Pros
Exciting opportunity to make a meaningful impact at an ambitious company.
Passionate leadership aiming to disrupt a competitive market with a highly innovative platform.
Dynamic nature of the startup culture provides an excellent experience to develop personally and professionally.
My colleagues and leadership were highly capable and hardworking. Always looking for ways to improve their personal performance and help the group find success as well.
Innovative platform that could very well disrupt the established market.
Cons
This opportunity is not for everyone and after looking closely at my experience I think there are a few key challenges.
- There was a lot of turnover. I joined with six colleagues and after a few months only two of us remained.
- My colleagues positions were never backfilled, but the workload remained the same. This created personal challenges that I never fully adapted to. Always felt behind and lacking.
- There were a number of administrative tasks that need automation. (Leadership did acknowledge this, but still was dealt with by the time of my departure)
- It is a highly competitive market and there are established players that get the benefit of name recognition which provides some obstacles to winning business.
- At times there was significant pressure to perform. We experienced a significant down turn which led to increased pressure and monitoring (every single demo was graded). This was helpful in some aspects, but it also led to me putting more importance on getting a "passing grade" than having genuine conversations with our potential customers.