Ask HN: How do you find early stage startups to join

Curious how others find early stage startups to join. Thinking first engineer that a startup is hiring to maybe first 20 employees.

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duncancarroll 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Y Combinator and other accelerators have job boards: https://www.ycombinator.com/jobs

A lot of VCs also have job boards, or they will list their portfolio companies and you can reach out directly:

https://jobs.a16z.com/jobs

https://jobs.sequoiacap.com/jobs

https://kindredventures.com/portfolio

etc

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random3 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think the most relevant is through your network, mainly because it’s generally a trust matter on both ends. It’s best when the deal is a known quantity vs looking over “who’s hiring monthly HN posts”.

I had 10-15 people i was working with (not all employed) at my last startup and they all came through my network either directly (ex colleagues) or through trusted parties.

Again it’s mostly a trust thing more than anything.

I think a good strategy is to get close to the kind of startups you care about without (before) direct intent to join. It’s easy to hang out (or at least it used to be) through various events, meetups or co-working places.

Many startups I didn’t join and could have been good, I’ve met through open-source (Hadoop, HBase, Mesos, etc.) these are companies like Cloudera, DataBricks etc. when they were tiny. I still miss that crowd, years later.

So it’s mostly a matter of being close to what’s happening, able to filter and ready to jump when opportunity arises.

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goyagoji 38 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'm curious as to why startup would be a goal specifically vs the job itself at any company? Lifestyle, company size, career growth, equity, something else?

	▲	UncleOxidant 30 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		You have a lot more control in an early stage startup vs a later stage one where lots of design decisions have already been made before you arrived and you're kind of stuck with them. If you like having an influence on the design of the product, tools, even implementation languages the earlier you get in, the more influence you have.

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UncleOxidant 28 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

In the four early stage startups I've gotten into: 1) Found it through an agency (this was in the late 80s, though). 2,4) I knew someone who was already working there. 3) I knew someone who knew someone who worked there.

So basically through your network.

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dtnewman 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Look for startups that interest you and then email the founders. Follow up every two months until you hear a hard no. Things are absolute chaos at an early startup and it's rare that the job board (if even there at all) is up to date.

Source: I work at an early stage startup.