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Posted on July 21, 2008 0 Comments

CoNotes has just passed the 250 mark for jobs posted! We are hard at work to make sure CoNotes is the best place for you to discover startup job opportunities.

Having been a part of several startups, I wanted to pass on share a few learnings from my experiences which may help you find the perfect job.

1. Entering the unknown

By their very definition, every startup is entering the unknown. It is trying to do something that no other company has done — and this is a difficult thing. It is difficult for the company, and difficult for every person inside the company. You will be doing a lot of guesswork, and making the best decisions possible with very incomplete data. Therefore you must be comfortable working in these conditions and willing to learn from your mistakes (and there will be a lot of those!).

As Donald Rumsfeld said, “There are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don’t know.” And though he didn’t take his own wisdom to heart, I think it would be wise for you to beware of your company’s unknown unknowns. Don’t pull a Rummy.

2. Get some glasses and focus!

Every startup needs to focus and every member needs to focus. There are so many things going on that it is so easy to get sucked up into doing a lot of things. But what usually happens is that you end up doing a lot of things rather poorly, and nothing well. I definitely fight the urge daily, so wearing my glasses helps me see better.

3. Passion fruit is good. Passion is even better.

The fuel of any startup is the passion of its members. A good startup is like a Jeep. It sucks a lot of fuel, is gangly and rough around the edges. But it can make it over pretty much any terrain it encounters. A Jeep without its fuel will just be stuck in the middle of some crappy place.

But misplaced passion is just as bad as not enough passion. Continuing the analogy, it is the wrong type of fuel. If you join a startup, you need to be passionate about the company and its mission. Granted, there will disagreements within any startup, but you need to believe in what problem the company is trying to solve.

Furthermore, you will be working long hours. You won’t be paid well enough to work so hard, and the only thing that can keep you motivated is your passion. Any maybe when you have one of those nights when you are stressed out, not sure if you made the right decision or not to join this startup, have some passion fruit (it helps to lower blood pressure). Then hopefully you’ll get your passion and passion fruit all in one sitting. What else could be better? Perhaps only an In-N-Out animal style cheeseburger.

If you have found a job through CoNotes, we’d love to hear from you!