I try to interview everyone who comes to work for me. That’s obviously a tactic that has its natural limits as a company grows. But when I do interview someone, I try to make a point of saying to them, “This is an amazing place for some people to work and an absolutely terrible place for others”.
Why? Because Startups are not for the faint of heart (a topic unto itself, for a later date) and by derivative, the life of an employee of a startup is not “typical”. Relative to getting a “normal job”, there are the differences you’d expect—no fancy office furnishings (though if the startup has a clue, far better technology/computers and good chairs), less formal attire, less formal behavior around the office, tolerance for eccentrics (who can still get along with others), and the regular stuff that everyone kind of expects when they think about startups. But the truly big difference lurks underneath the startup veneer. It’s a large part of what makes successful startups successful and it’s why a big company (BigCo) can’t add a cafeteria, free lunches, bean bags and black lights, and suddenly become a startup success. That intangible startup fuel is often called “culture” but that’s a kind of vague term and it’s not particularly unique to startups to have a culture. All companies—from the most inept and slow moving to the fast moving “killing it” startup—have culture, though sometimes the culture is just that they promote incompetence and mediocrity. What startups have that is in rare supply in big companies (and startups as well, surprisingly) and is incredibly hard to create from thin air is passion.
What successful startups universally have is passion. The people who are running the company and all of the employees take tremendous pride and satisfaction in being better. They don’t want to win—they literally NEED to win. The passion to win, and the sacrifices you end up making in the rest of your life to do so, can make you (and your significant other) nuts if you are not “startup material”. This is why I try to warn people before they walk in the door that this is not going to be like every other place they work. You don’t have to be a startup to have that passion for winning. Goldman Sachs has managed to bottle it and keep it despite their size. Places like the Navy Seals and CIA are conventionally known to be places where the elite go (and lose the rest of their lives in the process) in the pursuit of winning.
It’s for this reason that we almost never chase potential employees. An employee who does not deeply want to be in a startup—which manifests as them beating down OUR door—will almost certainly end up burning out on startup life really quickly. It does not matter if you are smart or not (though we don’t hire dumb people), well educated or not, or experienced or fresh out of school. Harvard on your resume does tell me that you likely know how to work—or you have really rich and connected parents—but that’s still not enough to know whether or not you will succeed in startup life because working by yourself to get great grades or get into Harvard is not a good predictor of whether or not you can be passionate with a group in the uncertain world of startups. Though don’t get me wrong, we definitely look at prior success—for young people, that’s grades—in the people we hire.
By the way, there are many “professional manager” run startups that have lost a lot of the passion they once had. In the interest of professional appearances, their investors (most venture investors have not a clue about what they are doing) simply wrung the passion out of them and in so doing, make them a BigCo in a small company’s clothing. Small companies that lack passion have the culture of a big company with the lack of resources of a small company—a near certain doom-loop-inducing set of attributes. I can’t wait until there is a market where I can short those folks.
Here’s an email i recently sent someone who applied for a job at Oyster:
Hi XYZ –
Ariel and I spoke just now after your call and it sounds like you have some doubts about whether Oyster is the right place for you.
Since this is such a critical role for us and since we have so many applicants for the position, what is most important to us in the person we hire is that they are 120% committed and excited by the challenge. If our opportunity is not clearly more exciting and more interesting to you than any other one you are considering, then it’s almost certainly the wrong fit.
If there is anything we can do to help you understand our company, our history as entrepreneurs, the PR opportunity at Oyster, or your role in PR once you are here, we are happy to attempt to do so.
So give it some thought. If this job is not overwhelmingly exciting for you, we’d be happy to understand what your concerns are and try to address them or mitigate them. But the role is so important, and the demand for our position so strong, that one way or another, we have to hear from you that this is something you want really badly above all other opportunities. Tonight we heard that we are being considered in comparison to another interview you have. Honestly, that’s not the way we work. Part of the success of Oyster is the tremendous passion that our people have for the company and what we are doing. Without your demonstrating that level of interest, we cannot bring this to conclusion.
If money is your issue – there is a small amount of room to move there. Within reason, money won’t be the reason we lose you given our assessment of your talent. But parallel with that, we need to hear that this is what you really want.
All my best,
Elie
