A quick 10-second overview of the backstory is that I owned a collection agency for 10 years. During that time I fell in love with software development. I sold my collection agency in late 2019 to pursue a debt collection software startup. Currently I own a very small SaaS company. The accelerator that I'm working with would like to see me raise funds but I really want experience working with a team of other Developers, that is where I expect to find the most personal and professional growth.
Even if I wasn't building out a startup or looking to get involved with someone else's startup - I would still probably be coding 12 hours per day just because it's what I love.
I don't think it would be hard to raise VC funds for my company. A lot of people have expressed interest but I don't want to become a glorified software salesman when I only desire to improve as an engineer.
I decided that I would try to get a job at another startup so I can get some team experience and decide if that's the path I want to take with my company in the future.
I just aced a 3 part engineering interview with an interesting startup. I was expecting to hear back with a job offer but instead I heard back with a statement that some of the people at the company think that it's weird that I'm leaving a Founder position to work for someone else's startup. We talked about this at length during the interview and I thought I did a good job of explaining myself.
Granted - I only did one interview so I'm not upset that it didn't work out, maybe a little bit bummed out because I really liked the team but I can't be surprised.
The people at my accelerator keep hammering it home that I have a good idea, I have the industry specific experience required to pull this off, and I'm a technical founder with an MVP so I genuinely think that they are upset with me over this.
I'm just trying to figure out what's best for my career trajectory. I personally feel that I'm lacking some important team experience that I'm very self-conscious about. I don't even want to try to put together a team until I have some experience working under some other engineers on someone else's team. I'm not even sure that I want to be steering the ship because I'm tired of legal issues, payroll, hiring, regulations, benefit packages - I just want a code and build cool things with a cool team.
In a strange way I feel like I'm being pushed into building a startup that I'm not even sure I want to build. I'm so exhausted from running a company for the past decade and I'm so happy that I found 'my calling' for lack of a better term - but I'm feeling 'written off' as an engineer because of my non-traditional background as well as losing some respect from my accelerator because they think I'm crazy to look for a job as an engineer right now while I'm sitting on a startup.
I have employed over 400 people over the past decade. My favorite employees- the best employees that I've ever had were usually the people with larger ambitions. The people who wanted to own their own companies. The people who treated the job as if it were training to emulate my business model in the future. I'm really trying to figure out why I feel so lost as a startup founder or as an engineer who's just looking to continue to hone my craft.
I'm 30 and I don't have a formal CS degree because I dropped out of college. I can't help but feel like that's also a contributing factor to feeling displaced.
I'm not ungrateful, I know that a lot of people would kill to be in the very same position that I'm in at the moment. I'm just feeling lost and wondering if anyone here has any advice, recommendations, anecdotes to share, or anything to help me make sense of this situation.
I truly believe that if I get funded I have a shot at a really great long-term company but I also know that I really want the experience of working as an engineer for someone else's startup for a while and I don't think that is a step that I want to skip.
[link] [comments]
