I happened to be at the Open Coffee Club meet yesterday. I as usual arrived late and missed the open commune talk by Venkat from Outsmart 360. When I reached the discussion on internships was in full steam. Shalin (who represents NEN internship initiative currently) was brainstorming with the crowd and without giving out much details on how he is planning to go about the whole thing (to not bias their opinion) was trying to collect information from people about what they think of internships/jobs at startups. There was quite a few people interested in hiring and getting hired so there were opinions from both sides of the table. I myself have been thinking about startup jobs and internships for quite sometime now and wanted to pen down some of my thoughts.

What is a startup and why you should bother working there
After I graduated out of IIT Guwahati I wanted to work in a startup. It was a no brainer because you always learn more at a startup. Or so the legend goes. I disagree. What is a startup and how do you define learning. Is startup a small company with few people or is startup something which is small but has potential to grow big? This debate was raised yesterday too over coffee.

I personally feel you are a startup if you are afraid you may die if you don’t act smart/hard. Thats my simple definition of a startup. May be this applies only to bootstrapping startup but from my experience only when you are bootstrapping do you think everyday if you are adding some real value somewhere, working towards achieving something or just talking about random cool looking stuff or technology. When you are bootstrapping, you cannot make many mistakes. And when that sword is hanging over your head, you learn to respect yours and everyone’s time, money and knowledge. Not just that, you learn to work hard and you learn to work smart. That is the startup learning to me. You are out of college and you suddenly realize its all for one and one for all. You don’t work and it does not get done. Does not matter if you learnt it in college or not. You use that as a defence when your startup dies. You WILL learn it and you WILL do it if you want to see your company live. Its may sound dramatic but its not. Its the reality of a true blue startup. If you can goof up or skip work and nothing gets affected, you are not in a startup. You are in a startup where no two people work on the same thing or save each other’s ass because you don’t have time or money to do that.

Internships (at startups)
We at Muziboo are too small to be offering jobs to people (unless they want to come in on a pure partnership basis) but we can give out some internships. However in the past from a couple of exeriences we have realized that when people come to Muziboo for internships, its mostly because they are not having much elsewhere. They talk to us, realize we are too small, go back, think about it and drop it in a few days. We don’t really mind it but we politely decline any requests for internships now. From what I understand of the whole problem, when people come for an internship, they have a report in mind. They want to put down some numbers, do some analysis and may be a few recommendations to the company. This may work well for a medium sized company but not for something like Muziboo. What we need to Muziboo is someone who would go out and tell us that this is a new avenue for marketing. Or this is an avenue for getting advertising revenues. Now this is not as vague as it may sound. Music advertisers are few (shops, schools, teachers) and it essentially boils down to finding how much they spend on advertising elsewhere, how much return they get and then coming out with a price tag which should essentially be a no brainer for the advertiser. Its about doing some basic maths backed by some solid research (market research). Also when we ask someone to do market research we are willing to refund all the expenses, so even if we are not able to pay, we atleast don’t want the chap to lose his money.
This however does not sell as an internship that excites someone in marketing. I am not sure of venture backed startups but bootstrapping startups have only this kind of work. And this IS work for them. There is nothing fancy or suger coated here. There is no you will learn more than Mc-Kinsey kind sweet talk here. Its simple. We need this to grow as a company so this is all we will do. Nothing fancy just for the heck of it.

Jobs (at startups)
Let me talk from the employee and employer’s perspective here as I have worked in a startup and started up myself two (too but two) :)

Employee’s Perspective
As someone who wants to work in a startup, I understand that startups can’t be paymasters and that there is no job security etc here. I understand all this and most people who are worthy of working in a startup understand this. Lets move on. If you have to teach this to someone, you are talking to the wrong guy. If you think that you can talk someone into working at a startup, you are wrong. If you find yourself telling somone “you will learn more here than infosys/wipro”, remember you are talking to the wrong guy and you are wasting your and his/her time.
Now that I want to work in a startup, I want to work somewhere where I matter as I stated above. Where if I don’t work hard, the company suffers. Only then can you expect me to give my 100%. If I know I can do with my 90% I will give only my 90%. If I can do with 80%, then it will be 80% and so on. I have known several people like that so I don’t think its very uncommon. If someone can get excited to work with you, they can get bored too. So hire someone smart and give them something of great responsibility. Make sure that they realize that if they don’t give their 100%, 100% of the required work does not get done. On the other hand, convince them that if they do deliver well, they will gain (either now or in future). Take out the time to implement a stock option plan and do it right away with the regular vesting cycle. Its your job as a co-founder when you decide to hire someone. You can’t say its not a priority number 1. If hiring smart brains is your priority number 1 then this is too. Don’t find yourself ever telling people “dont work for money” because you are lying. End of the day we all work for the money. Don’t we? Money can come in now or in the future but you are always chasing it. A smart guy would know that work matters more than some difference in money. Don’t teach him all that. Hand him the stock options and tell him how much of the company he/she owns. Make them feel they own a part of this thing. They will work hard. Don’t say work for inner peace and zen!

Employerer’s Perspective
Don’t ever use the word “cheap labour” for your interns. I absolutely hate it and if you can hire someone who does not hate it, they are not worthy of working in a startup. Everyone in a startup is there because they feel they can do things better. You start a company because you feel you can do something better and charge for it. I work in a startup because I know I can deliver more and be paid for it and recognized for it. Hire for talent, not for money. If you don’t have cash, give equity. But reward talent. As guy kawasaki says A players hire A+ players. B players hire C player and C players hire D players. If you hire a B player you will one day wake up with Z players all around you. Hire smart people and pay them now or in future (but not just talk about it, do it)
Know whom you are hiring and for what. Sell your startup but don’t oversell. Understand that when you are young, excitement rules over maturity. Be ready for it and channelize that energy. If you don’t have the time do it, don’t hire freshers. Freshers are over enthusiastic, specially the smart ones. If you don’t like that and want maturity and experience and stuff like that, go hire those guys. Don’t expect freshers to be cheaper experience. It does not work that way. Don’t complain when they leave for better money. If they don’t see value they will leave. Thats why give them good stocks so that they know what they are missing if they leave. In today’s market you cannot say “you are leaving for money!!! Geez”. Money drives us all … lets accept it and work with that knowledge. Again as I wrote before there is money in the present and money in the future. Use future money (potential money)

If you have read this far, I really appreciate your patience. Lot of the view above are personal. I am trying to highlight the gap thats there between employees and employers sometimes. I may make the same mistakes when I decide to hire people (I pray that day comes), but may be I will use this post as a reference then.

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Tags: startups, internships, jobs at startups