Working for a Start-Up & Nine things you should know

A recommended reading for new entrants in Dextrasys.

We are a start up. Competent people often join a start up because it is the next best thing to starting out on their own.

The charm of start-up is that it can create many start-ups with in the start up. Imagine a young engineer or MBA joining an established company’s marketing team. That can NEVER give him/her the same thrill that he/she would in creating a marketing department in a young organization from scratch. That thrill no money can buy.

Remember, for a long time, being a start up with in a start up will remain a sought after experience. You all, I am sure, would like to say some time ‘ I started the Dextrasys London Office, I created the first intranet portal, I did the first patent drafting which is now done by 300 people, I hired the first employee for the patent abstracting, I closed the first accounting year in Dextrasys!’

There is a special beauty, a very special charm, when a plant is just a sapling with all of three leaves. No mighty oak can match that.

Please read thru the following 9 things that you should know when you work for Dextrasys,

1. It means dealing with risk and sharing rewards

Working for a start-up is not for the weak at heart. The reason is simple. For every start-up that succeeds, more struggle and some more fail. Only a small percentage of the voyagers who leave the shore succeed. Secondly, when we look at the big successes, we generally get carried away by the outward manifestations of success and do not consider the blood, sweat and tears that went into achieving the success and are not in the public gaze.

Consider this—when Infosys was started, the founders did not find a bank that would give them a working capital arrangement. Worse, when the company went public, its issue was undersubscribed. The bottom line in every start-up is ‘risk’. If you do not enjoy it, a start-up is not for you. The upside of making your way from an early stage to a successful start-up is, of course, quite significant. Both in terms of professional learning and wealth creation opportunity, a start-up is an excellent place. However, there is a caveat—the harvest is a story of postponed gratification.

2. The harvest comes only in the long haul

Normally, a start-up takes anywhere from three to five years to come to a stage where it can go public and only after that, employees can reap the harvest of their hard work. As a result, it becomes necessary to develop a state of mind that accepts a career marathon. This is a very important consideration because in India, the average IT Professional has two years of experience and has a track record of 1.75 job changes. Given that propensity, if a IT Professional works for very short periods, the completeness of a start-up experience will not occur, nor would the person benefit financially. After all, the reason to join a start-up is to gain larger learning and to make money in the long haul. Thus if an Individual is more comfortable surfing jobs, it is probably better to keep hoping between large, established organizations.

3. You should be the type who can work unsupervised: Remember, you are the system

This is a very important issue—before jumping into a Start-up ask yourself whether you work best under supervision or are able to create your own work, structure it and deliver it with minimal supervision or none at all. If yes, come right in. If you are unsure, try for a big, faceless company that can afford supervision.

In a start-up, at time it happens that even if supervision could add value, people are so busy multitasking that no one can really ensure that you are doing your work or let you know every now and then that you are directionally correct. The ability to work unsupervised, the ability to reach out and ask for help are critical requirements. If a person walks into the office in the morning and says, ‘Show me my boss and tell me what to do today’, he or she will find a start-up a very difficult place to work in.

4. Construct the big picture, focus on the small

People who can make it big in a start-up are those who can see the big picture and at the same time, sharply focus on the small—the one on which today depends critically. The big picture is important because that is where the company is going. It may take a few years but that is what binds everyone together. Usually, it is just a map, a business plan or a statement of vision. It is not the exact, guaranteed future itself.

Imagine that you are a discover. You set sail in search of unknown lands. What you will have for most of the journey is only a map. Not the Reality. Given that fact, it takes a lot of strength to get emotional sustenance from a piece of paper or an overall purpose that the team is trying to achieve.

While the ability to perceive the big picture is important, equally important is the need for staying focused on the immediate deliverables. After all, the future is many todays, strung together in time.

Given that, it is very important to have faith in what I am doing today and the knowledge that done well, it will indeed take me to my destiny. The ability to focus on today while moving towards tomorrow is an uncommon quality that is a pre-requisite for being happy working in a start-up. If you do not have it, pls develop it.

5. Teamwork is critical

A lot of people in the software business (IT/ITES) prefer to work in isolation. A survey conducted some time ago indicated that the average Indian software professional is relatively low on teamwork. Yet, more than any other place, a start-up requires a tremendous amount of teamwork. By definition, a start-up has fewer hands and more things to be done. Everyone has to share the load of a lot of undefined work that cannot wait. As a result, there has to be a willingness to share the load in a new organization.

At MindTree, for example, everyone cleans up after lunch, everyone picks up the phone or fixes the server when it goes down or runs down to get a photocopy done. Similarly, the need to take care of customer requirements or teaching each other is so high that no one waits to be told that it needs to be done. Those who do not appreciate the importance of teamwork or do not enjoy it will find it hard to adjust.

6. Things do not work as per the plan—do not get flustered

If you ask me to make one cardinal observation, it is going to be this one. When you start a company, you begin with many assumptions. You assume that person ‘A’ is your friend, you assume that a long-standing customer will do business with you, you assume that the banker you know so well will put your project proposal in the fast lane and, of course, you assume that you will raise your first fat invoice and get paid in record time.

None of that will actually happen, Rest assured.

The excitement of an enterprise is precisely that.

Because none of that happens, people in a start-up try out different customer propositions, recruitment strategies, funding plans and alliances. In the process, they innovate, and those who do it right make it big. However, the process quite often is a roller-coaster ride. As things fail to happen per plan, there is the inevitable period of confusion, self-doubt and unpaid bills. A start-up is for those who will create new maps and be willing to explore new paths, and not for those who prefer a guided tour of the future.

7. You must have faith in yourself : You need to contribute to the energy, not depend on it

What personality trait is required to cope with high highs and low lows? A lot of self-confidence. A start-up needs people who believe in themselves. People who know that irrespective of the outcome, at a personal level they will emerge rich in experience-if the start-up gets grounded, they would still be able to resurrect their lives and move on. There are many of us who seek confidence from the environment we live; we depend largely on a feedback process to sustain ourselves. On the other hand, there are many who recognize the presence of the environment, accept its generosity, but at a basic level, thrive on their, inner sense of worth. In a sense, these are nuclear-powered people. More than any place else, a start-up depends on the energy that such people bring to the organization and unless that paradigm is recognized, it can be a very discomforting proposition.

8. Learn to accept a low-resource work environment

At MindTree Consulting right now, there are more people than chairs, desktops and notebooks. For those who go to war only if heavily accessorized, a start-up is not the place. The very fact that we are a start-up implies that our resource base is much smaller than big and established players. More than them, we have to watch costs, worry about prioritizing expenses and postpone gratification in a real personal sense. After all, we need to respect the confidence of the investors. People need to mentally accept that infrastructural support will go down several notches, and for those who would rather not give up their corporate lifestyle or feel lost without a glitzy life support systems, a start-up is avoidable.

9. Big joy in small things

Now if all that we talked about is true, then where is the fun? Where is the joy in a start up? It is in the small things. It is only in a start-up that there is no corporate caste system. There is no way you can look at someone and say what his or her level is. Everyone pitches in, everyone fights, everyone pulls weight and people are still not busy enough to be in silos that prevent rapid cross-fertilization of knowledge, skills and attitudes. It is also in a start-up that you can correlate your contribution to organizational impact. People instantly know who did it.

A start-up is also a place where no one has time for politics. You survive one day at a time. There is the joy of accelerated learning, the opportunity to watch people at close quarters and get a participant’s view of how businesses are built. If all goes well, along the line comes the satisfaction of creating substantial personal wealth that is difficult for most people through the salaried route. Finally, all these come in addition to a unique sense of bonding that money cannot buy.

There is a special beauty, a very special charm, when a plant is just a sapling with all of three leaves. No mighty oak can match that.