1/ Pro Tip: Best way to find a job at a startup…

Hint: it doesn’t start with a job board…

a thread

2/ Go to @crunchbase and set up a filter for the following:

1. Amount raised: $5M - $10M
2. Announced on: today - 3 days ago
3. Headquarters location: your preference
4. Investor Name: @Accel, @Greycroftvc, @Sequoia, @a16z etc...

It should look something like this.
3/ When a company raises money… they are going to use the capital to build out their team.

It isn’t rocket science!
4/ When successful venture firms with track records like, @Accel, @Greycroftvc, @Sequoia, @a16z sink money into a startup. Their chance of success increases astronomically.
5/ Filtering for recent fundraising allows you to get a pulse for when a company is going to add positions to their job board (if they haven’t already)
6/ If you see a company that piques your interest here is your order of operations:

1. Check for any job postings that meet your criteria. (If there isn’t a job listing for you now… it’s all good).
2. Linkedin, do you have a 1st degree connection to the company?

cont'd
7/

3. Linkedin pt 2, go to the companies Linkedin page and look at the People tab.

Do you have any strong 2nd degree connections to any investors or employees that work at the company?

If yes, ask your connection if they feel comfortable introducing you.

cont'd
/8

4. 4. If step 1 - 3 fail, there is still a glimmer of hope. This is step 4 because I consider it 4th down… and longgg.

Find one of the founders on Linkedin and send them a note congratulating them on the recent fundraising.
/9 Mention you have been following the company and you are interested in learning more about open opportunities.

Why does this work for small seed - series A startups?

A few reasons…
/10

1. When you’re the founder of a small startup… praise does not come often. When someone from the outside world recognizes your accomplishments it feels good!

2. Hiring is fucking hard… believe it or not… Most startups don’t have an endless pipeline of candidates

cont'd
/11

Having someone interested in your product come inbound should hopefully constitute a conversation.

Also, I speak from experience… step 4 is how I convinced @jtdaugh to hire me for my role @LEX_Markets

A hail mary on 4th and long... but it worked!
The best part about this approach…

You can save your query and check it every morning. If there are no new funding events that day... don’t sweat it.

Check back tomorrow or expand your search by playing with the funding amount filter

More from Startups

1/ Tuesday was my last day as CEO of @CircleUp. I’ve been CEO since starting the co. in 2011 with my co-founder @roryeakin.

This is a thread about what happened, why and my emotions about it. For more detail:

https://t.co/vYImcm1bTM

Much of this I have never talked about.

2/ My goals: I hope it helps founders feel less lonely than I did. Little public content about the challenges of transitioning exists, but I longed for it. I’m not here to provide a playbook- just to share my experience. Hope it might build greater empathy.

Here goes….

3/ Why: When I tell people that I’m transitioning to an Exec Chairman role their first question is always: “why?” Short answer: co. pivot + fertility issues + health issues + a false sense that grit was always the answer = burnout. Long answer: is longer so hang in there with me

4/ Over a 12-18 month period that ended in late 2017 I ran my tank far beyond empty for far too long. You know that sound your car makes when it’s sputtering for more gas? It was like that. Worst year of my life. Since then it has felt like bone on bone.

5/ Here is what happened:

Professionally: pivoting a Series C company was a living hell in and of itself, as I’ve talked about before.

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THREAD: 12 Things Everyone Should Know About IQ

1. IQ is one of the most heritable psychological traits – that is, individual differences in IQ are strongly associated with individual differences in genes (at least in fairly typical modern environments). https://t.co/3XxzW9bxLE


2. The heritability of IQ *increases* from childhood to adulthood. Meanwhile, the effect of the shared environment largely fades away. In other words, when it comes to IQ, nature becomes more important as we get older, nurture less.
https://t.co/UqtS1lpw3n


3. IQ scores have been increasing for the last century or so, a phenomenon known as the Flynn effect. https://t.co/sCZvCst3hw (N ≈ 4 million)

(Note that the Flynn effect shows that IQ isn't 100% genetic; it doesn't show that it's 100% environmental.)


4. IQ predicts many important real world outcomes.

For example, though far from perfect, IQ is the single-best predictor of job performance we have – much better than Emotional Intelligence, the Big Five, Grit, etc. https://t.co/rKUgKDAAVx https://t.co/DWbVI8QSU3


5. Higher IQ is associated with a lower risk of death from most causes, including cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, most forms of cancer, homicide, suicide, and accident. https://t.co/PJjGNyeQRA (N = 728,160)