# How to choose a startup to join

**Author:** Harj Taggar
**Type:** Video
**URL:** https://www.ycombinator.com/library/9t-how-to-choose-a-startup-to-join
**YouTube ID:** evIZRpNQUx4

---

Harj Taggar advises on choosing a startup to work at. Harj Taggar is a partner at YC and was the CEO and co-founder of
Triplebyte.

## Transcript

hey everyone i'm harj i'm a partner at y combinator and i'm going to answer how do you choose a startup to work at so the first thing is to be sure you actually want to work at a startup working at a startup is not for everyone it's a very unique experience and it's totally fine if it's not your thing um paul buhay who is an early engineer at google and also a y combinator partner um i asked him like how do you know if you should work at a startup or if you should go work at a big stable company and he said that if you're happy working where you are and

you don't have a strong desire to do anything else you're probably going to get paid less and have to work more if you leave for a startup so if getting paid less and working more is unappealed unappealing to you i would recommend staying where you are um and i think that applies equally to college graduates right like if you want a more stable career path where you're paid more today and for less work then join a big company um but once you know that what you're looking for is a startup

and then when you're choosing the one to join i would advise you to think a lot like an investor does when they're picking a startup to invest in because that's essentially what you are investors are investing money in companies and you're investing your time and your energy kind of your life so there's a few things that investors look for the first is look for signs that the startup is already succeeding like joining a startup that succeeds is the best kind of startup experience

like as a startup grows there'll be more opportunities for you to learn there'll be more interesting people that get hired your network will grow your career will accelerate um these are all really great reasons to join a startup and they are stronger the more successful the startup is so the way you do this is when you're interviewing with the company ask them like how many users they have and ask them what metric do you track to see if you're being successful or not and how has that been growing over time

and the most important thing to focus on here is not the absolute numbers it's the growth trajectory so if a startup has a million dollars in monthly revenue but it's had a million dollars in monthly revenue for the last 12 months in a row that's less exciting than a startup that has 10 000 in monthly revenue but the previous month it only had five so look for the trajectory not where a startup is right now today the second thing to look for is the team and that always starts with the founders so you only want to work at a startup

where you're really impressed by the founders and whoever they've hired so far and in particular when you're evaluating founders don't look for traditional credentials it doesn't matter if they went to a great college or if they worked at world owned companies many of the best founders took a slightly different path and don't have the traditional credentials you might associate with success and aptitude so i would advise you instead to look at how well those founders have done

relative to their peer group and where they began so as an example a 19 year old founder who grew up in milwaukee and has managed to raise a seed round and move to silicon valley and build a company um might be more impressive than uh an engineer who worked at google for 15 years and has left to start a company and is in sort of the same place so look for these like outlying traits and founders that indicate that they're just a bit unusual and likely to build an outlying kind of company

third don't try and evaluate the size of the market that the startup's in like this is the most common mistake investors make when they're trying to pick a startup and it's how they miss out on the really big ones a really famous example here is airbnb many many many of the best investors in silicon valley all rejected airbnb because they thought it was kind of crazy this idea of people sleeping in each other's houses and felt that was a pretty limited market so don't try and play that game but what i would say

is while not every great startup seems like it's in an obviously big market at the start every great startup always has this core group of early users who are fanatical about the product so even though they want a lot of people using airbnb in the early days the people who did use airbnb really loved it and every great startup has that trade so if you're thinking about joining a startup i'd ask to talk to some of the users and see how much they love the product and even if it's a small group if the

depth of their passion for the product and the startup is deep that's a really really good sign so summing up if you're thinking about joining a startup i base your decision on the founders how much the current users love the product and look for signs of growth
