How it’s like to work in a start-up and where you can find one yourself
I just joined yes.tap together with our other new intern Paul-Mehdy and so far it has been awesome. Working at yes.tap truly has been an immerse in the start-up culture; read: table tennis all you want. So far we are with a team of 6 dedicated go-getters with me supporting the business and commercial site and our other new asset helping with software development.
Compared to working in a large corporate, a startup gives a unique work experience. The work is much more engaging with the core business and that means I have to deal with more responsibilities.
The first week has already been intense and to give you an idea how intense:
I learned how the business worked.
Next to that I did research on the industry and looked out for other industries that could be interesting for us.
On the side I had to find out how we could use tools to increase our effectivity.
While working I learned skills to be more effective with my email and laptop and also shared my own shortcuts.
A big lesson for me was a 1-on-1 workshop about keynote and how to create an awesome presentation with that.
Since I received so much information already, it was a great idea for us new interns to share our own knowledge with the team. This gave us the opportunity to get feedback on our presenting skills.
Considering that I’ve been exposed to all different fronts of the business, I could already express my opinion on what we could do better immediately.
And I received the responsibility to lead the social media front.
Oh and did I mention it has been only a 3 days week for me?
As a first week, I can say that I can expect to learn and do much more in the near future. For those that want to work in a startup, I would really recommend it. But to get in the startup scene, it is a different playing field as when you’d search for a corporate job.
First of all, startups don’t have the same budget as a big corporate has. They will most likely not post vacancies to those expensive job boards. Second of all, startups are almost always looking for people with the right skills and right fit and they find that through their networks. For an introduction to how to get a startup job, Forbes posted this very good guide.
For those that are well familiar with the networking approach, but want to do more, you could have a more directive approach. There are websites where internationally startups posts vacancies like: f6s.com and angel.co. For dutch start-ups, there is dutchstartupjobs.com
However, you should remember that even though startups don’t have vacancies posted, they might always possibly be looking for additions to their team. Here are some other ideas to look for potential startups.
Gizmodo. Keep an eye out for cool technology articles. If you really like what they present in the article, you can always find startups you’ve never heard of.
Techcrunch. You can also find cool articles on Techcrunch and find secret startups.
Crunchbase. They claim to be the database of the startup ecosystem. Often you’ll see announcements of confirmed funding and this could be a good indication that they are expanding their team.
Accelerator/incubator programs. Startups that manage to get in these programs have proven that they have potential. After going through a incubator program, they’ll usually look for new additions to the team.
Venture capitalists. Big venture capitalist firms often invest when they see potential in a startup. Looking through their portfolio is a good idea to find a potential startup to work at.
Now if you’ve found a startup you’d want to work at, you should reach out directly to them. The right mindset to have is: how can I add value to them? In your outreach you should show them that you can do the job by showing your previous projects. A project I had running was my personal blog. If you want to learn more specific ways on how to get a startup job, you should check out Scott Britton. He has an awesome course about this.
When looking for a startup job, you should remember that it is important to have a connection with your future team and that you are ambitious about what the startup does. If you are now interested about what we, YES.TAP, do you should follow our Facebook and Twitter. And of course, look out for new blog posts.
Hoang Pham | YES.TAP
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