Some learnings from the last while working.

Don't just pick a great company, pick great functions and great people

When I first moved to Sydney I understood that to decide which company to join a hack was to look at top VC portcos and filter for recently funded companies that looked interesting.

This way I could see that they (1) have runway and (2) have passed a respected VCs due dilligence.

A step further which I got more access to after working for Blackbird / Startmate was to actually chat to people on that VCs investment team about what they feel is a good opportunity.

These people read the company investor updates which include financials and other useful data for predicting trajectory.

Beyond that it's tablestakes to talk to other employees, ideally those open to sharing both the good and bad, as a way to get across internals i.e. any weird levels of churn, why? Any weird internal politics? Etc.

More recently I've started to think more about two other equally important steps that should come next.

First, a great company isn't necessarily (ever) great at everything.

Let's say you find that company x looks great. They have solid, recent enough, backing, from good investors, and you've spoken to enough people who know their stuff to build conviction.

Now you should ask yourself, (1) what do I actually want to learn, (2) what is this company best at / known for.

To really optimise learnings you want these to cross over.

Secondly you want to know who in the company has mastered this craft.

Even at Eucalyptus where growth is strong, high ups would say only 2 people in the company have really mastered it.

You want to be around these people.

There aren't many of them, find them quickly and find a way to spend time with them.

Make more promises and take more big swings

When you're in a company, as someone young that probably has imposter syndrome, you can be in one of two modes:

1/ Survival

You're here if these sound familiar -

"I'm not sure what to work on" "It's only a matter of time before they realise I don't know what I'm doing" "I'll probably get fired soon" "I'll wait to hear back on next steps"

Etc. etc.

If you're here you're passive. You're vegatative. It's a slow death.

2/ Fuck it

This is you backing yourself, shamelessly.

Promise things. Promise you'll reach x new customers by y. Promise you'll launch a new market successfully.

Put yourself on the line constantly. Then do the work.

Be more American. Don't be a NPC.

This gets massively recognised, especially in Australia, and these are the people that move up quickly.

To be honest most people probably fall somewhere in between, but this is boring, extreme results come from extreme actions.

Slack is work Strava

You might have heard the joke if the run isn't on Strava it didn't happen.

Or if someones holiday isn't posted on Instagram it didn't happen.

There's a good lesson in this.

More often than not people don't care about what you're actually doing, they care about what you're showing that you're doing.

The reality is your whole team will never go into all of your campaigns, sheets, models, code, etc. and check out recent work done.

It's your job to be your own champion.

You never want to be in the position where people don't know what you're up to.

Rather over communicate than under communicate. Always.

Cheerio!