Being an early employee at a startup is almost always a terrible decision financially. Great if you: - Want to start your own company - Want to learn a lot and grow ...That’s about it.
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I never said it was a bad decision. I'm just saying the vast majority of the time it will not return in financial upside. sometimes it will, and it'll be huge. not dissimilar to vc, no?
You said it was almost always a terrible decision. You didn't mention the upside. You mentioned a couple other nonfinancial benefits, and concluded "that's about it." Surely anyone reading that tweet would infer you were saying that, financially, it was a bad decision.
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But isn't that indeed true for any single given early stage startup? If you work at 10 of them, them the risk goes way down, but if you just work at one or two...
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financially, it turns out to be a bad decision most of the time. sometimes, it turns out to be a great decision. not including something doesn't mean I don't believe it!
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we need a new word for “sometimes” if this “sometimes” is 0.001%
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Risk-adjusted, financially, it's probably the most precarious position to be. Lower median with a vastly large variance. Post-Series A is much "safer" - but it's all about balancing the median + variance seesaw based on your appetite
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Making career choices based on expected value? Dunno... you only have one life so n is too small to play the mean of small-chance big-outcome "rationally." Risk preference/aversion plays a role. It is, btw, a great decision financially if it is your only way into tech. Often is!
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“Wanting to learn and grow” should be the #1 thing you optimize for in your career, especially early on. Building the muscle to learn/execute/iterate is a leading indicator of value vs. comp. The payday will come if you work hard and earn compound interest on your learnings.
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1000% agree! that part is huge. "that's about it" was more in reference to "just those two things" so focus on making sure you're getting them, not "those two things are meaningless" would edit if I could.
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What are you asserting Paul? That joining a startup as one of it’s earliest employees is normally a good financial decision? Genuinely asking. Want to know how to pitch early employees for my startup better :)
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Joining a startup early is a bad financial decision no matter how you look at it. There's no liquidity, you cannot spread your risk, and, honestly, most startups don't solve hard tech problems. Of course, you want people to join startups since you'll make the money -- not them.
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