Rather be the 50th hire at a high growth startup or 10th hire at slightly slower growth startup?

Question

Without divulging too much info, I'm considering offers at a couple startups. One of them is a pretty high growth SaaS company doing around 35% MoM growth right now, but also seems pretty mature in that they're a real company now. I'm dealing with a recruiter and would be around the ~50th hire.

The other startup is a consumer facing company pretty small team, still pretty steady growth. Id be working closely with the founders. I think if it takes it off it could be pretty cool. That said, as of now things seem pretty unstructured. I'd be their 9th hire.

Both would be entirely remote and distributed. Thoughts?

n2no13nk23 · Accepted Answer

Both sound like good opportunities. Optimize for growth and team. Finding a team that you resonate better with will make you happier and hopefully help you grow faster. Ultimately there's no right answer for situations like this. Really depends on your risk tolerance and what you value. What helped for me is imagining where I'd like to be in 5 years and working backward to figure out what I'd need to get there (ex. experience mentoring other engineers or experience working on distributed systems, etc.)

jinyung2 · Answer

I think regardless of which one you pick, both seem like solid options. I think in terms of faster growth and more potential for your equity to become liquid, I'd say the first one? 50 is still a small enough number of hires that you get to make big impact on the product too.

I'd also consider how much you believe in one product versus the other or your level of passion in working that space, feels like with smaller teams that's usually pretty important. Also for the smaller, unstructured team, you could potentially bring in some structure that greatly benefits that company which would be super cool!

coffeepls · Answer

For me personally, I'd rather be the 50th hire at a high-growth SaaS company just to have a bit of security, I feel like if I were more financially stable or didn't have dependants that I had to support I wouldn't mind the 10 person startup. I think startups are the best way to grow!

kadduman · Answer

How did you come across these startups? Your own research, network or other?

Rather be the 50th hire at a high growth startup or 10th hire at slightly slower growth startup?

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