#1 Break an illusion
How I survived in the startup world
The ideas to share my startup world stories with people held me back for a long time since I was wandering where I should start. But suddenly the terminology “illusion” hit my strongly after one of the recent job interview with a startup founder — Yes, I want to start from here.
During the latest final job interview, the founder glanced at my resume and asked an interesting question. “How didn’t you get fired from the previous startup?” — Haha yeah, that global startup I’ve worked at before was quite well-known for a massive laid-off in Korea. Actually I worked with “5” different General Managers for 2 and half years which means that my approval line has changed every 6 months. And surprisingly I was the one who hanged on their pretty long time with a higher position. —
Bang, that question hit the nail on my head. I never thought about how I can survive myself in Korean startup world. I just pushed myself to the end harshly. If there were unsolved daily tasks, I couldn’t sleep till clean up. Nobody pushed me but I was so obsessed to accomplish something new. How? How I spent so many years like that? I started asking myself how I survived in startups and what motivated me to do that.
I know lots of startup leaders and recruiters are thinking how to recruit better people for the team. Maybe, sharing my mind-set here would be helpful to anyone who want to know what kind of employees will survive your startups better and longer like I’ve done for some startups before. Here are some keywords I kept in mind whenever I started startup journeys.
# Break an illusion — A startup life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but beautiful in long shot. I tried to tweak the quote from Charlie Chaplin. Yes. Everybody want to jump into startups because working startups sounds like fancy, young, challenging and super cool. But reality is totally different. Just started startups don’t have money, we only have zeal, time and creativeness! Lots of tasks are done manually and disorganized tasks are ride or die. Some works would start impulsively which might be called “legacy” later on haha. But somebody who regards those things as just a natural happening and don’t complain but try to grasp the issue and fix it faster are more helpful. Usually a types of people having fantasy in working startups tend to suffer difficulties in getting used to themselves in this world. You should be the person or should hire person who throw away startup illusion to make success this industry. That’s the staring point.
# Burning out is just a natural one you should suffer — I heard so many people that burning-out is the worst thing employees should avoid. But I don’t agree for some points. Working startups brings burning-out naturally. How we can be success without over-working. Work- and- life balance was an extravagance for me. Only work exists. Cellphone rings 24/7 and speedy reply is a pre-requisite to deal with everyday different issues.— Haha I know it’s too extreme version. And I respect everybody’s different thoughts and values in their lives. — I don’t want to blame anybody evaluating work-and life balance, I want to weight the reality that “startups request lots of your time and energy. and you need to be ready for it both physically and mentally” And I’d love to work with someone who already suffered a burning-out and deeply thought about how to overcome and how to work later on.
# It’s a jungle to survive — How many startups can be built up and disappeared every year? I couldn’t count exactly globally, but I know less than 1% can survive in the reality. Yes. I can tell it’s a jungle. You need to play surviving games every time. Only 1 wrong shot can push you in the hell. Sadly, I have an experience to laid off over 20 contractors at once within few months to sustain P&L and suddenly changed operations structure. I was the one who pushed back this decision making at last but I should have not resisted ever since nobody cared about how we made beautiful process internally but assessed the team only with results. That sucks but it’s a reality.
As a closing, Please be your self breaking the illusion or hire somebody without illusion for startups world. And please be careful to identify miserabilists from realists.
