Where to find jobs at startups

Question

Im a SWE with ~3 YoE at a big company and have always wanted to start/join an early stage company. However, how do people filter out "good" companies to work at (e.g. product market fit has been found, etc)? I know theres AngelList but there's so many companies and im curious about peoples' filtering strategies.

Note: i dont plan on making this jump until the market improves, so dont worry

spiderm0nkey · Accepted Answer

I try to cross check on sites like Crunchbase. Idk if you've been on there before. My usual process is:

1) Find company on Angellist
2) Check them out on Crunchbase to see when they've been funded last, who their investors and founders are, etc https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/snowflake-computing
3) I go on tech crunch to see if there's been any recent news about them (or their founders) to make sure there's nothing scandalous or weird going on.
4) Go on reddit and HN to see what people might be saying about their culture or market or whatever else I can find.
5) Just explore the rabbit holes, you never know what you'll find if you spent a solid hour or two digging into the weeds

Wfhwtheqrhqrh · Answer

Make a profile on workatastartup.com (YC’s jobs board).

Founders will reach out to you and you can do research/interview from there to see if they have PMF etc. And anyway, being part of YC is at least as good a filter as anything you’ll come up with yourself.

19g618l2gfzikt · Answer

Personally, this site has the best of both worlds with startups and solid paying full time opportunities. They have a foundation in web3/ blockchain tech companies. If you're interested check out their site here https://app.usebraintrust.com/r/zachary49/

quazarks · Answer

Go visit the fund websites and join their talent communities. FirstRound has one of the best I've seen: https://firstround.com/talent/

LB Brown · Answer

First of all are there any products you use and like that are made by startups? Odds are they are hiring if that’s the case. Often people join the companies that make the products they like.Second this is very rare but if you have spare time the Recurse Center has connections to many successful startups and up and comers. That’s how I’ve gotten the vast majority of my intros to these companies and nearly every one I’ve interviewed with in the past has done very well. Sometimes I have fomo, but I always feel like I got a lot out of it. However the Recuse center is a required three month thing and tough to join the community. But go for it if you want to get involved in open source stuff and meet some interesting people for a few months!Outside of that Y combinator has listings on some great startups. They really are lovely.I used to work at an accounting startup so these days I’m looking for strong fundamentals or signs of strong fundamentals. In my experience by series B you want a strong working revenue stream and lots of growth. It’s relatively easy to pick a healthy series B or early C company. Look for annual recurring revenue, growth rate year over year and month over month. Ask about burn rate and how much stock you’ll get and under what terms. Sit down with those numbers and either assign a zero or some reasonable value (to you not to the people at the start up) for each stock. If you’re then happy with the TC and excited about the potential of the company and what you’ll be doing (likely this will change dramatically as the company grows realistically. But don’t join unless you’re excited for what they’re doing now). Then join and don’t look back. Startups are exciting Im on my third. Joined Notion a few weeks back (intro through the recurse center). So many great places out there!

Where to find jobs at startups

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