If you are willing to accept and be challenged by the unknown, then working for a startup is for you.
People who work at startups are some of the most talented people in their respective fields.
They are self-starters and self-thinkers who thrive in a high-stress and high reward environment. That same environment also breeds great creativity, innovation, and rewards both monetary, professional, and personal.
The “fit” is someone who can see what the others miss.
However, that’s not to say that there isn’t significant risk involved. Like betting on longshots at the track, they don’t always come in. In fact, more startups fail than survive. But that shouldn’t make you stop going to the racetrack for the excitement of hitting that big Trifecta. You can never be faulted for giving it your all. This is how you learn who you really are by discovering your true potential!
Working for a startup, you are as intimately invested in the success of the company as much as you are subject to its possible failure. I like to describe startups as a “bridge” between working as an employee for a paycheck at an established company and being self-employed – the ultimate startup.
Working for an established company is the path that most people follow, but not the rare bird.
It’s more likely that you are dissatisfied with your job. You tolerate years of non-challenging, boring work and problem people resulting in a lack of appreciation, increasing work hours, and a shrinking paycheck that barely gets you by. Only to feel regrets as you learn who you are not while slowly getting the life-force sucked out of you.
Before you know it, your job has become a series of compromises, leaving you unfulfilled and wondering what it was you originally had in mind when taking that “job.” You start to ask yourself, “When did this become something I didn’t feel like showing up for anymore?”
If you work long hours wouldn’t you rather wake up excited each day knowing that there’s a chance your hard work will pay off? That there’s a good possibility of a pot-of-gold waiting for you at the end of the IPO rainbow as a result of the risk and hard work?
What are you capable of? …
Working at a startup, your career success lies in being an integral part of a team that shares the same vision, drive, commitment, appreciation, and reward for the step each person took to go where no man or woman has gone before. ~ Ray Holley