Be a Startup Superstar E-Book

Steven Kahan

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 276

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Find a job and quickly climb the ranks at a tech startup, even if you're not a techie. Are you underemployed or struggling to find a fulfilling career? Stuck on a low rung of the corporate ladder and don't see a way up anytime soon? You're not alone. Like many recent college grads and people who feel stuck in their corporate jobs, you've probably never considered working for a technology company that's just starting out, especially if you're not a tech whiz. That doesn't matter. Tech startups are desperate for talent and creativity in all kinds of fields from people with leadership skills and new ideas--people like you! If you're looking to turn your general business know-how into a wildly successful career, Be a Startup Superstar is your guide. Yes, you can love your work, feel energized by your role, and earn the income of your dreams. Author Steven Mark Kahan left his safe corporate job to join his first tech startup, and since then he has helped seven startup companies sell or go public (meaning early employees usually score big). In this breakthrough book, Steve shows you how to: * Look for five key traits when choosing a tech startup * Get hired at a tech startup with your existing degree, skills, and experience * Develop the leadership attributes and entrepreneurial mindset that can launch you to the top * Make better decisions and get better outcomes in the tech startup world and beyond Be a Startup Superstar provides the expert insider guidance you need to ignite your career by joining the tech startup revolution.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Foreword: What Are You Waiting For? It’s Time to Change the World!

Introduction

Part I: The Best Opportunities Are in Start‐Ups

Chapter 1: Use the Tech Start‐Up Boom to Zoom

The Unprecedented Opportunity in Tech Start‐Ups

Why Work for a Start‐Up Over a Big Corporation?

Notes

Chapter 2: Pick the Right Start‐Up for You

How to Find Start‐Up Opportunities

Five Criteria to Choose a Start‐Up

Getting Hired

Notes

Part II: Seven Keys to the C‐Suite

Chapter 3: Develop Your Leadership Skills and Self‐Confidence

Visualize Your Success Until It's Real

Use “Co‐Opetition” and Competition to Stand Out

Become an Expert and a Constant Learner

Develop Strong Communication Skills

Embrace Accountability

Show Humility

Believe in Yourself

Notes

Chapter 4: Stand Out from the Herd

Differentiate Yourself

Ask More Questions

Take Calculated Risks and Challenge the Status Quo

Find the Courage to Make Tough Decisions

Call Out the Elephant in the Room

Be Known as an Idea Person Who Executes

Notes

Chapter 5: Act Like a Leader (Even If You Don't Have the Title Yet)

Set Clear, Inspiring Goals

Everything Can't Be a High Priority

Create Order Out of Chaos

Make Fact‐Informed Gut Decisions

Earn Your Stripes

Notes

Chapter 6: Adopt Winning Work Habits

Work Hard without Feeling Overworked

Show You Know Your Customers

Be Part of the Solution

Pay Attention to Details (without Being a Control Freak)

Add Value Through Simplicity

Persist and Be Patient

Notes

Chapter 7: Choose Carefully the Company You Keep

Surround Yourself with A‐Plus Talent

Find the Right Mentors

Know When to Stay and When to Go

Notes

Chapter 8: Embrace the Power of Kindness

Walk in Others' Shoes

Say Thank You and Mean It

Create Fun and Joy

Exude Energy and Optimism

Notes

Chapter 9: Take Care of What Matters

Protect Your Calendar

Put Your Family First

Make Health and Fitness a Priority

Live Life to the Fullest

Notes

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Index

End User License Agreement

Guide

Cover

Table of Contents

Begin Reading

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Be a Startup Superstar

Ignite Your Career Working at a Tech Start-Up

Steven Mark Kahan

© 2020 John Wiley and Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

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Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data is Available

ISBN 978‐1‐119‐66040‐8 (hardback)

ISBN 978‐1‐119‐66070‐5 (ePDF)

ISBN 978‐1‐119‐66071‐2 (ePub)

Cover Design: Wiley

Cover Image: © artskill2k17/Shutterstock

ForewordWhat Are You Waiting For? It’s Time to Change the World!

I had been eagerly awaiting my first day at an enormous and very famous Wall Street investment bank. I had hit the big time! Through a family connection, I had landed an entry‐level position as my first job after college. Sure, I would be starting at the ground floor, but I was confident that I had the chops to succeed and move my way up the corporate ladder. I was super excited that morning as I introduced myself to my new manager, a grizzled Wall Street veteran.

However, with one simple action upon meeting me, the manager seemed to delight in crushing my enthusiasm. With his power move, my morning went from the wide‐eyed, first‐day excitement and dreams of a promising career, to imagining mind‐numbing drudgery for the next four decades. Did this guy, who must have seen hundreds of eager, fresh graduates just like me over the years, do this to everyone?

Before I was introduced to my new colleagues, before I knew what my initial role would be, heck, before I was even told where to pee, I was shown how to use the time clock. A time clock! Like you see in movies when they depict old‐time factories. The manager smirked as he gave me my very own punch card with my name on it within 10 minutes of the first day of my career. I was told I had to punch in when I arrived in the morning, again when I went to lunch, when I returned from lunch, and finally when I left in the evening.

A time clock? Really? Did they not trust me? Yikes, I thought, what have I gotten myself into? At that moment, I knew I had to plot my exit from the Fortune 500 company world of work.

It wasn't long before I became the sixth employee of an economic consulting company. What a fantastic career move that was. This was an environment where I was able to carve out my own path based on how my skills and interests aligned with the company's goals.

At the age of 26, I moved to Tokyo to start the company's Japan office. I went from literally punching a time clock at a massive corporation to being the sole employee of my start‐up company outside the home office. Soon I was doing business at a high level and making a difference. And I was having an absolute blast! The fact that I was located 6,500 miles away from the management team, plus the 12‐hour time difference, meant I was working when the rest of the team back in New York was asleep. And this meant that I had total and complete autonomy. I couldn't have been happier.

What a remarkable difference between the drudgery of my work as a tiny part of an enormous Fortune 500 company compared to my new work as a huge part of a small entrepreneurial venture. The lessons I learned about myself and what matters in my life have led me to continue chasing that start‐up culture to this day.

Now, I serve as an advisor to select emerging companies that are working to transform their industries by delivering disruptive products and services. My advisory clients include HubSpot, a company I started working with in 2007 when they had a handful of customers and fewer than 10 employees. I helped the HubSpot team grow the company to more than 60,000 customers in 90 countries, and more than $500 million in annual revenue. My current portfolio of advisory clients in the start‐up world also includes Mynd, Expertfile, YayPay, SlapFive, and InstaViser. I'm also a Go‐To‐Market Limited Partner at Stage 2 Capital, a venture capital firm that invests in start‐up companies.

Be a Startup Superstar is the book I wish I had when I was in college and considering a career in business. It's a deep dive into start‐up culture and includes wonderful stories about what life is like on the inside of successful, high‐growth organizations. I found myself nodding in understanding and appreciation on each page.

This is no academic tome written by somebody who simply studies what others do. Steve Kahan is a highly successful entrepreneur himself. He's been in a number of successful start‐up ventures and has also been in the trenches in the huge‐company world. Steve delivers valuable insights on every page. He's your personal mentor as he guides you through the start‐up world.

The stories you read in these pages show you how to be successful working at a start‐up. In my experience, there is a huge difference in how to approach work at a mega‐corporation versus a start‐up, and Steve tells you exactly how to navigate those differences. In a big company, politics rule. Pleasing the boss is often more important than serving the customer. In the start‐up world, the opposite is true: Success comes from what you do to grow the business, not from what you do to serve the egos of the muckety‐mucks with big titles. Steve uses real‐world examples to point out those differences so you can navigate your career with skill.

Start‐up companies represent an enormous opportunity for smart self‐starters. And these entrepreneurial ventures are always on the lookout for talent, for people like you. CEOs tell me all the time that the most difficult part of their job is finding the passionate people who will make a difference in their companies.

If you want to work for a company where everybody at the cocktail party will recognize the name on your business card, this is not the book for you. If you want somebody else to tell you what to do at work, look elsewhere. However, if you're eager to have fun, make a difference, and change the world, read on! We're counting on you.

— David Meerman Scott, entrepreneur, business growth strategist, and bestselling author of 11 books, including Fanocracy and The New Rules of Marketing and PRwww.DavidMeermanScott.com @DMScott

Introduction

Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

—George Bernard Shaw, playwright

I invite you to imagine you and I are meeting for a dinner appointment. It's a warm evening and we are seated at an outdoor rooftop restaurant overlooking a bright, big city. As the sun sinks into a soft orange glow, and the lights from the buildings illuminate the deepening blue of the streets below, we talk about your college experience. Your face lights up as you tell me about the recognition you received; the camaraderie you experienced with professors, classmates, and friends who challenged your thinking. You express a longing for the structure of the educational framework where success surely comes to those who work hard.

And then our conversation shifts to your current job situation.

You inhale deeply. During college, you had imagined so much success and income in your future, but here you are, full of knowledge and ready to put it to use, ready to prove yourself—but you're stuck. You're stuck in a job where advancement seems long and far away, and your life lacks the richness you desire and expect. You think about your peers, and while there are a few lucky ones who already seem rich and happy (according to their social media posts, anyway), you and most others are still getting by, trying to mitigate risk due to those aforementioned student loans you can no longer defer. You're hoping for a big break or a lucky streak, or a mentor to take an interest in you and help you to navigate through this career conundrum in which you and other young professionals are caught.

I am that mentor, and I'm taking an interest in you. This book provides the insider perspective of a mentor who has been in your exact situation and found a way forward, not just to a great job, but to a great career and massive success, both financial and personal. I want to help you discover your own path to becoming a brave leader in a world that you might have previously overlooked or written off as too risky: the tech startup world.

While working for a startup might seem riskier than working for a large corporation, the potential rewards far outweigh the risks. And, if you're smart, you can mitigate the risk. I will show you where the opportunities lie, how to take advantage of them, and how to choose a start‐up with the best chance for success—whether you're aiming for a tech or nontech role.

Have you ever felt stuck in your job? Have you wondered how you will ever reach the level of success you imagined for yourself? You're not alone. In 2019, amid a robust economy and low unemployment, college graduates struggled to get hired. Upon graduation, 75% didn't have a job lined up at all. It took the average college graduate almost eight months to find a job—all against a backdrop where the average student loan debt was $41,810. Add to that the fact that in the same year, only 31% of employees in the US and Canada felt engaged at work, and I believe this means we have a serious epidemic on our hands.

This epidemic is not new. It nearly infected me.

Many years ago, after graduating college and landing my first job processing claims in a large bureaucratic corporation, I realized that the traditional “safe” path from school to climbing the corporate ladder was not only high risk for my career, it almost felt like a death trap.

I dared to question my plan and ask myself, “What if I could earn a great living and love the work I do?”

Even though I had no skills or experience in technology, I left my boring, low‐paying analog job and went to work for a tech start‐up, and it afforded opportunities that would have never been available to me had I remained in a traditional corporate environment.

Since then, I have spent more than 30 years building my career within the tech start‐up world. From my first start‐up job as marketing representative at Database Design to my current role as CMO of Thycotic, I have been blessed to work for seven tech start‐ups. All six of my prior employers have either successfully sold or have gone public, generating more than $3 billion in shareholder value. I've had the privilege of working with hundreds of amazingly talented start‐up entrepreneurs. I've learned about how they think, what they do, and the attitudes they hold that have helped them achieve extraordinary success.

My mission, and the purpose of this book, is to offer the underemployed, college‐educated young person a way out of the death trap. If this is you, keep reading, because I'm about to reveal some of the massive opportunities available in tech start‐ups today, even if you aren't a “techie.” This book arms you with the knowledge of how to choose the right start‐up, and how to succeed once you get hired.

If you carry a huge student loan debt, the reality is that you can't afford not to work for a start‐up. At a big corporation, pay is limited to incremental annual raises according to the company's well‐entrenched salary policies. On the other hand, in working for a start‐up, the big payoff comes through stock options. Often, a start‐up will offer you a relatively modest starting salary and an opportunity to own a piece of the pie for yourself. This could lead to extremely high compensation later on, assuming the company grows and eventually has a successful exit. I experienced this six times as of this writing, and it's worked out very well, like millions of dollars well.

Working for a start‐up won't just help your bank statement—it will also help you grow professionally at a quicker pace than would be possible at a large corporation. Most start‐ups don't hire with a set idea of your potential or career path. It's the perfect environment to try on different roles and find your zone of genius, and then move up quickly from there. You can come in at an entry‐level position and end up working on big, world‐changing projects alongside the founders where your contributions can be seen and noted. At the right start‐up, you can quickly stand out and gain more responsibilities and opportunities to advance, both in your position of authority and compensation.

Finding exceptional opportunities is only the beginning—you need to be ready to seize them. This book provides you with the seven traits of successful start‐up entrepreneurs—how they act and the attitudes they share in common—and how you can develop and practice the art of leadership until these traits become a part of your own success story.

Be a Startup Superstar is divided into two parts. I recommend that you read the book in its entirety from start to finish, and then go back and reread and dog‐ear the pages you need the most at any given time.

In Part I, I explain the opportunity: tech start‐ups need new and exciting talent of all kinds. Beyond tech skills, these companies seek people with all kinds of talents and creativity who have bold ideas and the leadership skills to bring them to fruition. Of course, the best opportunities often come with a side of risk. Most start‐ups fail, so to give the reader the best chances for success, Part I wraps up with a chapter on the five key traits to look for when selecting a tech start‐up before you apply for a job.

In Part II, I share the seven keys to the C‐suite, which include dozens of golden nuggets about what you need to do to ignite your career in the start‐up world, and how they are vastly different from the traditional corporate norms. You can begin to practice these leadership attributes and entrepreneurial mind‐sets that can propel you to the top and keep you there. These are the traits they don't teach you in college or in on‐the‐job training by a corporation's learning and development team. These are the lost leadership skills that will help you break out from the pack and rise to the top. They will turn your potential for success into reality. They will help you learn the lessons that will empower you to make better decisions and get better outcomes in work and in life itself.

In short, forget climbing the corporate ladder; I'm going to show you how to rocket past every rung and land in the C‐suite in record time. Never before has there been a greater opportunity to rise to the top at great speed. Now is the time to go for it.

Part IThe Best Opportunities Are in Start‐Ups

Tech start‐ups are popping up all over and they need talent—desperately. You don't have to be a techie nerd to succeed in a tech firm. These companies need all kinds of talent and creativity from people with bold ideas and the leadership skills to bring them to fruition.

Chapter 1Use the Tech Start‐Up Boom to Zoom

A start‐up is “the largest group of rebels, rule‐breakers, and unconventional thinkers that you can find to create breakthrough change in the world.”

—Chris Kane, co‐founder and CEO of Munchmoney

Picture this: a lecture hall crammed with students in their last semester. The professor asks for a show of hands—who is planning on applying to a Fortune 500 company, or a top five tech giant? A sea of hands rises. A start‐up? Merely a smattering. This was the scene that my friend, Josiah Sternfeld, professor at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin, described to me.

I was surprised. I'd spent my entire career working for a string of tech start‐ups, making millions of dollars, countless friends, and indelible memories in the process. It seemed nonsensical to me that so few business school students had considered start‐ups, while at the same time so many young companies found themselves in talent droughts. With so many unemployed and underemployed young people, I tried to imagine why so few had raised their hands to apply for a job at a start‐up in tech. Maybe because so many are carrying student loan debt, they fear it would be too risky to work for a company with no track record.

But I had to wonder if all those eager undergrads gunning for the Fortune 500 gigs ended up employed. I thought not—as my friend discovered, everyone wants to work for these companies. The big corporates have the name, the prestige, they offer stability, and, because they receive so many applications, they can afford to be highly selective.

I did some research, and, as I suspected, many of the “Big Company or Bust” grads weren't enjoying smooth success in the professional world. Fourteen percent of young adults with bachelor's degrees (or higher),1 and 43% are underemployed, according to a report by the labor analytics firm Burning Glass Technologies.2 So, what's happening here? Why are so many bright, energetic, and creative young people having trouble finding gainful work? Why is it so many recent grads send out hundreds of applications that yield little more than an interview or two?

I read more articles and found out that many of these once‐hopeful grads become resigned, defeated, and end up taking jobs in the service sector and living with their parents, licking their wounds before making a charge at an MBA. Or, like me when I first got out of college, they fall into some dead‐end, miserable job, and wait for the day they can quit.

If this scenario sounds familiar, if the person I'm describing is you, take heart. It doesn't have to be like this. I once was in your predicament, and I found a way out and never looked back. You have other options. Lots of them. Today, you can find massive opportunities in technology start‐ups, and you don't have to be a techie.

The Unprecedented Opportunity in Tech Start‐Ups

First, let's examine what a start‐up even is. According to the US Small Business Administration, a start‐up is a firm that's less than one year old. That, however, provides a poor picture of what actually defines a start‐up. My friend Doug Erwin, chairman and principal of RedHouse Associates and a serial tech entrepreneur, offers a more instructive definition. According to him, start‐up is a stage. He says, “A company is still in the start‐up stage if it operates like it's the last frontier for outlaws, a world where nonconformists can live and create and sell their ideas.”

Who doesn't want to be involved in that? At a start‐up, you get to play the rough riding rebel on the run, the freewheeling upstart pestering the lumbering, flat‐footed law. If you go to work for any of the Fortune 500 or Big Tech, you become one of those bumbling lawmen—a cog, punching in to pass the days pushing papers in a daze.

“Sure,” you say, “this sounds great. But how do I get in?” Well, the good news is, start‐ups are proliferating at an unprecedented pace. According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, worldwide, three new start‐ups open every second. That comes out to 100 million a year.3 In 2017, in the US alone, entrepreneurs created 404,000 new start‐ups.4

The growth in start‐ups, and the potential for upward mobility, is particularly strong in the technology sector where I have spent my career. My first tech start‐up experience began more than 30 years ago—long before the boom. If anything, that sector is an even more lucrative opportunity now, as new technology permeates every aspect of our world—how we work, communicate, travel, eat, exercise, buy things, manage our health, move money around, consume entertainment, and even interact with our pets.

Naturally, the tech sector has become one of the largest components of the US economy. According to CompTIA's Cyberstates 2019 report, nearly 503,000 tech businesses were operating in the US in 2018, marking six consecutive years of growth. Fueled by small, emerging tech businesses, employment in the US technology sector reached 11.8 million workers in 2018, increasing by an average of 200,000 new jobs every year since 2010.5 The tech boom is on, and there's a massive opportunity to reap the rewards for anyone who is willing to rise to the challenge.

This is particularly true now, with an extremely high amount of capital flowing into tech start‐ups that shows no signs of stopping. From 2016 through the first half of 2018, 44,000 start‐up businesses received more than $282 billion in funding. Forty‐one percent of them, nearly half, were technology companies.6

However, life is not all rosy in the start‐up world. The market is saturated with ideas and products, so in order to succeed, tech start‐ups need a lot more than money. They need a unique and valuable product or service, a solid business plan, intelligent advertising, effective management, and high customer retention. Of course, you can't just go out and buy any of these things, which means that tech start‐ups primarily need one thing to succeed: strong teams of people.

According to a 2018 survey of tech start‐up CEOs, 66% said the number‐one issue keeping them up at night is “hiring good people.” Not acquiring customers, not revenue growth, not raising more money.7 While this may seem counterintuitive, it's actually obvious—a company can only go as far as the people who run it will take it.

In the same survey, 60% of CEOs said it was harder to recruit talent in 2018 than it was in 2017. So, finding the right talent is a problem, and it's getting worse. Add that to the fact that 45% of tech start‐up CEOs expected to hire 6 to 20 employees in the following year, with 13% saying they expected to hire more than 51 employees in the next year, and you get a talent drought.

Now, you might think that all these jobs tech companies are looking to fill are for software developers and coders. Not so. They need employees in sales, marketing, operations, finance, design, and HR, to name a few.

Why is it so hard for start‐ups to find good people? A large part of the problem comes from the monomaniac focus recent graduates have on working for the big companies. Even though tech start‐ups offer a huge number of benefits (discussed later in the chapter), they still have to compete with the established giants. In the areas with the largest concentration of tech companies, like New York and the San Francisco Bay area, leviathans like Google, Facebook, and Apple swallow up most of the talent. Everywhere else, the Fortune 500 and locally based incumbent giants send representatives to schools for job fairs where they can sniff out and recruit the talent they need. You'll never see a start‐up at a school's job fair. They can't spare the manpower or the cash from the all‐hands‐on‐deck needs of their day‐to‐day operations. Often, start‐ups need to hire people who can work remotely. But can you imagine a start‐up in Silicon Valley or Seattle sending a team to Lawrence, Kansas, and a thousand other small towns with big schools to hunt for talent? They can't.

That means that start‐up companies are desperate for smart, self‐motivated, creative, hardworking, visionary people who want to share their talents in an innovative workplace that's buzzing with energy and opportunity. And they're not just looking for techies. They need people of all types and levels of experience—artsy, techy, young and old, experienced and green, in‐person and remote.

Note that I didn't say start‐up companies are just looking for “talented people with Ivy League MBAs and prestigious connections.” Today's most valuable large companies (such as Apple, Amazon, Airbnb, or Uber) not so long ago were start‐ups with humble beginnings. Their initial teams didn't come in with Harvard MBAs and years of experience in corporate jobs. In fact, it's likely that involving leaders with traditional business backgrounds would have impeded these companies' abilities to grow.

Today's start‐ups have big ideas, they're well‐funded, and they need people who can join the team and help to bring their vision to fruition. They are looking for you. So, if you're entrepreneurially minded, full of energy, and eager to learn and work hard, for the right start‐up, you could be a godsend.

I know what you might be thinking, “This isn't the right fit. The start‐up world is too risky. What if the company closes? I have student loans. I want to start a family. And, sure, Steve, you've made millions, you have this exciting life, but what's to say you didn't get lucky?”

Or maybe you're a little older and you've been in a boring, dead‐end job for a while and you're afraid to make the leap. Either way, the sooner you give up your excuses, the sooner you can get out of this rut and go find a great opportunity. If you're serious about taking the fast track to the C‐suite, and you're ready for a fast‐paced, stimulating work environment, then tech start‐ups are the way to go.

I know I've already said this, but I can't stress enough that you don't need to be a tech person to be a valued member of a technology start‐up's team. I've held C‐level positions in six tech start‐ups, and I can't write a single line of code. Steve Jobs was a technology Luddite compared to Steve Wozniak, yet because of his other skills, he became the face of Apple, which as of this writing is among the most successful companies in the US, and arguably one of the most important start‐ups of all time.

Let's remember, too, that while the big corporate job may seem