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?

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.

I've published a post on 5 of the 10 Social Media rules I find the most ridiculous and I've received some comments, feedbacks and questions via this blog as well as emails and facebook messages. One point in particular seems to be more controversial: Add Value. I thought I would shed some light on what I meant and why I'm finding this point to be even more ridiculous than when I first put it on the list.

The first problem we run into, is that it's very difficult to define value. I looked up the word "value" on the online Merriam-Webster dictionary and here are the 2 definitions that seem the most appropriate:

1. Relative worth, utility, or importance <a good value at the price> <the value of base stealing in baseball> <had nothing of value to say>
2. Something (as a principle or quality) intrinsically valuable or desirable

I used the word "value" as define by the first point and I meant that you don't necessarily have to blog about things that have an utility or are important and I gave PostSecret and The Onion as examples. I would even go further and argue that you should not focus on adding value if you want to grow an audience or your followership. The first reason being that you cannot compete against 10,000 other blogs or the NT Times, and no matter what you blog about, odds are that a hundred blogs have already posted something about it. Another reason would be the ridiculous amount of information available out there makes content a commodity. Why do you fill up the tank at Shell instead of Husky or vice versa? Proximity? Coincidence? Why are you reading this blog rather than another one? Proximity (we're friends)? Coincidence (Google search)?

What We Can Learn From Borat

To me, Borat is the ultimate experience: stupid, disturbing, awkward, pointless, but dangerously funny and definitely memorable! I'm sure you've heard people quoting him on an almost daily basis with "Very nice! How much?" Or maybe it's Bruno, the main character of his latest movie: "Dolce Gabbana, Hallo?" Borat has had a big success and can count many fans and followers, yet I would not say that its success comes from its content. There is no real content: no script, not real story line, no actors except Sasha Baron (the actor for Borat and Bruno). You don't learn anything nor do you feel a better person when finished watching the movie. Yet Borat is amazing.

I am no movie expert, so I will not attempt to explain why it's been a success, I'm sure you can find other blogs for that. But one thing I know is that value as define in the first point above (worth, utility or importance), is not part of Borat's movie. It could however fit the second definition and be "desirable" I guess, but then the problem is that everything can be desirable to anyone. And if used that way. the word "value" loses its sense since it can be anything to anyone.

My take on this, is that creating a unique experience, being memorable, being different, leaving your visitors flabbergasted is more important than adding value in its traditional definition. We can think of groups, singers, movies, tv shows, books, blogs that don't have a high quality content, but are still great and amazing. This doesn't mean your social media strategy should be to be pointless in your posts and publish junk. The point is to show that the experience is at least as important, if not more, than the mere content. In this era of over-information, people are not looking for more information or more value, but for a unique and memorable experience.

If you're interested in Social Media, you've most likely come across many blog posts on dos, don'ts, and "rules" about Social Media. I find these very interesting, because there seems to be a general consensus on some of these "rules" even though there are very successful blogs that don't follow any of them. Here's the first part of a two-part article of 10 rules that I think come up the most often in blog articles and which I hate the most. My point is not that all Social Media rules are ridiculous, but that rules are made to be broken, and you shouldn't pay too much attention to them.

1. Publish often

Publishing often has the advantage of giving your blog a better ranking on Google as well as giving you the edge as far as first impression goes. What it doesn't give you though, is high quality content. When you post an article every day, you can't have thought it through all the time. I followed high profile bloggers such as Chris Brogan and Seth Godin for a few months, and these people post every single day. Although these 2 bloggers deserve kudos for the hard work they do and everything they have contributed to their communities/tribes, they can't keep up with great articles indefinitely by publishing everyday. We could also mention the kind of sacrifices it requires on a personal level to write 7 articles a week, for free. You can also read an interesting comment from Mike who raised an interesting point about posting less being not so much of an issue with RSS feeds nowadays in a previous post here.

Famous counter example: As an example Dosh Dosh is a successful and influential blog that publishes rarely, but has top quality content and long articles.

2. Engage people in a conversation

Most people follow you or comment on your posts with the hope you'll follow back or that their comment will draw traffic to their blog. This is not true 100% of the time, but I'd say the 80/20 rule would apply here: 20% or less of your followers are real fans and create 80% or more of the valuable and relevant content such as questions, ideas, links, etc. Trying to engage a conversation is a noble cause, but it won't happen by itself and it's most likely to take a lot of time before you're having a real conversations with your "fans". Keep trying to get as much feedback as you can, but if you're like 80% of us, replying to your fans won't take you all day.

Famous counter example: Seth Godin doesn't even allow comments on his blog which basically kills the idea of having a conversation and he still runs the most read blog on marketing in the world.

3. Be available, all the time

Chris Brogan is a blogger I really admire and who has done a lot for his community and he's probably the most available person in the world, which means that he sleeps 4 hours a day. He will try to reply to all the emails, tweets, facebook, friendfeed, linkedin, etc, he can possibly receive. I can't imagine the burden of having to be available all the time and the different consequences it can have on your personal life. I'm a strong believer in First Things First (affiliate link) and the power of prioritizing your life based on your roles (parent, employee, friend, son/daughter, etc.). Not everything that is urgent is important, and if it's not important, it should not get your attention.

Famous counter example: Let me reuse the Seth Godin no comment example here and make sure your read this blog post about what happens when you unplug. Someone also brought up no-tech Sundays, an idea I love and that I sometimes do.

4. Publish short posts, or break a long one into many smaller posts

I think it really depends of the audience you're targeting. I find my "true fans" to read all my posts even the very long ones and I've actually had more success with my longest posts. I have short posts for new comers and longer posts for regular visitors who know me better and have read some of my previous posts. If you publish less often, but try to have a higher quality, then length becomes almost irrelevant.

Famous counter example: Let me use Dosh Dosh as an example again, you'll notice that the typical post is much longer than average blog post.

5. Add value

What does that mean anyways? It's by far the most overused expression in Social Media right now, there is no article you can possibly read without having the words "adding value". First of all, I wish I knew what they meant by value here, and second of all it seems to be derived from business value. I believe a blog is all about experience and no so much about the value you add, but the emotion you can create. That might be the new direction my blog will take… hhhmmm

Famous counter example: One blog that has been very successful and which doesn't, in my view, add value is PostSecret. It might be argued that it entertains, but I don't really see the value it adds. Another blog that could be arguably added to this list is the onion (22nd on Technorati ranking) who reports humorous fake news.