Startups are hard , being a part of it also requires a huge potential and vision to grow the company . It is a challenging experience but comes up with a fantastic opportunity in growth of your career .On the other hand , it is also very risky , you never know when your founder will decide to shut it down and ask you to resign if the startup tends to fail . It is a risky business to get involved , no matter how appealing the job position may be .
HERE ARE SOME THINGS YOU MUST CHECK BEFORE JOINING A STARTUP :-
- HAVE CLARITY ABOUT YOUR ROLE – Before jumping into startups , make sure about your job role and responsibilities clearly . Make sure the working environment is fit for you , understanding the work culture is also important . Startups at their initial stages look for multitasking personalities and want their employees to manage more than one job roles to fit in and expect more from their employees this is because usually less resources are available during the initial stage . So it is important to understand what exactly your company wants from you . Also , if you are a person who wants stability in their work and wants a good balance between your work and personal life than joining a startup might not work for you . Discuss and know more in detail about your upcoming projects , desk responsibilities ,companies present goals etc.
- BACKGROUND CHECKS OF FOUNDERS – Have knowledge about who are the founders of the company and their experience ,know if this is the first company that they started or have they had some success previously . It is vey important to have trust and faith in the company and that trust doesn’t come on its own , it is good to have a necessary background checkups about the founder to satisfy yourself so that you can put all your efforts without having any second thoughts in your mind . Let’s say if your founder has experience of five years , check the industry expertise , what’s his academic background , any awards he has won and many more things to understand the probability whether they can be successful in future or not .
- KNOW WHETHER IT IS A VENTURE FUNDED OR BOOTSTRAP COMPANY– There can be two types of funding sources whether it can be venture backed meaning who has already the support of private investors and the other is bootstrap in which the entrepreneur is the same person who starts the company with little capital . Knowing about the funding sources helps to identify about the financial capacity of the company . A startup company who has strong and reliable back of investors has more chance of growing ,reason being the investors will not trust the startup blindly ,at first they do deep analysis and research about the company then only they invest their amount in the company .
- DO YOUR CALCULATIONS – Do your research and calculations about market conditions of the product or services at that time , research about the potential success , you should be prepare for the worst case scenario . Know about the demand of the product or service in the market , check whether the customers are growing or not . Take time in your research , it is better to be prepared early .
- CHECK THE ATTRITION RATE – Startups are already a risky business to get involved , you join a startup , it fails a month later , and you woke up the next day with no source of income . Research about your companies frequency of management exits , High attrition rate of the company indicates that the scope of growth of that company is less , also the company is failing to keep his employees happy and motivated to run workplace smoothly .
No matter how challenging is to join a startup company , it comes with both risk and rewards . It gives huge opportunity for career growth , gives you a lot of experience in the industry . If you are passionate about your job , don’t mind putting your time and efforts , a startup might be right path for you to succeed .