn how to scale people with limited time frame. Employees are the great assets to the organization and if you don’t help people to scale, your product will never scale. Once people scale, there is a satisfaction to see people growing.

5.Perspective- Start-ups give you the opportunity to work across teams ranging from application; database, Infrastructure, analyst, clients, HR, management and you get an insight from each perspective and understand how an organization functions. It is imperative to know these if you want to start you own firm. 

  

6.Hiring Skills – The Indian team might have won the champions trophy, but it is the selectors who get you the right set of people. Likewise, in a start-up you get an opportunity to hire people and hiring the right people is a skill that you may discover as you grow. Since team size is small, it’s inevitable to get the right people. 

  

7.Communication Skills - While it is a well-known fact that communication skills are quite poor for a fresh graduates in this country. There is an opportunity to polish your communication skills via emails, over phone, conference calls etc.

  

8.Conceptualization – As you grow, start-ups give you the opportunity to conceptualize and foresee things that lay ahead of you. You shall start visualizing the product, the requirement and can sense the need of the client as well.

9.Entire Life Cycle – You get an opportunity to work for an entire life cycle of the product. At times, you may come across a product that fails and at times a product that becomes successful.

10.Leadership Skills: You not only learn to work in a team, but also to lead a team. Along the lines you cultivate people skills. You also start setting policies that has larger impact on the organization.

These are some of the reasons why you may want to work for a start-up. Definitely, there is a tremendous growth, steep learning curve and further you get an extra edge to start your own company. The market has immense opportunity for those people who have learnt the art of working in start-ups and you also have a chance to land up in large company in a larger role!