I'm curious, what questions do you think are the most important before you accept a job offer from a startup? I'm curious, how do you know when to join or not to join a startup?
I can't boil it down to 3 because there are many things you need to understand, some details can be gleaned via observation too.<p>So some of the top questions you should ask IMO are below:<p>- Runway left<p>- When was the last raise, what was the amount and time to raise it? What is the makeup of the investors (Angel vs. VC etc)?<p>- What is the next milestone on the fundraising side?<p>- What is the biggest competitive advantage/product feature the company has?<p>- What are the biggest issues facing product/development?<p>- How do you see my role helping the company?<p>- How can I best help the company if I come aboard?<p>- What is the biggest opportunity you feel the company has?<p>- What is the biggest risk the company faces?<p>- Who do I report to? -- this trips some startups up, but can highlight potential issues.<p>- How many employees are there today? How many do you plan to hire in the next 3, 6, 12 months? How many employees have left since founding?<p>- Equity and the vesting schedule details. Share class information as well. Current dilution, outstanding shares issued and reserved is nice to know too as well.<p>For what it is worth and this applies to any size company not just startups, you should also ask about what agreements they want you to sign and get them as early into the process as possible without being unreasonable. e.g. outside work policy, NDA, non-compete, non-solicitation, compensation, equity etc. Some of these they may not give you until you agree at least conditionally verbally, but there should be no reason you can't see them once you do. Companies that hide these until your first day make me nervous, at the same time that doesn't mean they are bad, just maybe been given bad advice or have a lack of understanding themselves.
Assuming you are 1) excited by the people you'd be working with and 2) excited by the problem and tech stack you'd be working on, I'd want to assess:<p>- Does the product have traction? Are there paying customers or people who are very excited about what you are building?<p>- How much runway do they have? Perhaps related, if they aren't yet profitable, does the company act like they are (salaries, fancy perks, etc.)?<p>- Are you getting a reasonable amount of equity comp and is it structured such that you'll likely be able to benefit from future upside? Startups can change rapidly and stock options are notoriously tricky: you don't want to have to leave stock behind or stay too long at a company that you grow to dislike. This is complicated but <a href="http://stockoptioncounsel.com/blog/joining-an-early-stage-startup-negotiateyour-equity-wisely-with-stock-option-counsel-tips/2014/2/12" rel="nofollow">http://stockoptioncounsel.com/blog/joining-an-early-stage-st...</a> and <a href="http://stockoptioncounsel.com/blog/early-expiration-of-startup-stock-options-part-3-examples-of-good-startup-equity-design-by-company-stage/2017/8/11" rel="nofollow">http://stockoptioncounsel.com/blog/early-expiration-of-start...</a> are good resources if you really want to dig in.
Many factors have to align for a startup to succeed, but the most important of all is that there is actually market demand for the product. You can have the best team in the world and fail because you aren't making something that someone wants to buy. Conversely, you can make a lot of mistakes and still succeed if you have a product in high demand.<p>So aside from all the questions you would ask about working conditions, tech stack and financial runway, think long and hard about if you truly believe that there is a market for the product that the startup is making. And likewise, would it be possible to ever make a profit delivering that product?<p>So many startup ideas are honestly pretty bad - they are chasing tiny markets, they are chasing non-existent markets, or they are chasing low-margin businesses and would have to take over the entire world to be profitable, etc. If you don't completely buy the idea of the company as an eventually profitable enterprise, don't join.<p>Finally, make sure you get something in return for the risk you are taking - either in immediate pay or real equality. It's so, so common for people to work at a startup for 3-4 years, have the startup "succeed" in the sense that it gets bought up by someone, but in the end all the employees get nominal rewards (say less than 100k) or nothing. That is not worth years of giving up a good salary at a bigger company with better benefits.
I didn't ask this when I joined my current company, but have since learned my lesson. For future offers I will be sure to ask about the outside work project policy and pass if I feel it is overly restrictive.
I want to figure out if their team is strong in areas I won't be involved in. If they have crappy code at least I can fix it. But if their sales strategy sucks, I'm be stuck with the consequences without having much opportunity to improve matters.<p>There's not one specific question I'd ask to figure that out. Depending on how the conversation goes it might be asking about the background of the founders, or their plans for the coming months, or how they assess their threats.
Some good questions, you won't get answers to all:<p>What's your runway? Are you profitable? What is your yearly revenue?<p>What's the biggest problem you're facing right now? What could kill you in the short-term? What's your plan for this year?<p>How does your Product team work with your Software Engineering team? Do you have x-functional teams? Do you do semi-regular retrospectives?<p>What's the background of your leadership team? Eg. has your Head of Product worked as a PM at a FAANG? What's the best thing and the worst thing about working with the CEO/CTO?
I'd say get into the nitty-gritty of their tech if you can.
For example:<p>- What version of the languages and frameworks are they using? If they're not current versions, why not and when do they plan to update?<p>- If they do automated testing find out if it's the whole code base or just on an isolated part.<p>- If they have QA, are they writing automated tests or just performing manual QA?<p>- How long does it take to get code deployed?<p>- What do they think their biggest technical issue is and how do they plan to address it? In your experience, do those things line up?<p>- Are you personally impressed by the knowledge level of the engineers interviewing you? That's not one you can ask directly, but you can get an idea by seeing how they answer.<p>Understanding what their processes look like in practice and in detail, as well as why and how they make decisions, can tell you an enormous amount about the effectiveness of the organization.
I'm surprised this one hasn't been posted yet, because it can be a huge signal:<p>- Is there a plan for a liquidity event? or<p>- Does the company have a liquidity event target?<p>And some follow-ups, if so:<p>- What date is it planned for?<p>- What are the conditions the company is planning around?<p>It's important to know what a startup's goals are. Some exist purely for a liquidity event down the road, while others want to "change the world," etc. Taking a job with a startup that was targeting liquidity in a year or two means you have to balance your offer very carefully and understand your compensation package.
"Questions to Ask Before Joining a Startup" | 329 comments<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18533592" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18533592</a>
Assuming the startup has a product, your questions should center on impact and growth.<p>1. Impact: What problem are they solving for users? How are users using the product?<p>2. Growth: How quickly are they growing users, both free and paying? How are they acquiring users?<p>If the startup has a convincing answer for 1, they're working on something concrete. If they don't have convincing answer, probe deeper to find out if they have tangible plans for what they're going to create.<p>If they answer question 1 well, ask them 2. If they're growing users quickly (for instance, double digit % week over week), the startup is totally worth considering. If they're not growing quickly, ask them how they plan to grow. It's useful to know how they're acquiring users -- if they're spending money to get users, you should ask if it's scalable. If they're getting users without spending much money, great.<p>Growth can fix most problems in a startup -- it attracts users, investors and talent. If they aren't seeing growth, they should at least have a tangible impact with the users they have and plans for growth.
Another good one: What share class are my options, and are they the same share class as the founders?<p>As an employee you won't have a ton of insight into things like dilution or liquidation prefs as the company raises more money. Knowing you have the same share class as founders is a good way to ensure there is someone on the board is looking out for your share class.
Do you have any pending litigation?<p><i>Every</i> single company I have ever joined would have answered "yes" to this, and in hindsight, I really should have known about that answer prior to joining. Alone, it's probably not a deal-breaker, but I feel like I ought to have known sooner about these things.
Hi! You can check out Angel list's recent blog post exactly on this. <a href="https://angel.co/blog/30-questions-to-ask-before-joining-a-startup" rel="nofollow">https://angel.co/blog/30-questions-to-ask-before-joining-a-s...</a>
To be a bit contrarian here, I'm not sure that any question you ask after an offer (over and above what you knew/have learned before) will actually improve the quality of your decision that much. as an exageration, how do you answer "ask hn: top three questions before accepting a marriage proposal?" (though I'd be very curious to read that thread)
These are totally based on my own experience and may not make sense for everyone but:<p>- In the main projects I'd be working on, how many new files are necessary to consume data from an outside source (say JMS) and log the result.<p>- What is the frequency of your releases<p>- How long does it take for a minor feature request to make it from initial conception to delivery to the user<p>These aren't actually specific to a startup largely because I haven't been burnt by a failed startup. YMMV
You can find more than just 3 great questions to ask your interviewers on Culture Queries: <a href="https://www.keyvalues.com/culture-queries" rel="nofollow">https://www.keyvalues.com/culture-queries</a>
- What's the current burn rate and projected runway?
- How have you validating or going to validate product market fit?
- What sets your product and its key value proposition different from others in the market?
- What's the OT policy like? Encouraged/discouraged? Cash/comp?<p>- How much of my IP/side projects will belong to you?<p>- Could you walk me through an average day for a $position? (better to talk to an actual $position if possible)
- what is your runway?<p>- what is my equity (potential)?<p>- is there already a technical platform/process to do my work, or does this need to be build first?
1) Is there a business transaction within their business model that produces revenue?<p>2) What is their long-term intent? (Exit, operate, merge, acquire, etc.)<p>3) Has the leadership team done this before? (I don't want to be someone else's learning experience.)
The questions you should ask (and expect to have answered) vary depending on where you slot into the org chart.<p>Pivots, both historical and pending are relevant no matter who you report to.<p>Competition in the marketplace is also relevant.
- are your CxO positions filled by friends/family?<p>- do you have past history of firing people just before their vesting cliff?<p>- how did you meet your investors (scan for any hints of dirty money, e.g. backing from Russia etc.)?
1. Why is this position open?<p>2. How are remote workers integrated?<p>3. Are there past employees on good terms, who you would hire again? Are separations of all reasons generally clean?<p>My corn hole hurts. I used to ask all the option related questions and whatnot (6 SF sw eng jobs), but the engineering lane is so far down the totem in 2019 that I don’t see much purpose. They want my skills for 6-18 months? Great, let’s not over-complicate it. My resume is too toasted to make it past the second floor as a result of poor picks resulting in no references newer than 2013.
The big one for me: how strongly do you equate "programming" with "engineering", and to what extent do you value other approaches (in the spirit of [1])?<p>To what extent are ways of working circumscribed by tooling choices?<p>"What are you selling?" (and is it something I can believe in) is pretty important too.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.tedinski.com/2018/03/20/wizarding-vs-engineering.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.tedinski.com/2018/03/20/wizarding-vs-engineering...</a>
This is pretty close to a question on the yearly Stackoverlow survey, which you might want to look up.<p>Personally, I only consider offices I can reach by bike, and try to avoid bro-culture companies.
A friend of mine suggested<p>"What is your staff turnover like?"<p>Along with the note that the answer is less important than observing their reaction to being asked.
I think the category “startup” is too generic for us to provide you a valuable answer. What is the size of the company? How long have they been running? What stage (seeds, A, B, etc), who are the founders? What is the domain?<p>Give us more details and we’ll provide you very targeted questions to ask. Since you’re talking about an offer, I’m assuming this for a specific startup...
- Can you describe your key/northstar metric, what goes into it, and how it's doing?
- What is your runway/burn rate?
- If equity is part of the comp, may I see a cap table first?<p>My experience has been that if these things are secret, they are looking for disposable pawns. Sometimes you just need the gig, but go in eyes open.
If you're entering into senior roles, ask "What metrics are you using to measure success?". It's an open ended question but it'll give you tons of insights into how management thinks about business.
Ask if there's a structure in place to measure, or evaluate your growth to award raises. Otherwise, your next raise is going to be depending on that next sale for however long you can tolerate it.
Your question needs a little more focus. Specifically, what stage of startup? Let's assume Series B or earlier.<p>All the normal stuff like the top voted comment describes.<p>Missing from that list is the most important question! At A or B stage, what is revenue growth rate? At seed this is a different animal.<p>Second most important, and also missing (!), brief bios on the management team.<p>I'd also ask, combined experience of the engineering team, and often missed on a forum like this, combined experience of the <i>sales team</i>.
- How long am I guaranteed to get paid? If they guarantee and can't pay you it's on them. I wouldn't worry about the startup's existence - its not your problem, provided you are working for decent people.<p>- If there is a stock offer learn vesting terms and ballpark how much you would make if company was worth 10M-100M. Assume that's an extra bonus and company would probably not make it there.<p>- Determine what your role is and whether you will like it.
Ask them about the last raise round, and then ask why they raised. The correct reason for companies to raise money is if they tell themselves, “if only we had $Xmillion, we would be able to do Y”. They shouldn’t be raising money just to raise. This will give you some insight into the near term company goals.
It really depends on why you want to join a startup/where you are in your career. If you are young, you probably want to focus on gaining experience and build your network. If you are older, you may value financial aspects more.
- What is the limit of (1 + 1/n)^n when n goes to 1/10 ?<p>- Could you multiply this number with your salary offer ?<p>If they say yes to previous question, then there is a bonus question.<p>- Next year, could you find the limit of the same function when n tends to 1/20 ?
"If I end up not being successful at this role in 6 months, why will that have happened? What will have gone wrong and what can we do now to prevent that?"
I normally do my research on the company's financial health then ask:<p>- how flexible are you guys (wfh, etc)<p>- ask about holiday allowance<p>- confirm how perks work