The silver platter & fewer startups

The other day I was introduced to a guy who was just out of college. He should have been around 22 yrs. We were generally talking about technology and web apps then he mentioned that he was leaving his current position in a cool web startup. FYI, he had just started a couple of months back. Concerned, I probed a bit and found out that he was not happy with what he was doing. He wanted to work on the "cool" and "good" stuff. The high level stuff. The stuff that he could boast to his college friends. He detested the grunt work that was given to him occasionally. To me, thats' the stuff that sometimes goes into building a great business. He then told me that in a few months he was looking to start his own business.

What!!!!

Wait a second. This is not happening. I was speechless.

How does that work? Starting a business and being entrepreneurial is awesome but if you can't get past Level 1, then how are you going to reach Level 4? Aren't all businesses built on the stuff that we don't like doing sometimes? Isn't pain the part of the process that helps us reach the top?

I hope this is not the attitude of our young generation - 'get rich quick and I don't want to work' kind of attitude. Wanting everything on a silver platter but not wanting to go through the pain.

I wanted to wish him good luck. We parted ways in different directions.

These experiences helps me with hiring people for DeskAway. I look for one thing - a good attitude. It's worked almost all the time. Attitude will tell you a lot about the person, where he has been and where he will be a few years down the road.

Jan 17, 2010

youngstartup said...

perhaps , it was not his attitude and rather lack of incentives that drove him out of the startup. I had hired a similar kid out of college who I tried to pay next to nothing . He accepted at his junior level , that the salary was fair and began working. He also asked about equity but I laughed at him , I had somehow managed to retain 95% of the startups equity by paying the rest of the team salaries. Soon he realized though , that he was almost working for free with no incentives helping build my company ( he never once complained till he left about the occasional grunt work ). He was obviously smarter and better acquainted with startup norms compared to rest of the team , who sat quietly getting measly salaries without any equity.

So I don't know why you were "speechless" , he wanted to work in areas that he was not experienced in , so in the process , he could build his skills and at the same time help my company. Additionally I must mention , I stifled him from access to the company servers , databases and critical areas . Every time he would implement something he would have to wait , for one for my overworked team to implement the requests.

Hence I reached the realization , that he was of a different breed , one that I could not exploit , for my grunt work + other "cool" and "good" stuff that he could boast to his college friends about. I let him go and we parted on the good note. I realized that one day his company could be bigger than mine and he will be a great contact to have.

Mar 18, 2010

Sunil Shenoy said...

Great mention about getting from level 1 to level 4.

I think more people are thinking of jumping straight to level 4 these days. Internet is filled with get rich quick scheme which attracts more people to leave their job for the wrong reasons.

sahil parikh’s work+life stream