An essay by John Melonakos
Advice to Those Wanting to do Startups
Earlier this week I met with an Emory Law School student nearing the end of his 2nd year. He’s interested in entrepreneurship and looking for ways to exit law school into the startup community.
This is something I frequently see. Many people are intrigued by startups, but do not understand how to get off well-paved paths to cut their way into the startup world.
Here is the advice I gave this student:
- Keep living like a student. It’s much harder to jump into startup life with large personal expenses to manage. This particular student was already in the right mindset on this point.
- Join a startup before founding one. Early employees can get a great amount of the reward of startup life without founder-level risks. Also, founders are often quick to pull their people into confidence and openness, since the team is small. You can learn a ton watching how founders make things work (or fail) without all the upfront risk. Not everyone that does startups needs to be (or will be) a founder.
- The student asked if his legal skills would provide an advantage to the startup he joins. I don’t think so. I think that only two skills matter for early startup employees: 1) the ability to build stuff and 2) the ability to sell stuff. A law student would be best suited selling stuff. Selling stuff can refer to all the marketing, sales, operations, and business development activities.
- Attend startup events to open your eyes. The Atlanta Startup Village is now my favorite monthly recurring event.
- Read startup blogs. Here are some of the blogs I follow.
- Start using Twitter and follow other startup people
What advice do you give to people looking to get find a path into startups?
From the conversation
Comments preserved from the original post.
Ernesto
Than you for your great advise and for giving me some of your valuable time.