In July 2008, I took a job at a startup — a very different type of company than the large publicly traded corporations I had worked for while building my career. While we were a bit different than the classic “two guys coding in a garage” archetype, many of the articles I’ve seen written about navigating startup life apply just the same.
Corporate life is different when you’re building a startup. If you’re considering joining one, here’s a list of reads to help you understand how to think through elements like how much money you could make, founders vs. employees, corporate politics, et al.
- “What have you learned as an early employee at a startup?” Various contributors, Quora
- “How Open Should a Startup CEO be with Staff?” Mark Suster, Both Sides of the Table
- “5 Mistakes You Can’t Afford to Make with Stock Options,” David Weekly, GigaOm
- “Why I got Fired from Facebook (a $100 Million dollar lesson),” Noah Kagan, OkDork
- “The Decline And Fall Of Flowtab, A Startup Story,” Alex Wilhelm, TechCrunch
- “When You Should Quit Your Startup,” Amol Sarva, Business Insider
- “You Can Be an Entrepreneur–and Not Get Divorced,” Dave Balter, Inc.
- “No Exit,” Gideon Lewis-Kraus, Wired
- “My startup failed, and this is what it feels like…,” Nikki Durkin, Medium
- “How to Build a Unicorn From Scratch – and Walk Away with Nothing.” Heidi Roizen, DFJ
- “How to Avoid the 6 Traps of Exponential Growth.” Bud Caddell, Medium
- “LivingSocial Offers a Cautionary Tale to Today’s Unicorns,” Mike Isaac and Katie Benner, The New York Times
- “When a Unicorn Start-Up Stumbles, Its Employees Get Hurt,” Katie Benner, The New York Times
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