M C

Account Director at LinkedIn

Vetting Startup/Smaller Companies

When researching startups/smaller companies as potential new employers what are some things that need to be considered and are indicators to determine what places will be a good place to work and earn a high income?

📠 Startup

19 comments

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Kosta_Konfucius

Politicker

Sales Rep

Crunchbase is a great way to research their funding, and back channel to know how the team is doing

CuriousFox

WR Officer

🦊

Exactly what I was going to recommend. I've worked for a start up only once. It didn't make it. I'm curious now, but not curious enough.

jefe

Arsonist

🍁

Definitely the best resources. Doesn't always have information on pre-seed orgs but it's the best you'll get.

braintank

Politicker

Enterprise Account Executive

Most aren't.
You need to see revenue doubling (or tripleing) year over year.

Sunbunny31

Politicker

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

Honestly, this is really the only answer.

Account Director

Where are revenue numbers readily available for non public companies?

braintank

Politicker

Enterprise Account Executive

They aren't. You have to ask and verify yourself.

wolfofmiami

Opinionated

🐺

Make sure they’re profitable from the start. Or they have a ton of funding by reputable investment groups

GDO

Politicker

BDM

Raising money and runway, product market fit, tenure of people, repvue/glassdoor

Retired Sales Professional

Health care and structure of compensation, very important. 👍👍

FinanceEngineer

Politicker

Sr Director, sales and partnerships

Check out when they last raised, and what logos they have on their website.

braintank

Politicker

Enterprise Account Executive

Logos are very misleading. Plenty of companies sell 1 license to a janitor and put a F100 logo on as a result

FinanceEngineer

Politicker

Sr Director, sales and partnerships

Sure, if you are joining a janitorial supply company it makes sense. It all depends, as does raises based on who is on the board prior to the raise.

braintank

Politicker

Enterprise Account Executive

Just saying take logos with grain of salt. I've seen plenty of companies put Microsoft on their logo slide b/c one person at microsoft downloaded a free trial.

jefe

Arsonist

🍁

Companies do this shit WAY too often when it comes to logos. Don't trust them

DungeonsNDemos

Big Shot

Rolling 20's all day

This is the way lmao

Beans

Big Shot

Enterprise Account Executive

Understanding their funding, runway, TAM, accurate ICP, tech stack investment, and growth expectations.

J.J.McLure

Politicker

Owner at *redacted*

Watch for too many family members in management.
To me the benefit to getting in with a startup is not generally a high starting wage, it's growth potential and nepotism can diminish your chances of moving up.

goldenboy

Executive

Enterprise Sales Executive

Sales process and support for reps. Dig into the details and be ready to ask some uncomfortable questions. I made the mistake of not digging into the sales process and marketing support structure for a sales role and found out quickly once hired that, even though they told me they had a good marketing team and were actively supporting their sales efforts, there was no outbound function, coherent marketing strategy, or experienced marketing team (run by mostly former engineers who were in stretch roles). Ended up spending my first 6 months helping build the marketing function up and helping hire a VP of Marketing instead of being solely focused on my sales responsibilities. 6 months after that I left. Easily could have spotted this if I had dug a little deeper in the interview process.

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M C

Vetting Startup/Smaller Companies

19 comments

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