Seeking a Job in Start-Up Land

My first time jumping into the start-up world was as a freshly minted Harvard MBA in 1995. As my classmates were rushing off to high-paying, high-powered jobs on Wall Street, I joined a Series A start-up with 30 employees as a product manager, making $65,000 per year – lower than my pre-MBA salary at management consultancy The Boston Consulting Group. Since then I’ve had a terrific ride, but I often think of that fateful decision when I get asked, repeatedly, by other freshly minted MBAs: ”How do I get a job in a start-up?” Or, more generally, “How do I even begin to find and assess start-up job opportunities – I don’t even know where to start?

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The start-up universe is a large one and can seem overwhelming and impenetrable to the uninitiated. In order to narrow things down, I recommend following a simple, four-step heuristic. Here’s the advice I give:

 

• Pick a Domain. First, figure out your passion in terms of domain. Are you more of a B2C type or a B2B type? What blogs are you reading? What articles in Techcrunch or the Wall Street Journal capture your attention? What companies are your dream companies to work for? Answering these questions will help narrow down a set of domains that you are excited about. It can be more than one, but it shouldn’t be more than, say, three.

 

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