Matt Baril

I left my corporate job and joined a startup of 13 people 2 months ago (we've now grown to 18) and before making the leap, I did a fair bit of thinking and research to decide what criteria I should use in determining if a startup was worth taking the risk. I used 3 main criteria, in order of importance, and here I describe my thought process. I'd like to know your opinion and if those criteria reflect your idea of what's essential to judge before joining a startup.

Management

Who manages the startup is, in my opinion, by far the most important thing anyone should look at. They will make or break the company with their decisions. A good management team will adapt in the face of adversity and will pivot the product or the service. As a matter of fact, I believe the product or the service the company actually offers could almost be ignored, as long as this is something you are passionate about… It's the early days and the product or idea you are looking at is probably completely different from what the final product will actually look like anyways.

Here are the qualities I particularly look for in management in order of importance: Experienced, realistic, straightforward (no politics), open, honest, humble (not afraid to call a screw up a screw up or to say things such as "I don't know").

I believe it's of utmost importance to be able to talk to the CEO before accepting an offer. If the CEO has no time, this should be your clue right there. It's a startup and if with only a handful of employees the CEO doesn't consider talking to potential new hires important enough, you know what the company will look like in a few months from now when it's grown substantially. Here are some hard questions I would recommend you ask to the CEO, make sure you do research and know the answers beforehand though:

• What is your central value proposition?
  • One trap is to work for a technical CEO who focuses on the product without ensuring his product solves a problem and that people will be willing to pay for it. If they haven't put any thoughts on what value they offer their customers, this is a sign of potential problems.
• What are your main competitive advantages?
  • If the CEO doesn't know how they are different from competition, then they are not different. Having the first widget or the best looking widget doesn't mean anything, someone else with more resources will copy you or do it better than you at one point or another. IPs (Intellectual Properties), high barriers to entry, or something that can help the company keep its advantage over competition should be in place.
• Who are your main competitors?
  • If the CEO says they have no competitors at all, this should also be a good clue not to join. You always have competitors even though you invented something first. E.g. you invented the first carbonated soft drink, no one offers this type of drinks, who are you competitors? Any company that offers drinks: milk, water, juice, etc. There are always substitutes available out there and not being aware of that is a recipe for failure.
• What main challenges do you foresee in the short and medium terms?
  • Time to see if they are planning ahead and if they are being realistic about the challenges they will be facing. There are things that all Startups will face: getting customers, having enough working capitals, pivoting, etc.
• What's your market size estimate?
  • I can't remember where I saw that, but I read that founders, on average, overestimate their market by 400%. This is one of the most important questions VCs ask before pitching money in.

Team

Once you are confident there is great management team in place, ensure that your future colleagues have at least as much experience as you or more. The best situation is to be in is working with people who are more intelligent and more experienced than you, but make sure you can get the job done before accepting that offer. You don't want to the guy who is always trailing behind… A few things you can do to check your future colleagues background:

• If it's a true startup, you can probably drop by and talk to people, it's the best way to get a feel of the people and the culture
• Use LinkedIn to check your future colleagues credentials, recommendations and personal website
• Leverage your network to ask your connections for their opinion about people they know in the startup
• Google your colleagues, check for previous accomplishments

Financing

This is probably an overlooked point that is critical, most startups die when the cash dries up and knowing how many months of working capital they have is important. Now, the CEO might tell you this is confidential, but they will most likely be very straight forward if an official offer was made to you. You're risking your current job after all and this is basic due diligence and most CEOs get that. Here are some questions to get a better picture of their financial situation if the CEO refuses to answer that question:

• Have you had VC or Angels funding yet, or are you planning to get funding in the future?
• Who are the major owners?
• When do they expect to break-even if they're not already?
• Fundings from VC and major investments are usually announced in PR releases and on blogs, so make sure you Google the startup for rounds of funding or public endorsements.

What are your main selection criteria? What are you looking for in a new career opportunity in a startup? Would you risk your corporate job for a startup if the right ingredients were there, or you would still find it too risky?

Well, I've done it. After talking about, preaching it, blogging about it, encouraging people to do it, I finally did it. As you probably know, I've been working at SAP, the largest business software in the world, for almost a year and a half in the business development department at an entry level position. Ever since I had talked to Peter Tingling and wrote a post about working in a Zoo vs. the Wild, the idea of leaving the corporate world was with me. In December however, I had an interview at SAP for a better internal role and was told I should expect to be promoted before the new year. With this news, I wasn't planning on moving anywhere any time soon. Well I was planning on moving desk, but that was about it.

Unfortunately things didn't quite happened that way, but I started training sessions and mentoring sessions in February and was mostly trained by the end of March. Unfortunately bad timing and many layers of decision makers meant that by June, I was still in my old role and that was my breaking point. I know my more experienced readers and colleagues will say I'm a typical millennial who can't wait, and I guess they're right. Yes, thank you for your feedback… I know. Anyway, in June I started applying on jobs as I needed new challenges and something exciting, a job I could learn from, a job I could feel I was contributing something and making even a small difference. Here again you can detect my typical millennial's sense of naivety… So I decided I would be looking for jobs in new startups in Vancouver.

Sometimes it feels like if all the stars align at the right moment and one night I came back home and checked my LinkedIn and I had 3 job listings on the right panel (which was a BETA feature BTW, I think this is a great idea from LinkedIn). One of them was Inside Sales Executive (the same role I was desperately waiting for at SAP) for a company called Visier Inc., a company I had never heard of. I clicked on the link to discover it was exactly in the same industry as SAP BusinessObjects, it was literally a block away from my current job, it was a startup and most important of all: it was founded, managed and run by ex-SAP employees with one of the founder and CEO being the ex-CEO of BusinessObjects. For those of you who don't know, BusinessObjects was the leading Business Intelligence company in the world and was acquired by SAP a few years ago. And Visier was founded by BusinessObjects' CEO and literally all 14 employees were ex-SAP employees looking for new challenges. I just couldn't resist and applied right away.

So to make a long story short, I applied, went through 2 interviews and got the job. The only problem, if you can call that a problem, was that I actually had been promoted to my new role at SAP, finally. So I had an interesting dilemma, on 1 side I had SAP, a well-known and respected corporation who I knew was offering me a stable and certain future with the best pay, benefits and perks in the industry and the city. On the other side I had Visier, a highly promising startup with everything to be built from the ground up and a motivated and dynamic team.

I'm not going to lie, I lost sleep over this, but I ended up leaving SAP on my 2nd day in my new role, a record they told me. I joined the company a little over 1 week ago and I don't regret it at all! The challenge, the freedom, the opportunities, everything I missed so much in my corporate career Visier has. I've also found my inspiration to blog and will publish a few posts in the next weeks about making the leap based on my experience and my conversations with other people.

So here I am my friends, writing to you from the wild and looking forward to the journey!

What about you? Have you found your piece of Wilderness yet or leaving the Zoo seems too risky?

I haven't posted on my blog in quite a while and I won't blame anyone or anything for that, I've been involved in many projects for the last few months and decided to prioritize my projects and unfortunately the blog was put on the back burner. I still get comments and emails from people who use the job feed and I'm averaging 10-15 unique visitors a day, so I'm glad to see the blog hasn't died and some people find the job feed useful!

As some of you may know, my friend Evan Bleker and I started a small venture called Taste of Vancouver Tours about 2 months ago and I've invested most of my energy and time in our project. I have learned a great deal and faced many challenges already, but I enjoy every single step of it. It's finally time to apply what I've learned from school, books, case competitions, conferences, mentors, etc. And well as you probably expected, it's more difficult to execute than simply debate something in a classroom setting. You need some guts, good resistance to sleep deprivation, patience (which I lack), motivation, dedication when everything goes wrong, negotiation skills, marketing skills, project management skills, etc. The last 2 months have been very interesting to say the least.

The fact that my blog hasn't been updated for a few months and the creation of Taste of Vancouver Tours are actually related, but not because of a time constraint, it was a thought that was the catalyst.

I believe we, in the western world at least, live in a "container" world. We're more concerned about the container: what things look like and how people talk and present themselves than the "content" in that container: what we actually know and the quality of our thought process. Take this quote as an example, you've probably heard it 1000 times by now: "It's not about what you know, it's about who you know". I actually have a problem with that and I think it's fundamentally wrong. Why would you hire someone based on the people he or she knows rather than what he or she knows. The answer is you wouldn't. This quote misses the point: success attracts people and successful people will have broad networks. It doesn't mean that having a broad network wil make you successful though. You can know a lot of people in your field, if you're not successful at what you do, it's not going to be of any help.

So, a few months ago, I decided I would stop "shouting" in the blogsphere, hoping someone would hear me. I decided to spend my resources to act, execute and deliver. It's not that easy, but it's a lot more fun and I figured there are already many people shouting hoping for your attention, hoping to convince you they're worth listening to. I rather spend my time building something, filling up the container. If I'm successful, the rest will follow.

I will end with this quote I found on The Economist website this morning: "Also, they [potential MBA candidates] will recall that the most effective way to build a network is not to go to school, but to be successful".

Last Friday, I had a beer with Peter, a friend of mine who teaches at SFU and started his own company called Octothorpe Software which makes software to help anyone from individuals to Fortune 500 make better decisions. We were talking career path when Peter asked me: "If you had the choice, would you rather work in a zoo or in the wild?" Now, that got me thinking. Every time you meet Peter, you can be sure to be intellectually challenged and learn… a lot.

The Zoo

The zoo, on one hand, is this place where you're fed, pet, washed, and treated well just for being there. You're not asked to do much except for being there and doing that one show every day to impress the visitors. You're not asked to make any decisions or take any risks and will not be put down unless you do something absolutely stupid like biting the hand that feeds you… The staff in the zoo expects loyalty and will, in return, make sure you have all you possibly need.

The Wild

The wild, on the other hand, is a different story. Living from one kill to another, being emaciated during the hard months, feasting during the good ones. You can get killed at any time, but developing and relying on your peers and making up your own pride will increase your odds of you surviving. You enjoy your freedom and the fact that you don't report to anyone, but yourself. You also know you have to stay on top of the game, always keep a sharp eye open and plan for the next day. Having cubs to feed increases the consequences of your potential failure and keeps you up at night.

As Peter pointed out, there is nothing wrong in working in a zoo and it actually fulfills many people's aspirations. The only thing I would warn you against though, is to be careful not to be let loose after many years in a zoo. Your chances of surviving in the wild are decreased, a lot. You'll be fat, your reflexes slow, your natural instinct vanished, and your enthusiasm to run after big games dead. Even more important, you won't have anyone to rely upon to come to your help. It must feel quite lonely out there in such conditions. If you can have a plan, or multiple backup plans to ensure you do not end up in the wild after many years in a zoo, then you're safe. Otherwise, if you're like the rest of us and don't have a bulletproof position in a zoo, make sure you keep your eyesight clear, your instinct alert, your body fit, your claws and your fangs sharp and most importantly, keep your passion unaltered. Retiring in a zoo as opposed to starting your adult life in a zoo might also help you develop the necessary skills to survive in the wild and then enjoy the zoo.

So, do you work in a zoo or in the wild?

I found Peter's analogy very inspiring and thought I had to blog about it. If you like this, make sure you send a message to Peter to say thanks.

I'm curious to see what has been the most helpful for you so far in your career to get a job. Feel free to add more details in the comment section if you want to explain your choice.

The poll has been closed. See the poll archive to see the results of this poll.