X-Factor: Should you ride the Tech Start-up wave?

“Hey K, what’s up? Heard you have moved from consulting to a tech start-up. Congratulations. Can you get me a job there? Would love to work with them? ”, one of my acquaintances asked me during one of the house parties. If you are one of us, who belong to the most hated /loved fraternity i.e. HR fraternity then you can definitely relate to – “What kind of profiles does your company entertain?” And in past 5 months, I got that so many times that I thought to write a blog on - “What do you need to excel at a tech-start-up?” And my answer is whether you have the X-Factor.

Are you a Techno-passionate?

Irrespective of whether you are married to sales, operations, marketing or human resource, you need to be born with techno-passionate DNA, which means you can talk during sleep on upcoming technology trends, innovative and in-vogue applications et al. If you are still wondering that you are a techno-passionate, ask your girlfriend/ boyfriend what does he/she think would be an ideal gift for you and if he/she says anything close to a technology gadget, then you are there!

Is Agile your last name?

Yes, Agility! And if you think that’s the simplest thing to do, then let me explain why agility is critical and yet so difficult to attain in a start-up. Start-ups work in a borderline region, which exists between complete randomness and a state of perfect stability, called edge of chaos. And thermodynamics clearly explains how inescapable slow down would be, with greater chaos higher entropy and greater wasted energy. And most of the times, maintaining agility comes at the cost of comfort that one finds in planning, which means one has to plan faster, fail faster and succeed faster in a start-up.

Do you embrace change or flout it?

While the change has always been constant for the corporate world, the rate at which start-ups are experiencing it is exponential. A start-up strives to overcome powerful corporate inertia so that it can be perturbed enough for disruptive innovation. And if you are one, who struggles to keep pace with constant change (changing role expectations, business models and anything but everything), you SHOULD NOT even consider joining start-up because whatever your recruiter or anyone says, it would DEFINITELY happen. But if you are one of Darwin’s finches who has mastered the art of adaptability and would love to explore different shades of sky with no exact boundaries then you are the one!!

What drives you – Money or the opportunity to lead the business impact?

And this is one of the critical insights that I have personally drawn through my experience. If you are planning to join a start-up for some extra bucks, then you are sentencing yourself to a severe term of frustration and disappointment. Happiness that one would encounter on a salary day would be much lesser than the frustration lived through rest of the days. So, if you want to be there, be there for the right reasons. Be there to enjoy an opportunity to make business impact; be there to be unconventional; be there to stay ahead of the curve; be there to enjoy the roller-coaster!

So, do you have the X-factor?