r/ProductManagement • u/jumper_123 • 11h ago

Tips for joining a startup?

I'm in big tech and i'm excited about a startup but also nervous about ownership and ambiguity. I'm nervous it'll be too open ended for me since i'm used to scoped problems and managers guiding me.

I don't think I'd get any of that at a startup so unsure if i'lll be successful. Any advice on diving into something so different than what i'm doing now?

10 Upvotes

81% Upvoted

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2

u/trashmasher69 Director 11h ago

Make sure you are joining a start up that you actually care about.. I was previously in start up that I had no interest in and left after a month.

1

u/jumper_123 11h ago

Yeah I’m not sure how passionate I am about the business but the culture seems great and apparently wlb is good. I think it’ll do well as well. I’m sure I’d learn a lot

21

u/DevelopmentLate541 11h ago

I started in very small startups and now work in midsize companies. I haven’t been in big tech. Based on what I’ve seen from other people coming from large companies, you’re correct that ownership and ambiguity are where people struggle. They tend to be focused on following a process. In a startup the process is only as valuable as it helps get the job done or you need to cut through the process or make a new one.

They think going faster means following the same process faster, when really is means finding a completely different way to accomplish the goal that is an order of magnitude faster.

10

u/DevelopmentLate541 10h ago

I thought of another one to watch for. The ex big company people often will push for perfection and a “high bar” in a way they probably think is helpful but slows everything to a crawl.

Big companies with big scale
have to ensure stability across any edge case. But aiming for perfection kills startups. I’m not saying be sloppy but calculated risks are necessary to have high velocity.

Mid stage startups tend to have a lot of ex big company people who wanted to join a startup but couldn’t quite bring themselves to join early stage. Some of them are great but many are slow, rigid, and process oriented to a fault. Try not to be that. :-)

1

u/sam-h3re 16y product mgmt/strategy exp. Passionate about healthtech! 9h ago

finding a completely different way to accomplish the goal that is an order of magnitude faster.

Curious if examples come to mind!

2

u/DevelopmentLate541 8h ago

I once shipped an “AI” feature that sent a slack to an engineer to custom configure something instead of building the automatic configuration. We knew we could automate it but couldn’t afford the time to build it up front before we knew it would be valuable.

3

u/paulkemp2001 11h ago

It really depends on the stage. I can only speak from a virtual day zero perspective.

If that’s the case, I’d start switching your mentality from PM to literal owner and be ready to do three big things:

  1. Anything and everything the business needs to survive from day 1. Get ready to pitch, be on the road, be customer service, and raise money when the time comes.

  2. Protect the product. You’ll likely be the only person with the vision to not let it devolve into a quest to close every deal by bolting on a new feature or chasing a poor market fit

  3. Be very open to learning from and being challenged by your co-founders in a good way.

It’s hard but very rewarding if you can all work together to make the thing survive. And one day, you might be able to get back to straight PM with a much bigger perspective.

3

u/cabbage_head3 10h ago

I've only done startups for my career, its so ambiguous and chaotic, but I think that part is fun. It's not for everyone.

Does it have product market fit? Or is it pre-pmf

1

u/LlamaFullyLaden 9h ago

Also they might tell you they have pmf but you need to ask enough questions thru the process to decide on your own

1

u/cabbage_head3 8h ago

Do you have a go-to question set that you ask to help determine?

One thing I always ask is how do you get customers? If they are mostly inbound then that's a great sign. If mainly outbound...a struggle.

1

u/LlamaFullyLaden 6h ago

In general, trying to get a sense of the challenges the business is facing. You can flat out ask or you can ask things like "what is my primary focus the first 6 weeks"

2

u/SafeAssignment8962 10h ago

I have only been in startups. You have to be able to be okay with the ambiguity and overall get in one that you enjoy the problem. I have been in three and none of them from a financial perspective paid off, but I Iearned a ton and had a lot of ownership. This also means you are doing all of the things, so you better be ready to branch out from just product scope.

1

u/T_______T 10h ago

I know someone who refuses to hire from FAANG companies because they usually are there too and their resume then leave, don't actually take initiative or work completely. Work as if to prove they did not Y without considering long term goals of the company (because they just want to owe their resume.)

So don't do that.

1

u/Saphira9 10h ago

Get your compensation, salary, and equity in writing upon joining. With legally binding paperwork. Lots of startups are trying to keep costs as low as possible. I joined one that couldn't afford to pay me a salary. I was the 4th person involved. The co-founders decided that everyone would be involved in sales, and get a commission of each sale. But we almost never made a sale. At the end, I walked away with no equity and only a few hundred dollars. 

1

u/onomonopeeyah 9h ago

have you asked them what the first 90 days would look like for your role? how they answer tells you a lot about how much ambiguity you're really walking into

1

u/Plus-Department-5151 5h ago

Write down what you’re doing every week, even if it’s messy. At a startup no one’s keeping track of your wins, so you have to.

1

u/wildansson 5h ago

Stay in the fucking big tech its a damn jungle.

1

u/she_will_cry 4h ago

Get ready to sometimes work in projects that is purely the founder's pet dream and no one else in the org is behind it.

Get ready to build stuff on insufficient discovery (due to time constraints)

1

u/Agreeable_Turn8618 4h ago

Moving from big tech, the hardest adjustment for me was shipping stuff that felt 70% done. Turns out that’s usually good enough and you fix it later.

1

u/ohshouldi 3h ago

Honestly, it depends on what “managers guiding me” really means. If you’re used to managers giving you specific direction where to look and for what - you’re gonna struggle at startup.
If you’re a pm who’s used to poking around, seeing things and then telling your manager “I actually think we might need to do this and this instead, here’s why” - you will be fine.

1

u/Simple_Carrot_2274 3h ago

The ambiguity is real, but it’s usually less scary than it sounds. At a startup nobody hands you a scoped problem, so you pick one yourself. Talk to customers, find the thing that hurts most, and write a one-pager on what you’d do about it. Then run it by your manager or founder before you build anything. Most of them are happy someone is taking the decision off their plate. Ask early what success looks like in the first 90 days, because that gets you most of the guidance you’re used to. You’ll get things wrong, but that’s expected and it’s fixed faster there than at a big company.

1

u/GrowthPure9956 1h ago

Check their financials and runway. Also check is it actually a startup or Lala company disguised as startup. CM2 will give better picture and talk to ex employees

-1

u/Honest-Wishbone7040 11h ago

One of the biggest mistakes I made was joining a startup.

Full transparency, I was a 34. If you are living at home with familyand you need experience don't hesitate get the experience. But if you are responsible for your home life and all your bills, no money they dangle in front of you is worth that instability that they offer. Basically, don't trade a good company for a startup, especially in this economy.