Comments on: Saul Klein on entrepreneurship in Europe, & myself on career starts everywhere

By: Revue de presse | Simple Entrepreneur

Revue de presse | Simple Entrepreneur — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 06:43:21 +0000

[...] 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 ? [...]

By: Jeremy Fain

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 14:58:23 +0000

@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.

By: Vincent van Wylick

Vincent van Wylick — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 14:57:58 +0000

@Guillx: actually he did, right from the start . So perhaps you should brush up on your research-skills.

By: Guillx

Guillx — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 14:19:45 +0000

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 ?

By: Matthias

Matthias — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 14:18:00 +0000

I agree with Vincent! Truly: I always wondered what you were doing at Microsoft…

———————————————————————————

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

By: Vincent van Wylick

Vincent van Wylick — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 10:29:39 +0000

I have only one thing to say. It’s good to have you back, Jeremy!

By: Jeremy Fain

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 10:05:14 +0000

@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.

By: codordog

codordog — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 07:04:16 +0000

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 !

By: Fidji SIMO

Fidji SIMO — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 04:03:40 +0000

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.