[pickle-wizard]

I joined an early stage start up once. I was employee number 3. I learned the hard way that just as they do a background checks on you, you need to do background checks on them. I later learned the founder of the company had several personal bankruptcies and DUIs.

This bled over into the company the company was a mess, and ultimately lead to the company going bankrupt. All this could have been avoided by paying $20 to one of those background check websites. In larger companies the inertia of the companies protects the companies from one or two bad actors, but at a small company one bad actor can quickly sink the company.