Saul Klein on entrepreneurship in Europe, & myself on career starts everywhere
I usually don’t ’steal’ posts from others -especially without adding any value-adding comment, but I couldn’t help sharing this one – found on Richard’s blog thanks to Twitter (follow him). Here’s a very inspiring slideshow by Index Ventures VC & founder of Open Coffee Saul Klein:
[slideshare id=58242&doc=nextweb2007-saul-1518&w=425]
The slideshow speaks for itself, doesn’t it? And even if you don’t chose to become an entrepreneur yourself at this very moment, in Europe or elsewhere, my take is that you should join an early-stage startup. Let me tell you a quick story about this.
The first time I thought of leaving MS to start a startup (a thought that never occurred again, believe it or not, before I actually walked out to either join another company or take the big plunge), I hadn’t even joined Microsoft. I was at Capital IT, a major VC forum in Paris, as a Microsoftee although I was due to join the company a few days later. There I met, for the first and last time so far, Pascal Mercier, a French fundraiser whose firm Aelios Finance is pretty successful at matching the best entrepreneurs and smart money (to my knowledge both angels & VCs). I was introduced as a recent graduate and the second we met, Pascal Mercier asked: “Why didn’t you choose to join a startup rather?”. The best answer I found was: “but I do work for startups!” Which I thought was true since 1) MS is just a damn successful startup (you would be surprised to see the easy-going startup atmosphere within the company); 2) I was part of the team that took care of emerging ISVs in France. Acknowledging reason #2 only I guess, Pascal nodded and we parted ways. I later realized though that working for startups, and working in a startup, are clearly two different things. When you represent Microsoft, you may call whoever you want and the door will be opened the next day. Your brand power is so strong that at the end of the day, you never know whether you achieved great things because you’re damn so good, or because your company is so powerful in its industry. As an entrepreneur, and I’ve been facing this issue already, you need to fight like a pitbull to get passed through the right person on the phone, and fight again to get an appointment. I should also mention that you’ll need to deliver the best pitch of your life, after waiting for an hour in the lobby without even being served a cup of coffee, to actually get to the point where you may pretend to try and sell your solution. This struggle for survival is real life and that makes entrepreneurs fully accountable for their success or failure.
The same rationale goes for early-stage startups, without a brand name yet: life will be tougher for sure than if you worked for a big name, but the impact you can have on such companies is huge (eg double revenues in 6 months, etc. something unachievable in an 85K-strong corporation like Microsoft – or even at Google, a 20K-strong company & definitely not a startup anymore). Whether you want to be an entrepreneur or join a larger group later in your career (or both), an unknown and yet ambitious startup is where you should start your career to acquire the right survival toolkit. By the way, did I mention the stock option plan?
My two cents…
Addendum 11am: check out comment #3 to discover how to spot startups that will pay you better than large corporations and resign from consulting, banking and Fortune 500 companies to join them!
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Excellent post Jérémy. The problem is on slide 38: “it’s OK to fail”. Not for everybody, not in every environment, not in every country. A professor of entrepreneurship at UCLA once told me “I can teach you everything about entrepreneurship: how to be brave, how to fight to get deals, how to prove yourself that you are developping skills way better than your other friends who went to big companies, but I really can’t teach you one thing: how to feel good when you will be stumbling upon the investment banker with a six figures salary that was sitted next to you during your courses at HEC”. The thing is that, even if we are intimately convinced that entrepreneurship is the “best” way to demonstrate great skills for a manager, it is really hard to convince other people of that in France. And a lot of people just can’t live without feeling good about what they’re doing, not only for themselves but also in the eyes of their family, friends, and “not so much” friends. It is really sad, but I think really true.
Agree ! That’s something I kept on telling you during your 6 month training period at Microsoft Jeremy. Life post MS can be hard for some people !
@Fidji I actually disagree. I think it’s wrong to fail as long as you start again. And when it comes to me, I really don’t mind the perception of others: what I want is prove myself that I can build a great company and change the world.
@Codordog You indeed warned me very early about it! But I think this syndrom applies not only to MS but to all multinational companies. That’s another problem with Microsoft: when you work for Microsoft, which is definitely interesting and a lot of fun since colleagues are so good and crazy at the same time, the very business model of the company puts you in the center of a large ecosystem so you tend to think that the only company in the world is Microsoft – and forget that there’s a lot of other great things out there too.
You give me a terrific occasion to raise a second point to support my case for startups. You kept on telling me not to consider myself a trainee anymore when, after 3 months in the job, I was hired to start in the MACH program in January – and eventually offered one or the other of 2 full time positions that I turned down – eventually to start a startup.
As you know, I didn’t resign from my employment contract to start a startup initially (I wasn’t sure yet), but part for lack of interest for the jobs (although what I did with you as a trainee was very interesting all along) the other part being the lack of competitiveness of the MS offer vs. others from large corps too, but that’s another story, and most of all startups.
Hence my call to all candidates here: startups can pay (I mean the plain vanilla package, and you should add stock options to it) a hell lot better than large corporations (and I mean +100% for jobs that can only be more interesting since you get to have a deeper impact and take part of the adventure). How do you find them? Hang around in high tech circles a lot, watch out Series A financings (remember, you want a startup that’s still rather unknown to learn to fight) and knock at the doors of the startups whose product make you die for and who just got financed. Startups that just got financed for the first time tend to pay what it takes to attract people that will strengthen their team and please their VCs.
This is probably more true here in Europe than in the US where it’s the stock options, not the salaries, that matter most.
I have only one thing to say. It’s good to have you back, Jeremy!
I agree with Vincent! Truly: I always wondered what you were doing at Microsoft…
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Matthias,
I was actually doing very interesting things & Microsoft is a great company. I just happened to realize that I was an entrepreneur at the same time I realized what I was promised at Microsoft wasn’t exactly what I was delivered. So I said to myself: “cut the crap and don’t waste time to try and change the world”.
Jeremy
Well there’s one thing you obviously did not learn for sure at microsoft, it’s humility.
Why didn’t you say you were just an intern ?
@Guillx: actually he did, right from the start . So perhaps you should brush up on your research-skills.
@Guillx because at the beginning I was an intern – and I said so here http://techiteasy.org/2006/12/20/229/ (too bad man), but not after I was hired (end of August 2007) to the MS Graduate Program due to start in Jan08. Want me to send you my employment contract?
About humility: since you obviously know me very well, you should’ve already noticed that I’m a very arrogant and nasty person.
[...] Saul Klein on entrepreneurship in Europe, & myself on career starts everywhere Travailler pour des startups et travailler dans une startup sont deux choses différentes. L’Europe n’a a priori rien à envier à la Silicon Valley, alors pourquoi ne pas en profiter pour abandonner son job et devenir entrepreneur ? [...]