Thinking of working in a startup company? It pays to know what to expect when joining one. I sort of stumbled into working for startups. I was a remote staff in the first one and worked on-site in the second one (shifting to WFH during the pandemic). Looking back on it now, to say I was not ready for what it entailed of me, is an understatement.
Expect to hit the ground running. Once hired, expect to dive immediately into work. These companies hired me as a copywriter and a marketing communications specialist. I had to give the best copy my brain cells could squeeze out in one quick shot. Most content projects have a tight timeframe. You’ll have to rely on your talent and creativity to carry you through. It also helps to have a wide vocabulary and almost-perfect grammar.
My background was largely corporate and development communications. But I was fortunate to have the foundational skills. I transitioned to direct-response copywriting, creating video sales letters, advertorials, and sales emails. We also did videos and webinars scripts, email marketing, product pages, among others. It was a refreshing change for me and I enjoyed the writing.
Brace for chaos. Startups usually have no clear systems and processes, and this can breed chaos. It’s expected to have some disorder as the company goes through innovation and aims for rapid growth. But it’s critical to know the difference between a ‘necessary mess’ and ‘a mess that signals danger.’
If you’re new to startups, you can get confused or even alarmed by the bedlam. But if you find excitement in experimentation in a fast-paced environment, then give it a try. Make sure, though, that you believe it’s worth investing your time, effort, and talent.
Expect high expectations. I had remote colleagues gripe to me about unreasonably high demands and expectations from the bosses. I did not know it then but this is the norm in startups. I found later that startup founders were under great pressure to do a lot with scant resources. This pressure comes from their investors and even co-founders. If you’re not cut out for this environment, startups might not be for you. But, if you’ve got the grit and resilience, as well as the knowledge and skills, you might just make it.
Be ready to deal with isolation. While I collaborated with my remote colleagues, I never got to meet them. I also expected to be onboarded on the products and services when I first started, but it turned out I had to onboard and train myself (lol). It was challenging to do that using just training videos and other materials HQ sent me.
I also found there’s another type of isolation working in a startup. In the beginning, I had to work alone—no one to bounce off ideas with, no peer review, sometimes not even a brainstorm. This gave me a sense of isolation or disconnection from the company and the people I worked with. I only persisted because I was not a neophyte at that time.
Be open to wearing many hats. My boss pushed me to venture into more diverse copywriting projects. He also sent over the work of other staff for my review and editing. While it was outside my scope, I did not mind the extra work because it allowed me to exercise my editing skills. When I was Senior Content Team Lead, it was a given to review and edit the work of content specialists. But I also did training with not only my team but with other departments as well. I also offered to do Media Relations to help boost our company’s reputation as a desirable employer.
If you’re averse to working beyond your scope, plan how you intend to communicate that to the boss. Bear in mind that in startups, it is common for roles to overlap. And there is an expectation on everyone to help out any way they can.
Take initiative. Contribute to creating systems, procedures, or workflows to help create structure. This will help you and your team, as well incoming staff who will find themselves needing to hustle at the get-go.
Coming from corporate, I was so used to structure that I found the lack of it in startups disconcerting. In my experience, structure is a precursor to excellent output. Wanting to address this, I developed the content creation and approval process with steps and the definition of each. With the help of my team, we also crafted the company Content Style Guide. These serve as the guide rails for anyone creating content.
Manage your frustrations. I’d say ‘calibrating’ my standards at work was the most trying for me. For instance, my training was to ‘perfect’ the messaging of any piece of content before we send it out. Messaging has to be crystal clear if you want to achieve the goal of your communication. But deadlines were always tight and EVERYTHING had a sense of urgency. I barely had time to do due diligence on my written work.
For me, one cannot afford to send out messaging that will have to be retracted or corrected. If you do this, it will be very difficult to (re)gain the trust of your audience. I found, though, that in startups, ‘’iteration’’ is the name of the game. That things do not have to be ‘’perfect’’ and it’s okay to make mistakes and iterate in the next version. So I’ve learned to let go of my training and standard of doing things right the first time.
Learn when to stay or jump ship. Company culture in startups is not yet fully defined. It can fall to different interpretations by employees. This happened in the first startup I worked for. Soon it became arduous to navigate this while trying to focus on producing great copy. It also made me miss working in the corporate world. It’s where people internalize company vision-mission-goals. Where systems and procedures were clear and followed. Where mechanisms were in place for seamless collaboration and effective working relationships. All these can yield excellent output from employees. When rewarded for this, employees feel good working for the company and stay longer.
When chaos in this startup became too toxic, I decided to leave despite dissuasion from the CEO. Several months later, they would reach out with an offer of triple my old salary. Tempting, but I was already deep in another journey with a different startup, so I passed up.
(MY SCENE is my take on issues and matters I find relevant. Let me know your thoughts at adi.quisido88@gmail.com)
