| There are three ways to get out of a startup: 1) jump
2) go down with the ship
3) get pushed There is also the mythical "startup hits the bigtime and you get rich", but the odds of that happening are so low as to be not worth talking about. So if you join a startup you should be prepared to experience one of those exits. Jumping may be worth it if the startup is going sideways in a variety of ways, including but not limited to: 1) persistent low traction 2) anyone in the company ever says anything resembling "we must educate the customer" 3) frequent pivots (one or two is OK, after that it's probably just flailing before failing) The bad culture and poor pay issues aren't as likely to come up if you've chosen well in the first place, and are reasons why you should leave sooner rather than later, but startups are mostly experiments aimed at answering two questions: 1) Can we build this thing? 2) Do enough people want to pay for this thing to make it worth our while? The answer to the first question is usually--but not always--yes. The answer to the second question is almost always "no". |