Henry Vasquez is the Head of Operations for Earlybird, a studio for startup MVPs and product development. Previous to Earlybird, Henry was the VP of Operations for Spartz.
"For anyone early in their career, I would only recommend being a founder first if your CoFounders have experience starting a business", Henry says. Starting a business is difficult, and there are some distinct advantages to learning the ropes while being an employee first. For instance, instead of risking your personal savings, you get the chance to learn on someone else’s dime while still being able to acclimate to startup culture.
Only after a few years at a startup, can you truly begin to feel comfortable with the high levels of uncertainty and the emotional roller coaster of working in one. Before starting up, Henry suggests there are a few qualities you may want to develop before founding your own business:
1. Risk tolerance: and I mean most of your money and professional reputation
2. Embracing otherwise uncomfortable behavior: asking people for money, asking for help, public speaking, and handling rejection.
3. Willingness to work extremely hard for little/no immediate monetary gain: Some side projects are good for this, so is working on your uncle's farm
4. A healthy pattern of how to respond to and overcome frequent feelings of incompetence. Pick something you think is hard to learn and just do it
5. A responsible leader mentality: initiate something big and challenging that will most likely fail without you busting your ass to make it work
When evaluating companies, Henry suggests, "If you’re going to join a startup as an employee, try to find one that has already found product-market fit and is trying to grow/scale." By doing this, you will have time to deconstruct the ingredients of success (and failure) and pick up skills and relationships needed to succeed along the way.
What qualities are you focused on building? Join the conversation and register for our panel discussion happening on March 31st at 1871.
