(Hopefully) Excellent advice
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Be the only
There’s an app called VOZZ that Imperial College alumni and students can use to ask questions, discuss topics and connect with each other. The app is pretty clunky and they’d be better off using Slack but, whatever, every few months I remember to drop in and see if there’s anything interesting being said or anyone I can help.
In the last few days I’ve had a bit of back & forth with an MSc student who wants to work in Operations in a startup.
I ended up emailing the student the note below. I wanted to share it here because I often give the same sort of advice to startups — when in doubt, raise your standards. That doesn’t mean you have to be brilliant at everything, but if you want something specific then you have to think differently and up your game. As ever, no one else is coming to save you.
And as Kevin Kelly says in his wonderful new book, Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier, “Don’t be the best. Be the only”.
Hi [StudentName],
Thanks for the note - good to hear from you.
Operations is a great place to be in startups - you'll get to do everything, learn a tonne and it can lead to amazing opportunities - check out Ryan Graves for one1!
However! While you're clearly very smart and get great exam results your CV is not great - it doesn't tell me what you've created, how you think, why you're 10x better than anyone else who gets good marks at a good uni etc.
For startups you have to get creative and get across things that are different to what the likes of Deloitte or PwC might want to see. For example, a terrific question in the YC application is: "Please tell us about the time you successfully hacked some (non-computer) system to your advantage". The answer to that question reveals SO much!
Another is Peter Thiel's question: "What important truth do very few people agree with you on?".
And - I can only find you on LinkedIn online and there's no recent activity there so, if I was a prospective employer, I'd have no idea about you as a person. Don't make it hard for people to see what you're like - if you do they'll just pass because it goes in the 'too hard' pile.
Lastly, you have to be able to articulate why, why, why you want to work for a startup - most people who say this don't really know, they just see it as trendy right now.
Getting a good role is hard as you know, but getting a good role at a good startup is brutal - there are thousands of people applying so you need to think differently. Plus there are 10s of thousands of people being laid off from Google, Facebook, Vodafone etc so you're competing with them too.
Happy to hear what you think and please, challenge me back - don't feel you have to agree with any of the above! But if you really want a good role you'll have to up your game here.
Thanks,
Matthew
I’ve been there too
After I graduated from Durham in 2006 I did similar to the student above and polished up my CV. I thought it was pretty good. Then I had one of the more impactful conversations in my life. It was quite short:
“You CV’s shit”
And that was about it.
It was horrible but wonderful and it got me fired up.
I’m keen to see what the student, above, does next.
Important: None of these posts are investment advice. If you are thinking about investing you should seek the advice of a suitably qualified independent advisor.
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