Thread by @copyconstruct

Unless you’re working for serial entrepreneurs, it’s hard to tell if a founder of an early stage startup (without a proven business model) is exceptional or not.

As for “exceptional” engineers, you’re more likely to find these engineers at larger companies than at startups.

https://twitter.com/shl/status/1143147990485360640

There are exceptions, of course. There are some “startups” with an exceptional quality of engineering (Hashicorp comes to mind), and there’s garbage code/engineering to be found at large companies.

But on average at very early stage startups (especially at product companies), the focus isn’t on engineering excellence. The focus is on finding product-market fit.

Even with “exceptional” engineers, corners often get cut.

So I warn people these days against joining early stage startups to “learn a lot”. I often ask “what is it you want to learn?”

If the answer is “a bit of sales, a bit of marketing, a bit of product” etc, then sure. You can get a certain amount of breath at an early stage startup

But that breadth is most likely going to be very shallow. And you’re probably not going to learn any one thing *particularly* well, because sales, marketing etc is so context/product specific that those skills might not necessarily be transferable when you want to start your own

Engineering is incredibly context specific too. IME, the “exceptional” engineers I’ve worked with have a terrific knack of knowing when and when not to pattern match with prior experience/decisions.

Also - it seems like in the recent years, the most successful startup founders on average have been folks who’ve had very successful career at large companies. They’ve found it easier to raise (both seed rounds and A/B rounds).

Especially in the enterprise software space.