Thanks for your insights. What you say makes a lot of sense, and you're right--you only read about the success stories, not the failures. As someone who has never tried the startup thing, on the surface it seems like a more straightforward path to employment, particularly in today's challenging job market. Clearly there are many factors, including luck.
Having been at three "failed" startups in my 15 year (to date) career, I guess I can provide a data point.
I've been involved in the staff and eventual senior management (but not founding) of three small companies in my career: two began as bootstrap startups that morphed into relatively successful lifestyle companies once it became clear we had no scalable product/market fit. They settled into hardware or software consulting, one is pretty sizeable now (a few hundred strong), the other remains under a hundred employees. The final one got to Series B funding but tanked after burning through $15 million.
To summarize, all were highly intense and emotional experiences. I compressed 2-3x the amount of learning I would have otherwise had in most other jobs, particularly in areas where you don't usually get exposure to as a young geek: business development & sales, marketing, HR, finances, etc., and I also became a much better software developer.
That said, small companies, especially if you're involved with steering them, are very personal affairs, and are extremely sensitive the founders' personality quirks while they're under 50 employees. They were hard to work for after a while.
So, in sum:
- Working in a startup is a great experience if you're not in it to get rich, but rather to improve your career by compressing your learning & working on something that inspires you
- Get involved with senior management if you want the experience, but be prepared for the emotional/health toll
- Luck is important, but not just any luck, you want luck that helps you survive - a good market being most important.
If you look hard enough you'll definitely be able to find a lot of the failures. A lot of startups make the risk even higher because they're not always transparent with their finances. You might be working hard to meet a deadline and show up to the office only realize your company has gone bankrupt. A lot of newly funded startups live month to month and offer no security whatsoever (although they definitely try to make it seem like they can).
