Starting Up from the Ground Up

In December of 2014, I was knee-deep in my second “real-world” job search which was slowly turning into a mild quarter-life crisis. I had spent a year and a half living the stereotypical “startup life.” I worked in a glamorous office in Soho where everyone was under the age of 30 and got free Ubers home every night — one time I even met Kanye West (he’s shorter than I had imagined, but that’s a story for another time). Ultimately, that company wasn’t the place for me and as a result, I decided this time around I was going *corporate.* When a friend urged me to meet with Nikki, the first employee at WayUp (what was then called Campus Job), I was hesitant, but I met Nikki in a Starbucks nonetheless.

To make a long story short, Nikki pitched the idea of WayUp, told me about her experience with the company so far and gave me some background on the two co-founders, Liz and JJ. I was immediately hooked, and she could tell.

I’ve been at WayUp for exactly one year now, and I can safely say that I’ve never regretted my choice. That being said, joining a small tech startup early on is hard –like really, really hard. I’ve learned more in the past year than I can say but, in the interest of time, I’ll let you in on the most important gems…

Seek and accept weapons you’ve never used

When I started at WayUp, there were two full-time employees and no set teams. I was technically joining the “Marketing Team”….which at the time was just Nikki. I’d never worked in marketing before, and I had definitely never helped build a company from the ground up. Not going to sugarcoat it: I was scared and I knew the learning curve was going to be tough.

This experience allowed me to learn one of the most invaluable skills in my career: You can’t predict anything and you’ll never know everything. One of our company’s core values is to seek and accept weapons you’ve never used. It’s a terrifying concept, but working in a small company environment allows you to understand your strengths and develop new ones faster: You’re forced to ask for help, learn from your team members and figure out what the hell you’re good at. You’re never going to know exactly what to do and sometimes you just have to throw shit at the wall and see what sticks. If you’re wrong, hopefully it wasn’t a million dollar slip up and no lives were on the line. (That being said, you should probably make sure there aren’t actually lives on the line.)

Sleep when you’re dead

You know that nervous energy you get during college finals in the library when you’re tired, but weirdly giddy at the same time? Your brain is alert, and all your friends are buzzing right along with you? That’s what a late night at a startup feels like. If you’re in the office past your bedtime, it’s because you’re so determined to finish a project that you simply can’t leave. You’re bouncing ideas off your neighbor, jamming out to the new Bieber album while you create a product roadmap about user engagement and your is CEO singing weird show-tunes to herself in the corner. That is when the magic happens and you won’t find it anywhere else, so as much as I Iove sleep (probably more than the average human), I would never trade working a few late nights for a 5 pm exit time.

Startups are a mess!

Recently, Jonathan Ehrlich, former Head of Marketing at Facebook and current Venture Capitalist investor came to chat with our team. “All companies are a mess,” he told us, “Even the ones that look perfect from the outside. But, they’re a beautiful mess and if you’ve got a shot, don’t fuck it up.”

When things get messy, you have to brush yourself off and keep going. In Startup Land, you might work all night on something that gets completely scrapped the next day. You might find yourself taking on projects that have nothing to do with your position. It can be incredibly frustrating and those are the times when the whole thing feels like one big, giant, horrifying mess. It’s how you deal with the mess that helps you grow. When you get through tough times with a dangerous “can-do” attitude, you’ll quickly gain an awesome sense of leadership. This is arguably the toughest part of working at a small startup, but it’s also the most valuable.

Don’t get me wrong, the startup lifestyle isn’t for everyone. We’ve all willingly sacrificed a few things here and there to help build this business, but watching this company grow from a team of 3 to a team of 30 is proof enough that when you’ve got that shot, you go for it, and you go for it together. If you do decide that joining a startup is the right move, I promise that you will not learn faster, work harder or have more fun anywhere else.