THINGS TO CONSIDER BEFORE SAYING YES TO A START-UP COMPANY

With an ever increasing number of people being poured into the labour market daily, one would have to struggle real hard to be able to get an interview in a company let alone to get employed. Today, to get the dream job, applicants have been challenged to take up a higher degree in the form of a Masters or even a PhD else they will either remain on the bottom of the pay ladder in their place of work or even get locked out the labour market. In my article titled Building your CV (Competence + Value), I made mention of how important it was to get the right skills set intertwined with commendable values so as to be an indispensable employee but, this piece is geared at addressing the desperation experienced by job hunters and their possible decisions of settling for a start-up company.

Napoleon Hill once said, “Think Big Start Small” and ever since, that cliché has found relevance whenever a person is seeking for an opportunity to accomplish a great career. While I agree totally with Hill on that statement, I think he forgot to tell us his definition of “small”. These days, words have benefitted from different interpretations from different people and this has made it difficult for us to really ascertain if Hill’s interpretation of starting small in his days was working in a multinational firm as an intern, in a pub as a bartender or even as a refuse collector using a cart in an urban area. But, whatever his interpretation was, I’m tempted to believe it might not have included working for a start-up company; especially in Nigeria.

In Nigeria today, crave for being your own boss has driven so many people into starting their own businesses. Good as this might be for the economy, it has proven to be a problem on its own, in that, these start-up companies stem from hasty decision making and utterly poor preparations. Most start-up company owners lack the technical, entrepreneurial and managerial killer instincts which Michael Gerber analysed in his book the E-Myth. Jose Mourinho the self-acclaimed Only One, once said, “I had the option of either being an average footballer or a great coach and I chose the latter”. So today, I often wonder why some people would rather prefer to die of a high B.P and remain broke as CEO’s than enjoy wealth and health as subordinates after all, a living dog they say is better than a dead lion. 

Anyway, depending on the side of the slide you are looking at, you might want to give preference to being either a living dog or a dead lion but regardless of your decision, you definitely will not want to be the employee who will sink along with a start-up company. If true then, the following are things you might want to consider before accepting to work for a start-up company:

1.       Does the Founder/CEO have enough backup cash to pump into the business if it doesn’t maintain momentum after take-off? Typical to every new venture, your chosen start-up firm will have to struggle with prevailing competitors for months to be able to make an impact if she’s in an already existing line of business or work for months to stamp her feet if she’s in a virgin market but whatever the case is, new businesses are not a straight line graph and so there are bound to be downtimes and you might want to know if your employer is prepared for such times. Does he have enough money to reinvest in the firm if things don’t fall into pleasant places after start-up?

2.       Can the company pay employees for at least 6 months if the business doesn’t pick? As stated above, downtimes are probably a constants and so because some CEO’s don’t have enough money to re-invest into the firm, they’ll rather prefer to use the little revenue generated to run the business again. Now you might want to ask, where will the money to pay the employees come from? In most cases, the employees will be kept on hold for months and on getting to their human limits, they’ll quit depressed and disappointed. If that happens, bingo! The company will replace such employee without pay-off and start on a new slate. This cycle continues for as long as this company struggles.

3.       Is the Founder/CEO an entrepreneur or just an investor? I’d rather work for an entrepreneur as a boss than an investor because the latter usually have little or no business and managerial knowledge but, their bossy nature and the money they have invested will not allow them listen to their employees which can result in the slackness and dysfunction of the venture thereby prolonging their days in the wilderness. 

4.       Do I need job security? Most people would rather prefer to work for a Fortune 500 company and be underpaid than to work for a start-up company with a big pay and their reason would be because of job security. A Fortune 500 company has been tried, tested and stands more chances of maintaining their feats than a start-up company which can nose-dive any time any day and send the whole employees back into the labour market.

Now, knowing quite well that you don’t want to sit down at home jobless and without work experience as a growing professional, I suggest you make sure whatever is engaging you is really worth it.

EE