Wright Seneres  0:00  
Hello Princeton spark listener.

Wright Seneres  0:03  
This is the full audio of you have a job offer from a startup. Now What?

Wright Seneres  0:06  
a workshop that Princeton Entrepreneurship council ran in February. Our thanks goes to the Center for Career Development, Jason Meyer, Tom Vander Schaaff, Rachel Yee and Greg Brooks for their participation. Thanks for listening.

Lauren Bender  0:20  
My name is Lauren Bender. I'm at the Princeton entrepreneurship Council. And in case you don't know what the Princeton entrepreneurship Council is, we our mission is really to support the entrepreneurship ecosystem throughout the Princeton community. So in partnership with Keller and other organizations we work with, you know, students, faculty, alumni. And so if you have any questions about entrepreneurship, you know, we're here to help you. We're in the eHub on the second floor. Um, what a couple of things that we do that I think you might find interesting. Oh, I'm not in. There you go.

Unknown Speaker  0:54  
This will be much easier to see.

Lauren Bender  0:56  
Okay, there. We have a platform called OfficeHours. If you need mentorship on your own startup or you know, entrepreneurial career advice, you just come to our website entrepreneurs.princeton.edu. And you can find a mentor and schedule some time to meet with them virtually. Or if you feel like going into New York, most of our mentors are in New York and some are happy to meet in person, but it's a really rich resource. If you don't see the mentor you're looking for, feel free to reach out for us to us and we can hopefully find somebody who better meets your needs. Um, we do a lot of events It Has anybody been to Tiger talks in the city before in New York. Okay, we do the tiger talks events. They're really interesting entrepreneurial topics, usually featuring entrepreneurial alumni as well as a faculty member. We have ticket trained free train tickets for students. So we make it as easy as possible for you to come and spend the evening with us. We have two webinars coming up about funding for your startup. So if anyone's thinking about doing a startup, um, you might enjoy these webinars. We have an event in New York City called Tiger talks about March 25. On my path to entrepreneurship, which you may find interesting. We do a lot of other things. But those are things that are coming up and we also have a podcast called The Spark. There are six of us and Anne-Marie is the back of the room. She's the executive director, especially anyone with life sciences. She's a real expertise there, although she's an expert on all aspects of entrepreneurship. I'm Neal who's in the back with the camera. He's our IT specialist who makes things happen. My name is Lauren Bender, I run the alumni entrepreneurs fund. I'm also working on skills based programming to help people who are entrepreneurial gain practical skills, you know, in their entrepreneurial career. And then Diane Don and right our other colleagues and we're all happy to help you. Um, you can connect with us, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, That's supposed to say we're everywhere. But that's not everywhere. But that's where we are on. So tonight's event is for people, how many people here have an offer from a startup? Just out of curiosity. Okay. Well, thank you and congratulations. So tonight is really, you have you have a job offer from a startup? How on earth do you evaluate it? It's hard enough to evaluate a regular job offer. But with startup, you have a lot more complexities in terms of your offered equity. And you've asked, and what does all this mean? What does it mean for my career? You know, I have 10 friends who went to Facebook, I know what their career looks like, but what does this mean for me? So, I'm really thrilled that we have these four amazing speakers here tonight. Take advantage of them. There's so much content to give you. Jason is adventure lawyer who works with startups and an entrepreneur. So there he can get he's gonna give you just a lot of technical information that's really important to evaluating a startup. Tom is a venture capitalist, he's going to talk to you about how to evaluate a company. And then Rachel and Greg work in the recruiting space, and really are going to talk to you about career path. As you know, as an entrepreneur, Rachel specifically graduated in 2019. So it's very close to your experience, and I think can share some of her experiences and decisions. So ideally, I know you guys are gonna have a lot of questions, but maybe if we could let each person give their presentation first, and then we've got time for QA afterwards. And then also everyone's going to hang out till 630. So that if you have one on one questions about your offer or things you're interested in, you should be able to speak with them. So with that, I'd like to introduce Jason Meyer, who's class of 1980, right? Yeah.

Unknown Speaker  4:58  
Ouch. I just

Unknown Speaker  4:59  
there was my Don't save. There we go. All right.

Unknown Speaker  5:11  
All right. Cool. Thank you.

Jason Meyer  5:14  
Hey, hi, everybody. Thanks for coming out in the rain. Princeton rain great to spend time with you. It on the question thing I think the time probably does demand what Lauren said, but like, I've totally lost you. Let me know I've lost you while I'm in the middle of talking. And the other thing is I'm in no hurry afterwards, you know can stick around and answer your questions. And my office is on that live stream. So you can always find me that way too. So, who the heck is this alone that they brought up

Unknown Speaker  5:48  
here?

Jason Meyer  5:51  
Here I get to add things to my after my after my titles. Lawyer I'm a certified compliance and ethics Professional. I've done a bunch of entrepreneurial stuff. Been in firm, big firms General Counsel for a venture funded company started, venture funded companies been on C suites ran things for your purposes. Probably the thing I'll warn you about most is the last bullet point that I added for you, which is an advanced warning which is when I was in your seats, I basically majored in WP RB. Now we don't have a major WP RB but that was pretty much how I spent my time and was program director there and then kept having ripples through my career in the audio world. And, and now I'm a dad, including dead people who are exactly your age. Both of those will be very important biographical points later on in my presentation, so I'm giving you this advanced warning. What I want to try and cover in the next 20 minutes is very high level stuff, which basically boils down to, okay, they sent me I've been talking to the startup or been talking to a venture funded company. They sent me a letter that says they want to hire me. What's with this letter? What's in here? What does it mean? It looks fine. Is it fine? How do I read it? And I want to try and give you a very high level view of the kind of stuff that's in that letter. So part of it is what you're being paid, and especially the equity or stock or piece of the action part of what you're being paid, right? You You know what the dollar is mean. And if it's with a startup or venture funded company, then probably those dollars are not as high as the dollars that your friends who are going to, you know, McKinsey or Bank of America are saying, but it's the rest of it you're interested in and we'll talk about that. Another thing that's in that letter is what kind of worker are you? What is your relationship to that company? We'll talk about that. We'll talk about who owns what, which is not quite as simple an issue as you might think, and then talk to them about your your freedom of movement. What else can I do while I work for these people? What will I be able to do when I'm no longer working for these people? Assuming that day comes? And at the end of it, I have one real big takeaway for you. So let's start with the money. Show me the money. Okay. Well, the letter is going to say, for a base salary of x, and you'll probably figure out what that means. And it'll say you're entitled to some benefits or it won't and that part will be pretty straightforward. Let's get right to the heart of the matter which is the part that isn't just cash or benefits. It is compensation in the form of a piece of the action. There are many different types of ways That companies attack this issue. I have myself written these letters in many cases, and my clients approach in that room for wave. Let me try and get it to a sort of simple level of definition. So let's say three different forms. There's good articles online that would say there's six or seven. Let me try and boil it down to three. All right, one is you get stuck. Okay, you get a small piece of the company, you have x shares, you know, you have 10 shares of our 10 million shares. Okay, well, you can figure out what that percentage is. Chances are, it won't just be here have some shares. It'll be I have shares, and I will hand them to you if various things happen. That would be restricted stock. So if you see phrases like restricted stock, they're talking about panning of the shares when something happens so we can talk about what those Some things are in just a minute. Another form is stock options. And for anyone who has seen the social network or any other popular accounts or been in this world, right, we all think options on options. So they give them the options your friends are asking, do you get options? What the heck are options? Okay? options are basically the right to buy shares of stock to buy a piece of ownership for a certain price somewhere in the future.

If it's worth it, that's because you may get a right to buy those shares at a price which when you get to the time when you can finally exercise that option. That price might be for more than that share of stock is worth in which case, you don't want to buy the options in which case they are what people call underwater, and is they're worthless to you. Why would I? Why would I pay the company $17 a share for stock that's worth $10 a share. It doesn't make sense. But that's how options work. I have the right to buy shares in the future for a price. And then the third one, and actually, I would say among my clients who tend to be privately held and not sort of big VC clients, just because by numbers, most entrepreneurial companies aren't sort of big VC companies, they are more Angel invest in more private invested, especially if you're really at the startup phase. So a lot of my clients use what we call Phantom equity, which is you don't own any of the company. You don't get to vote. You'll never get to vote. You're not an owner. But you have a piece of paper that says, If good things happen down the road, we'll pay you a bonus. And that bonus would be as if you own the stock. So for example, why do you want to own stock? Is it because you You want to cast your, you know, 10 votes, when there are a million votes being cast, I really want to catch my captain, you know, my vote counts doesn't really count that much. But if you do them stock, you are entitled to make that vote, you're entitled to get a lot of information about the company, they have to inform you the same way they inform their 20% 30% and 50%. shareholder, you got to get the same documents. You get to see the finances, you get to see the resolutions you get to go to the meetings. And this is why a lot of new employees in private equity and venture funded companies aren't given stock outright because they don't want you with meetings. And they don't necessarily want you seeing the whole board book. And they don't want you to seeing the financial statements because for you to do that as an employee can get awkward. So instead, they say look, the thing you really wanted out of this stock was when if and when when We sell this company for, you know, 10,000 times with anyone put into it, you want that payoff. And we will pay you a bonus as if you own the stock to give you that payoff. And that's how Phantom equity works.

Unknown Speaker  13:15  
Now, there's a lot more to it than that.

Jason Meyer  13:17  
One thing, basic rule, pardon me if you got this one already, but I'm surprised by the number of people I speak to who don't have this one down. Let's say they say to you, whatever this is Phantom equity options, whatever this represents. Currently, I have 4% of the company. For me, or or let's say you're coming in really early, it's like, well, it's 5% of the stock. You're gonna be a 5%. Owner, okay? Obviously, you're only a 5% owner, or rights to that 5% if it's one of these other forums today, when they sell more stock as they want to To raise more money, when the next round of financing comes along, when the venture capital guys come along, and they want, rightfully so a pretty good chunk, your half a percent becomes a quarter of a percent, or it becomes a 10th of a percent or less, right? numbers aren't percentages. And I'm still surprised at the number of people come to me even who are forming companies who are entrepreneurs, and they have to kind of explain to their friends, hey, the number, the percentage that number is now is not the percentage that number will necessarily be later, I'm giving you a number of shares, not a percentage of shares. That gets into things like anti dilution clauses and so forth. We don't need to go there for these purposes. The point is, just be aware of what you're getting. Now for all those forms of equity there various variables that come with them. Things like the price pricing on options, you Have the strike price or the exercise price that is, what can I buy that share for the typical structure would be your up you have the right you have an option to buy 1000 shares for what's the stock worth today on the day you're hired? It's worth $10 a share. Okay, well, you have the right to buy 1000 shares for $10 a share. So that's going to be worth it. When you help the company grow in value, you make the stock worth more money down the road, you'll want to buy those shares for 10 bucks because those shares will actually be worth 2550. Okay, that's one condition, which is the price and as I said before, if the price goes up, and then the price goes down, by the time you were able to exercise those options, those options may not be worth anything. So that's always a risk on stock options. Will the price be there when I needed to be there? So that goes in the dump counter. Before your strike price comes to granting investing. So you'll see these kinds of words a grant is when you when your rights to that start. So would be things like, we'll give you options to buy 10,000 shares a year, granted on the first day of the year, for five years. So it's 2000 shares a year. Okay. You have Zilch rights to any of that stuff. Before you that sense, before you get to the beginning, you know, at the beginning of the year, maybe you get 20% of that the next year 20%. But granting, you've got no rights to that stuff before the grant date, then you get vesting. vesting is the period of time over which you can actually exercise those rights that things sort of ripen. So typical structure would be I'll grant To 20% of this every year, and it will vest monthly over the course of that year, just basically means is I'm showing you piece of paper that says you get this. But unless you were around for five years, or three years or 10 years, you don't get a hold of it. Unless you're around for some minimum period of time, you get none of it. Or you'll get conditions, particularly on things like Phantom equity or restricted stock grants. You'll get variables which are things like you'll get this when you meet your you know, when you meet your key objectives, we're going to define some key objectives for you. And if you meet them, then we'll open up the door to this stuff. Or if you meet your sales target, then you get this stuff. Or if the company meets its sales target, then you get the stuff and you'll get this sort of series of conditions. So for any of these things, you need time to pass usually, and you need these conditions to be met. You have nothing.

So this is all the say, taking the equity is a gamble, it's a gamble that the company is going to increase in value, that you're going to be there long enough for all those conditions to be met. And that while you're there, you and the company will do what's necessary to meet all those conditions. The final thing is, there'll probably be some provision about how you lose all these rights, even if you're there long enough. For example, on Phantom stock options, it might be, but you also have to be an employee when we signed a contract saying we're going to sell the company. Right? If you decide to take that job on the other side of Brooklyn, you know, a month before we sell and you're gone, you get zero because you will have forfeited it because you're not here on the key date. Or if you violate company policy, and we fire you for cause you lose it all. Okay, so forfeiture is another possible thing. When you put all the together. There are more than three times three permutations on these things. You'll get multiple conditions, you'll get multiple vesting periods and grants, it can get very complex. This is sort of the basic vocabulary. And the question you should ask them that letter is how long am I prepared to wait? And let me think about that timeframe and what happens within that timeframe to evaluate whether this grant does me any good. It is a super high level for the equity portion of it. Let me hit some other things really quickly in the time I have left, and then I'll be here for questions. What kind of worker are you? three basic kinds of things to look for in the letter exempt, non exempt, an independent contractor? Non exempt means you're an hourly employee. Okay, I'm going to pay you by the hour I'm going to pay you by the day and that means you're entitled to overtime time and a half when you work more than eight hours. It's a day time and a half when you work more than 40 hours a week, etc, etc. But that also means you're probably not viewed as a particularly important person. Most of the time it will say you are an exempt employee. And a big thing companies do is to call employees exempt who frankly, they really shouldn't call exempt. They call everybody exempt. Okay. And this is something that departments of labor, the US and of states get aggressive about when they have administration's that say they want to be aggressive about it. But an exempt employee means they don't have to pay overtime. A warning, most sort of tech, coders, programmers, marketing sales, you're almost always going to wind up exempt. So it's like they may have you working 6070 hours a week, the amount of money I get is not going to change that switch because that means and then independent contractor means you have employees, you don't get any benefits. You have even fewer rights. They're not paying withholding They're not paying part of your taxes as they would if you were an employee, this is obviously highly popular, it makes the same talent cheaper to the company. It is also somewhat risky for you, and particularly risky for the company, if they're calling you an independent contractor, and they should. But the key thing from your point of view is, if you're being called an independent contractor, you need to recognize that you have even fewer rights than an employee does in the US system. You have basically you have no rights to benefits, you have very little rights to keep that job. You're on your own. You're a freelancer, you might be there for three years, but as long as they call you, an independent contractor, you're a freelancer and you can be gone tomorrow for no reason at all.

Thank you, um, who owns what you're going to see a lot in the letter or from a decent, lead drafted letter you should, about who owns what you'll see phrases like work for hire, you'll be asked to sell invention quality. These are both where you say whatever I do at work, the company owns all of it. Everything I do at work, everything I use the work computer for everything I use the work cell phone for everything I do sitting in the room, the company owns it. And they really do. So, the one thing I will tell you about is a lot of these offer letters will have some sort of schedule, we will say something like, you know, we own everything. Of course, you're allowed to have your side gigs. You know, you can do things on the weekends or at night as long as they don't interfere with your duty of loyalty. And you have listed them here. Okay, here's a hint. When you're given the opportunity to add a list to your letter of like the other things you have going on, or things you've written in the past that you want to declare you still own pile on. everything you can think of. Right every book idea you've ever had, whatever you're doing doing with your sister on the weekends where you're knitting something, you know, whatever it is, put it on that list. Because what will happen is, the people in HR will take that list, they will staple it to your letter, they'll put it in the file, no one will ever read it. It will have. I've never seen an instance where I had any effect on anyone actually being hired. But if down the road, your side gig is worth a lot of money. And your old employer says, Hey, didn't they develop that when they work for us? You want to pull that letter out and say, is it clear that we don't get it? So I'm going to take a few seconds to tell you about that one. You're also going to be asked to sign a confidentiality agreement or a non disclosure agreement. They are super important for legal reasons. They important for you if part of the reason those people are hiring you is an idea you have. You want them to sign a confidentiality agreement. These things really matter. I can get into the legal technicality of why but don't laugh them off and don't sign them like candy. They really count, and they're probably the most important weapon, your future employer has to protect their intellectual property. As a practical matter, they're going to be things in there that affect your freedom of movement, like a phrase that says you have no conflicts you won't go to work for, you know, you won't go to work that won't interfere with your time, it will take time away that you promised. It'll have a non solicitation clause, that means you're not going to poach, right? You're not going to like leave the company and then call on your client that you had at that company. You're not going to leave the company, and then call up your friend who is a co worker and say, Hey, come join me at this new gig. It will forbid you from doing that. And if you do that, you may be liable to that company for damages, or you may lose some of the stuff you've actually invested in earned. And finally, they will probably be a non compete clause. I could spend an hour on non compete clauses by themselves. And non compete clause says after I leave them company, I will not work in this industry for three months, six months a year in the city in the state, maybe in the country. Okay. They are very problematic legally, they are not popular in courts in California, and in fact, they're against the law. But if you're not in California, they still matter. And the main way they matter is your employer. Now your ex employer knows you're not going to go to the effort to fight them over it. So they can be a bullet because they've got more money than you do. And you need the new, you know, who left and now got money to hire a lawyer, right? So just the fact that it's in there carries a lot of weight, even if it may not stand up legally. So again, take those very seriously. This all takes me very rapidly to my one real big takeaway. I warned you, okay. I'm a radio guy, and I'm a dad. So I have a dad reference for You buy one big takeaway comes from the real big fish 1996 alternate top 10 hit sell out. And my takeaway is when you get that letter and you think, I don't think it'll be so bad because the man said that's the way it is. And the man said it don't get no better than this. That's what that moment when you get that letter is gonna be and my big takeaway to you is, don't sign that piece of paper tonight. Does anyone know the song at all? Come on, it was a real estate adventure. It was in FIFA two K, come on.

Unknown Speaker  26:37  
All right, thank you.

Unknown Speaker  26:39  
Look it up. Okay.

Jason Meyer  26:41  
Like I said, I'm a PRP, dad. Okay, we're gonna do. Here's the bottom line. The bottom line is, you can tell from my rush through years of legal training, that there's a ton going on in that offer letter. It's a lot of terms. There's a lot of things that are technical. There are a lot of things that look super important that aren't really going to wind up making that big of a difference. There are a lot of things that are snuck in there will make a huge difference. Okay? get someone to read it with you, preferably a lawyer who knows what they're doing, right? It's worth it. This is your career. This is your salary. And it could also affect what you do later on. If nothing else, My office is on Nassau Street. COMM CV. I'm happy to take a look at it and we'll see if you need need any more than that. But find somebody go to Career Services, get someone else to read that letter because there's a ton going on in it. Don't sign that piece of paper tonight. Get some advice.

Unknown Speaker  27:43  
Okay. Thank you. Thank you.

Lauren Bender  27:48  
So next up, Tom Vander Schaaff is going to so you're listening to one of the things Jason said when you're looking at this company. You're trying to figure out is it going to be around what are my Options going to be worth more, you know, when I invest in them in three years than they are today. And to figure that out, obviously, no one can know. But to make an more educated guess you actually have to evaluate the company that you're thinking about working for, as a VC would. And so we have Tom Vander shot who is going to walk us through that process. He is a VC for Edison partners here in Princeton, thank you, which

Unknown Speaker  28:28  
only have three slides.

Tom Vander Schaaff  28:30  
But I've already ruined my credibility, probably because I can't even get the month right. But that was stating that I've worked in principle activity for over 20 years. And before that, had worked in corporate finance, straight out of school as an undergrad 96 here, as well as worked on some entrepreneurial things as well, um, but uh, Edison were a you can think of us as a venture capital firm, we gather capital from institutions like India. And foundations invested in their behalf in private companies were long only strategy. So we're trying to buy low and sell high. And so we thought it might be instructive to share some of the ways that we think about evaluating companies so that you might use them. But again, we have a specific focus and I won't do it on the next slide. It may not just be space real. It may or may not be applicable to the situations that you're evaluating, but there'll be similar concepts. So, the advantage we have is we're investing in portfolios, right? We're building portfolios. In our case of 20 or more companies or pool of capital, you're basically making a single selection. That's a little more difficult. you're investing sweat equity instead of dollars. I do want to preface this by saying like, if your ideas you're going to magically pick the next Facebook and be the first five or 10th employee. You might as well start buying lotto tickets because that's a really difficult proposition. There's a lot of other reasons to go to startups. But the likelihood you out of the gate pick something that's life changing in a economic sense for yourself is, is relatively low. So you should bear that in mind as you go through your thought process. But there's lots of reasons to work with startups beyond just pure economics, but in terms of Edison's positioning and the kind of things that we find attractive. So we're a growth equity investor, we invest in companies that have already had some commercial traction. We look for companies in the b2b space, which means they sell solutions to businesses, their customers or businesses. And so we partner with entrepreneurs to help build those companies more quickly, and because They may have had a good deal of success. But they're struggling with how to build out their management teams or grown quickly. It's a stage of evolution in many companies where they may get to five to 20 million in revenue. And they need a partner like ourselves to help grow more quickly to higher goals. So we're not a startup investor in the pure sense of the sort of industry parlance, which is startup is basically pre revenue and, you know, a few employees most often, but they're also startups, it can be thousands of employees like Tesla, right, that was a start up, consumed millions, hundreds of millions and billions of dollars quite quickly, in just a very short period of time. That's only to say there's lots of different kinds of industries and startups that you could explore the way that we look at it investment. Again, we have the advantage of looking at Several hundred for each investment that we make. We look at different criteria, different aspects of the companies to better understand what fits well, either in terms of a return profile or a risk profile that we prefer. And so these are some examples of things that we look for. That may or may not be applicable for you. But we're usually the first institutional capital investing in a company. That means that they've been quite creative to get to where they have gotten to have little to no backing from others. That's usually a sign that the entrepreneurial team that's there has a lot of stick to itiveness and is, is well versed in their industry to build something of value with little to no outside help.

We're often fairly active investors so of a key part of our valuation is how well are we going to partner with the folks that are building the company because we're not day to day operators in the Business we're partnering and working as advisors with with people, which is a bit of a contrast from, I think the decisions that you are, are thinking about. But very similarly, I think you're going to want to focus most of your attention on the people that you're partnering with to get a better sense for who they are and what they'll be like to work with. But also, I think part that's probably applicable for both investors as well as employees, how much are they going to invest in you in terms of your learning, that's the intellectual building, and mentoring that you can have if you make the right selection, probably considerably more valuable than no offense to the equity you might get out of the box because you're going to be able to parlay that throughout your career. And so I would, I would have put a heavy onus on on evaluating people and making sure that they're up. There truly going to invest in you and mentor you. In the pay off may take some time. It's probably going to lead you to much, much higher heights over time. And then, you know, you can look at different things about the financial performance of companies. Our goal is to invest in companies that have gotten to some commercial success. So we've measured that by revenue, by growth of the business year over year. These are things that are important that will help establish for you some baseline of how the company is performing, and how well past results may not necessarily assure you of any future results kind of thing. It'll help you get a sense for what it could accomplish, particularly with capital in the future, and hopefully, build your equity value. So why don't I stop there? I guess. I guess we're not supposed to do this, but I'm gonna ask if there any questions on in particular about our business, how we look at companies Before we talk about some of the things I think you might look at as you consider joining startups

Lauren Bender  35:09  
if there was a question,

Unknown Speaker  35:11  
this is a fairly technical slide. Okay.

Tom Vander Schaaff  35:18  
So what I've offered you Here are a couple of samples. They're just ways that we will get both scoring companies, again, because we look at large volume as well as people. And it's I think a useful heuristic for you to consider is rather than using sort of anecdotal reasoning, or look across the breadth of your opportunities that you're considering, and use some objective measures, whatever it is that you're finding important about your goals, and the opportunity that you're considering. I recommend that you look at more than one First of all, and then look at how they compare and It's usually helpful to have a fairly disciplined, regimented way of doing so, because it'll help you more easily discern the pros and cons with each opportunity, but for instance, I tried to distill it. So this is these are the kinds of things on the left here that we might look at an accompany aspects of its market. Is it a growth market is an interesting market, whatever aspect of the market that may be appealing for you? Is the company currently or prospectively a leader in its market? Or is it very commoditized and having a difficult time differentiating itself? These are things that as an investor are important, and I think, for your sake, figuring out the longevity of the opportunity that you have in front of you. And is it a highly evolving marketplace could add to the excitement and learning or could be a warning sign of the risk levels. As I mentioned, growth and kind of traction in markets, those are easy things to measure if, if the companies will share enough information, so you need to ask pretty proactive, probing questions. They're not similar to the discussion around your employment letter, most companies are going to be relatively secretive about their information with prospective employees, they're not just going to tell you that they have X number of customers or y amount of revenue, the so you need to ask specific questions. And more often than not, you'll get at least a directional sense of the size and scale of the opportunity. And then you need to fit that with your own parameters of what you think are valuable, right? Like it's, it can be exciting if you're the getting at the ground floor, right? But you have to be cognizant that risk levels very, very different than if you're going to go join Google. Okay. Well, now But if you, you know, joined Google in 98, that a different story, right? So you have to be thinking about how and what your goals are. But so there's, there's those objective measures of the company. And you can go through each. As an investor, we go through pretty extensive looks at each functional area within a company that may be germane for you, depending on the role you're deciding upon in the company. So if you're doing something like development, you'll probably want to get into detail about the product and their architecture and their plans for the future because, but similarly, that may not be all that terribly interesting if you're anticipating joining a go to market function, sales or marketing. So I think these are fairly obvious things, but you want to learn as much as you can about the specific role. And the department that you're you're joining if I could re emphasize one critical point, though it's mostly about the people. The thing that you probably think through first is your goals. Right? I just listed a few. I think it's not all that terribly different than any other job search, right? You're going to want to figure out, is this going to be a learning experience? Is it going to be intellectually challenging or stimulating for you? The good news is most startup ventures are often as much by mistakes made and trying to recover from those as by success, but it's still a pretty neat space in which, in general, the opportunity to learn from mistakes is not like a lifetime time penalty, right? You're not permanently struggling in an industry if you're marked by failure. In fact, in some of the

more entrepreneurial networks, it's sort of a badge of honor to say you worked in three or four Failed companies. But that's not really what you want to do. But it's still some good learning experience. And then, so that's the kind of learning experience. Another key attribute could be, again, related to the people. Are these folks that you could envision working with quite some time? Are they going to afford you connections that are of value to you over the course of your career? This is one that I I personally didn't, didn't think heavily enough about when I came out of school. And I was just fortunate to fall into good relationships with people that some of the first folks that I've worked with at a school, I still regularly communicate and talk with and they've been huge of great value for me over the course of my career. So I'd encourage you to really think about each of the people you're talking with in the company on that basis as someone that you can see Helping you. And reciprocally, you helping them was more than just the initial job. You could have a lot of other bowls right with altruistic, change the world, fulfill some kind of mission. Because these are all things that you kind of have to self reflect and decide on. What's important is their alignment with the company's mission. Most companies, most of the companies that investors back, are there to build equity value, right? Like they're there to produce a product that they've turned, makes their company more valuable over time. And that's but there can be lots of double underline or triple underline businesses that have other goals. So that you have to consider do those align with your own personal goals over your lifetime. And then we talked about some aspects of the mercenary that can be quite quite profitable to work at a startup if you're fortunate enough to work at one Where the equity value goes up a great deal. As I said, the probabilities somewhat slanted, that there's a depending on the size and scale of the venture that you're joining. So if current incomes a big bonus for you, or you know, some other aspect of your earning potential that you're trying to maximize, just carefully think about whether the entity that you're joining is matching up your own goals on an economic sense, because there are a lot of differences potentially

Unknown Speaker  42:40  
like a woman, okay.

Tom Vander Schaaff  42:45  
So, I think those are, you know, some of the interesting ways I've seen again, encourage you to, to be fairly methodical, rather than just joining the cool thing I think is a huge grab. occation of folks to try to go join well known brands which have been in the consumer side that can be exciting. Most often those have a lot of weakness in their business, a lot of risk. So I'd encourage you to think of both the ups and the downs. But that was as best as I could go to try to 20 years of selection into 20 minutes but hopefully that was helpful

Lauren Bender  43:35  
that I made them pack all this experience into a short amount of time but I just there's so much to know that I wanted to give you have or have them really give you a flavor for everything. Um, and then you can ask questions. So now we we've sort of heard about you happy offer technically, is this a good offer online sign? Is this a company in an industry I think is going to prosper and give me the experience I want on and now Rachel and Greg are going to talk to you more about, you know, how does this impact your career. Um, and again, from a recruiters perspective, you're getting experience today that they're going to try to take you and put you somewhere else tomorrow and help you on your career path and they've seen who succeeds in startups and who doesn't. So really advice about how working for a startup Can you know, impact your career positively and think maybe to watch out for?

Unknown Speaker  44:36  
I think I can Is it okay if I sit for this?

Unknown Speaker  44:38  
Okay, absolutely.

Rachel Yee  44:42  
Hi, guys, so it's really exciting to be back. I know, actually, most of you in the room. How are you guys doing today? I know you guys just got back on campus. Um, yeah, so I'm drawing from a lot less experience. I've been working for essentially seven months but have garnered a lot of data points and I've learned a lot in a short amount of time. Um, I guess for those that don't know, me, I just graduated in 2019. I served as student body president last year. And I kind of fell into entrepreneurship, to be honest, I was pretty frustrated with how slow things move at our institution. And I was like, oh, if I can apply an entrepreneurial mindset, maybe that would make things go faster. So I went to New York Tiger track. And that's kind of how I was exposed to, for me what I thought was probably the basis of most of the entrepreneurial frameworks and also venture capital, which is kind of I can, I'll get into kind of the company that I'm working for now. But essentially, I got introduced to the company that I'm working for, through my thesis, which I was looking at status, reproduction, and in hiring and venture capital. So that's how I ended up at true I know, it's not a brand that I was familiar with. One I didn't even know that the industry of the executive search even existed. I was like, What is an executive search? What do they do? Essentially, it boils down to finding executives like CEOs, CFOs board members, and essentially finding the best in the market and placing them into companies. So a little bit about true, um, they are really like what was exciting to me is they are disrupting a pretty old industry. I mean, there are the Shrek firms, which you might have heard of, maybe not, I don't think I ever heard of them, but they're kind of the incumbents. And essentially, in the past seven years, they've become the seventh largest firm in North America, which is amazing. And in the past year alone, they have grown 64%, which I was like, that's an amazing group rate. Like I want to see why this is growing. And some of the companies that we work with are like Spotify glossier jewel, Google, like these companies are consumer. I mean, we do a lot of enterprise as well, but like exciting companies to see what they're looking for and exacts on and in terms of what I do on my day to day so I work for the parent company. So our platform has the executive search which What Greg does, but we're also launching a venture capital fund is what, what is what I'm working on for 90% of my day. And then we also have a CRM platform built specifically. It's kind of like a Salesforce, but especially, especially sorry, specifically for recruiters. And then we also have executive coaching, where an executive coaches will look in an executive team, figure out the gaps, and do agile action plans to figure out where to fill those gaps. Um, yeah, so that's essentially what I'm doing now. And Greg,

Greg Brooks  47:33  
yeah, absolutely. So that's a good example about a startup you do many things and your day to day can change quite often. I'm on the recruiting side of things. So when I started, we were doing quite a bit of strategic hiring. So really anywhere from a high level individual contributor, up through VP and then into the C suite. And one of the things that I think we hope to bring here is kind of the recruiter lens. When we initiate with one of our clients, you know, obviously, there's a enroll that needs to be filled, and there's a skill set behind it. But typically, there's different types of profiles that could potentially fit. And so what we do is chat with our clients throughout the course of our search about those different types of backgrounds, and see what resonates with them. And oftentimes, it's kind of an evolving process. But I think at the end of the day, what we've seen as people be successful, who have taken many paths, whether they be, you know, startup to startup or large company to start up or somewhere in between, and we work from companies, you know, anywhere from seed stage up through public, to, you know, typically they're in the technology sector, but that's across all practice areas. So hopefully, we can bring some sort of a lens in terms of the path you choose and how you'll be able to maneuver moving forward from there.

Rachel Yee  48:56  
Yeah, so this is essentially the framework we're going to try to get through in the next 15 minutes one criteria to negotiate and factors to consider which our speakers have already gone over, but we'll kind of reiterate some of them kind of long and short term benefits and implications and then personality factors to consider when thinking about Should I join a start up in the first place, and then go through some possible career trajectory as options.

Also, we just want to start with, so if you do have an offer, regardless if it's to a startup or not just the statistics alone are that only 7% of undergraduate women and 30% of undergraduate men even attempt to negotiate. So we included a framework that will be sent out after this. We didn't really want to take time, but this is kind of a little infographic for how to negotiate a salary. Um, so in terms of things that you can negotiate with a startup offer, things that I mean, think about, you can look at your offer acceptance deadline. I know some companies Send out excluding offers which can put a lot of pressure when you're kind of navigating, navigating different offers. So that is something you can always negotiate location that definitely depends on the company but that's something that you can negotiate well as well. Start Date my start date was set for four days after graduation, I pushed it back on the salary bonus structure, even a relocation stipend that's something that people don't often think about, but that is a cushion to get you started on fringe benefits that are like health related. Look for healthcare. Other fringe benefits that might be like a cell phone reimbursement or a gym reimbursement like all these things that you might not think about but like add up and paint a bigger picture for what you could be looking for equity which has already been gone over and even continued education like our company pays for up to it. $5,000 of continued education. So I took class on machine learning this fall, and I'm going to continue taking classes on my own time because I can get paid to learn. So that's something you should continue to keep in mind. Other factors to consider when you're thinking about your overall, I guess offer is think about the product and the team, the people that you'll be working with, I love the people that true like honestly, it's awesome. Like Greg has come with me. But like, I really look forward to going to work every day. And that's not something I thought I'd be able to say. I'm even thinking about your commute. If you're going to be commuting into SF like think about like, if it's an hour and a half commute, like, is that important to you? Like what kind of time do you want to be spending doing that, um, in terms of growth, thinking about your personal growth within the company, as well as your professional growth, which I would say later, we can talk about that and break them into two separate pieces. Also, even articulating what your concerns are is a really good exercise because Maybe that's an area of where you can continue to monitor within your first year. Vacation PTO. This is something we can probably talk about as well. But a lot of startups offer unlimited PTO, I think that is a double edged sword. A lot of people end up not even taking vacation time off when they have unlimited PTO. But that's something to consider. And then I'm thinking about your criteria and roadmap for promotions, like ask about that, know what the next steps are. And if they don't have that, maybe creating your own structure. And at the end of the day, it all comes down to a gut feeling after analyzing all the data points.

Greg Brooks  52:38  
I think just like an overarching part on all those points is sometimes it feels like you shouldn't ask these things or you shouldn't bring them up. It's going to be a negative. But I think oftentimes in the startup, if you're having the foresight to think through these things, they're going to be looking for individuals that you know are thinking outside the box and are not just Going with the status quo. Because I think ultimately, you know, your day to day, there's going to be a lot of kind of figuring things out and maneuvering. So if you're coming to the table, and you know, you know what your ideal situation is, and you're showing that you're already maneuvering, I think that that's generally a plus. You know, some things to consider. There's obviously, pluses and minuses with anything you're going to do in life, and especially in your career. So just kind of taking a look at, you know, breaking down early versus later in your career, if you do choose to go to a startup. You know, if you go to a startup, one of the big benefits and really what should be a driver for you is the immediate impact. So it's going to be a small team, you're going to be tasked with a lot of things. Typically every day is going to be a little bit different. And if you're the type of person that wants to be able to get in and kind of work hard and solve some problems, to really move the needle, you're probably gonna have a better opportunity to do that in a start up them a larger company. Anywhere, you're often gonna be working within a framework that's already been established. With that, you know, I think that there are, you know, some cons that come with it, obviously, work life balance is going to be a consideration. People in startups are working often very long hours through the weekends, etc. So, you know, with those benefits, you'd have to consider that. But there are other, you know, positive upsides including, you know, it's a high risk, high reward situation, I think we've talked about kind of the financial implications or the ability to grow a company, which is always a nice thing. So you know, ultimately, if you are putting in long hours, hopefully there should be some sort of payoff. You're also getting exposure to a lot of different components of the business. So if you're not quite sure what function you want to be a part of, if you're starting a startup, you're probably going to have a chance to get involved in many different components of the business. I think Rachel's a really good example. where she's come in and there's been, you know pivots in the things that we've done, and she's kind of rolled with the punches and then really contributed across different revenue lines for us. You know, the other thing to consider is that if you do join a startup and you're brought in for one specific thing, there's a possibility that you do get a little bit pigeonholed into one thing. So if it's a business focusing on one thing, and you're working on one component within that business, and you continue to go down that road, typically a startup is going to be somewhat unique by nature. So when you look to move from that company, if you've only been focusing in one niche in a niche business, then you're gonna have to find a way to kind of expand out of that, which we'll kind of get into a little bit later. Later in your career. You know, I think that there's a lot of pros especially if things are successful. You know, you're better equipped to start your own company, we see a lot of folks that are part of the business that scale successfully. And then they may decide that they want to go back to another business that is looking about the same as the one that they started. And they want to scale again, other people say, I've already done this work, we've already scaled it, you know, I'm ready to move on to a more mature company, perhaps I can control other businesses. So you do have some options there. And then from a con side, you know, later in your career, you could be worn out, I mean, you could really put for yourself into a startup that is viable for a long period of time and doesn't reach the level of success that you were hoping that it would. And then if you find yourself later in your career, and you spent all your time at this one startup and it hasn't developed then you need to find a way to kind of pivot out of that. So I think one of the considerations here is and I think we mentioned it before, you know with gut feeling is you will get a feeling when you start working for a startup how things are Developing, you know, is the leadership team doing the things that you would expect them to do for the business to be successful. And I think all of those things will be important for you to keep in mind throughout your time there to make sure that you're ultimately joining a successful organization or making the decision to pivot to another organization.

Rachel Yee  57:22  
Yes, so in terms of personality factors, when you're considering when you have an offer in hand, and maybe you're also juggling other competing offers as well is your risk tolerance. And depending on whether this is very early stage, or maybe a little bit later in growth stage, I think that from what I've observed, at least from our Princeton peers, people tend to skew risk. intolerant, I would say, for myself, I tend to mitigate risks. So when I was thinking through whether to accept an offer from a startup, I'm just kind of keeping that in mind and knowing that I probably Instructure when there is a lot of ambiguity, and that's something that you also have to ask yourself like, what is your comfort with ambiguity? Will you be able to operate or Will you shut down? Also, that comes with the ability to manage up? I think that it's a huge opportunity, when there's a lot of ambiguity and not a ton of structures to ask for what you need from, I guess, leadership and create your own structure. And that also comes from being able to read the leadership. I think that comes with EQ. I think that being able to understand, I guess how leadership teams work together is going to be very valuable skill and knowing. I think, for me, something that I'm still really developing is understanding, I guess, maybe the like, of course, on paper, there are direct reporting structures and you have your org chart, but like understanding maybe be informal, internal politics, like how do things actually get done? In a firm like that is something that you should be aware of. And if that's a skill that you need to tune up like that, maybe something that you want to work on. Again, ability to operate without structure. In these startups, there is a lot of ambiguity a lot of flux on, I didn't really have a rule, or a description, a job description. So being able to create that and define your own role, like that's going to be pivotal if you want to really succeed and add value to this company and also learn a ton in the process.

Greg Brooks  59:32  
Yeah, so, gravitas is kind of like an overused recruiting industry. Word and it The meaning is a little bit ambiguous, but it goes along with professional presence. So I think a key thing, especially early on in your career is, you know, when you're dealing with potential employers, while it's an interview, and while they're going to be asking you questions, it should also To be a conversation, these are people that you're going to be working with, this is an opportunity to show your personality. Ultimately, these are going to be small teams. So you know how you fit within kind of the social component of a startup is going to be important. And you'll develop that over your career. But I think, as an example, we do quite a bit of work in venture. We talked with quite a bit of folks coming out of investment banking, maybe one or two years in their career.

Unknown Speaker  1:00:31  
Next slide. Thanks.

Greg Brooks  1:00:39  
But I think what we see is sometimes, hey, this is an interview. I'm here to answer questions, and it doesn't become a conversation. But ultimately, the folks that are most successful, make it conversational, and the answers to the questions that the folks that you're chatting with come out in that conversational capacity. So I think it's something that's important to think about as I think people are getting Towards receiving questions from an interview, but really there's significant back and forth.

Unknown Speaker  1:01:09  
Exit options.

Greg Brooks  1:01:10  
So I think this, this is another one that we've kind of touched on here. So you've joined a start up, hopefully it's been successful, you've scaled it, we see quite a few individuals that will go back to startups and try to scale them at a similar level. startups are always looking to bring in individuals who have seen what they're hoping to see. So people who know the defense's that you're going to have to climb and kind of do unexpected things as you scale up from a revenue and size perspective. So you always have the option to go back and do that again. Again, you may scale a business and say I put in my work. Now I want to continue with a larger, more established company. Perhaps you want to inject kind of a startup mindset into a larger business that's looking to become a little bit more innovative in whatever space that you've been working. So you have your option there. You can consult. Certainly, you've seen quite a few things. And there's an appetite for that. And you don't need to necessarily commit yourself fully to that next step. You've seen what a successful startup looks like. So you now have tools to potentially start your own business. If you'd like to do that. You've gone through the motions, you've seen the things that you need to worry about. And then the other thing, which we say kind of jokingly is, you can retire because you've made so much money and everything's been so successful, which, you know, I think, at the end of the day, is a is a component and a benefit of potentially joining a startup.

Rachel Yee  1:02:37  
Yeah, so Greg touched upon this. And actually, I think this prepared me very well. Two weeks ago, I had a mini quarterlife crisis. So I collected 50 data points across many different industries and from people in all stages of their career and essentially these were the exit options that they said hey, look like you stopped still have in front of you. Of course, joining another start. up, I'm even pivoting. And I think that going back to grad school or getting your MBA is also a very good way to pivot your career. Going back and joining an established company, and as Greg said, consulting and really the bottom line, because we already have this foundational Princeton education, I think that I mean, we're all smart people we can think on our feet and really apply ourselves and all options are still on the table. So the main three takeaways I know we've thrown a lot of information at you would be one when you get the offer. If you can negotiate everything, the worst they can say is no. To you need to consider your own risk appetite and long term goals. I think by keeping your end goal in mind, even if what you end up doing right out of college is not your end goal. You can still work towards building skills that will get you closer to your end goal. Also, remember, if your first startup isn't successful, you can still leverage the experience to anything you do in the future. And also, I think that this is really important to be able to articulate and create a narrative. And whether it's successful or not successful, being able to have that narrative in mind and keeping that in mind as you're picking projects. And yeah, essentially just figuring out where you want to spend your time. And also just as a reassurance, you have many viable options. And I just want to reiterate, like, yes, we can give you a lot of guidelines, but at the end of the day, really going with your gut is probably going to serve you the best. Um, also, we don't have time for this, but we did include additional resources that will be sent out, I'll just fly through the slides really quickly, just to give you the overview of what would be in them but happy to discuss anything afterwards. Um, so this is kind of a framework for how I've helped other others evaluate on One friend had a come had offers from Microsoft that summer and a stealth healthcare startup and we were able to negotiate all three. So that was an interesting, I guess, like the framework that we use to kind of evaluate all three of the startups in what her end goal was, was interesting and helpful. Some tactical takeaways before the job kind of thinking through, like, if you want to sign them, there are five things right there. And then during the job, like once you've actually gotten on the job, this is kind of the framework that I've created for myself when I was like, well, am I in the right place? Do I need to reevaluate? Do I need to pivot? Um, I guess I can go through this really quickly, but three month check ins, whether it's with a peer or a mentor, that's super helpful. Um, I try to do hypothesis driven quarters. I test two to four things each quarter to see where I'm growing and pivot as necessary. Actually free writing reflection. I'm not the hugest writer, but like sitting down and actually forcing yourself to process what you've learned in the past three months has been really helpful. also creating a one page executive summary. I think this not only helps with like when you have to update your resume, but like being able to remember tangibly like, what have you contributed to the company, whether that's high low impact, you can evaluate that. And then also within this executive summary, mapping out your top three contributions, learning moments and areas of improvement, and this is kind of what my reflection our main one pager looks like. And then Oh, um, that I think we can probably stop here. But um, if you have moments of panic or doubt, which may happen from the people I've talked to that have worked in startups, like that is normal, and it's good to be able to take a step back and be like, hey, look, yeah, there's a lot of ambiguity and might be really overwhelming right now. But I can structure this in Yeah, so this is kind of a framework for how to deal with that. Okay, thank you. And

Lauren Bender  1:07:06  
if anyone is in here who didn't sign up, come give me your email address because, um, our, you know, presenters have all generously agreed that we can share their presentation. So if there's something that you missed,

Unknown Speaker  1:07:19  
um,

Lauren Bender  1:07:21  
so why don't we open it up just to a couple of, you know, questions to the whole group, and then

Unknown Speaker  1:07:25  
we can mingle a bit. Yes. Good question. I think it's

Unknown Speaker  1:07:32  
I'm something that I personally don't really know how to think about is how to negotiate. Salary versus equity. I'd like it if it's ever worth it to take more equity, salary cut, because I don't really know what to think like, how much am I worth to this startup? What's your framework for thinking about that? And do you ever think it's a good idea? First place Well, I

Jason Meyer  1:08:02  
take the first shot, but we all have our own perspectives on it. The first thing is that I want to re emphasize what Rachel said and with sort of at the heart of my presentation as well, which is do not hold back from negotiating. always feel free to ask, you know, don't make the assumption. I can't say anything, they'll hate me, they'll take the offer away, it's not going to get any better. even larger companies, even fairly rigid offers, there's places in there where they may be able to do something and and rare, rare that you lose anything by asking. So first of all, feel free to

Unknown Speaker  1:08:45  
um,

Jason Meyer  1:08:47  
the second thing is, you know, the, the equity versus cash thing is is absolutely the old burden the hand versus the two in the bush. The The there is a, I think, a sort of natural risk among people with an entrepreneurial mindset that it's like you want to go from broke, you want the equity you want the big payoff,

Unknown Speaker  1:09:13  
you'll always be

Jason Meyer  1:09:15  
munnings I talked about is different risk profiles. It's Rachel to write. If you're an entrepreneur mindset, you have a different approach to risk. And one of those things is you'll always bet on yourself. That's what makes you an entrepreneur. Always take developers. There are a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with you while you're Batman. So number one is you got to make sure you can afford it. And these days, you know, with affordability, especially with housing and student loans and things like that, thankfully, maybe student loans aren't as bad here as they are other places but

Unknown Speaker  1:09:50  
that

Jason Meyer  1:09:51  
is a real factor. The second thing is it I

Unknown Speaker  1:09:55  
have to say it took me

Jason Meyer  1:09:56  
decades to understand this. Which is a Never mind what they can find out about your job history, never mind anything else salary you get is the building block for the next salary, you get the next salary, next salary. So you accept a lower salary somewhat at your peril for what will happen to you in the future. And I guess my third answer would be given all the ways that equity may not come, right, if you decide to trade for equity. And actually, I think the more likely thing is you've got two offers. And one is more equity rich and the other is more salary rich. That's where you may want to play with. When does that when do I actually get that equity in my pocket? How long is it going to take? What are the conditions for it? What are the risks it doesn't come to? So one difference may be are we talking about options or Phantom? Or are you actually gonna, you know, am I really one of the first 10 people in You don't think you can succeed without me? In which case put up now let me see that equity now make me a shareholder, a real true shareholder who come to meetings and vote.

Unknown Speaker  1:11:11  
So the quality of that equity will also

Unknown Speaker  1:11:18  
really well.

Unknown Speaker  1:11:20  
Other questions and so another hand

Unknown Speaker  1:11:25  
so I'm a PhD student here. I haven't get an offer yet, but I did have some internship offer previously, my experience with edge RS are not good. They're not very responsive. For example, I get the internship offer is lie very close. And I have a lot of other interviews going on. I don't think I can make a decision at the deadline. So I interview email that interview, HR immediately I say, can you extend the offer at least like two weeks or something? She never replied back. Although I follow twice, she finally replied after the deadline.

Unknown Speaker  1:12:05  
So always says there are so many states can negotiate. But if they don't respond, what should we do?

Unknown Speaker  1:12:15  
So I'll jump in

Unknown Speaker  1:12:17  
bed, please.

Tom Vander Schaaff  1:12:20  
I guess one thing I give you confidence is one of the most extraordinarily tight

Unknown Speaker  1:12:26  
employment markets

Tom Vander Schaaff  1:12:29  
ever so, so I'm not sure I'd lose that much sleep over the circumstance you're describing. But if someone's not communicating with you, that sounds like a pretty good signal about how they treat their employees. And so I would, there's lots of things you should interpret about their approach that should influence how much you actually invest in.

Jason Meyer  1:12:55  
My mother was a real estate agent and from that perspective, If she taught me a rule that I keep thinking about, I thought about it again, which is basically, before you close the deal, that's as good a relationship as you'll ever have. Right? It's like, it's like before, before your fiance asked you to get engaged, right? That's good. That's, you know, you're in a strong position as you're going to get. So if that's the way you're being treated now, that is totally a signal about how that company treats its employees. And, you know, if it's a big employer, sometimes you decide to suck that up, but otherwise, it's a signal.

Unknown Speaker  1:13:37  
We had a question here. Yeah, I'm

Greg Brooks  1:13:40  
just gonna say if I could just say, in the beginning, when you're starting to chat with these companies, you can let them know that you're in other processes that'll be helpful for how they view you and then that will let them know that there is a timeline involved. And I would always make sure I get a phone number. So you can call them emails are forgotten. They go on to the Shuffle. So you can call people, people in HR will be fine with that sometimes, you know, things move on and outside of their hands. So never, never be hesitant to give them a call.

Jason Meyer  1:14:10  
Actually, I'm gonna throw up one more, one more thought. First of all, definitely get the cards of the people that you interview with or recruit you because sometimes you want that as a back channel. You also all have a back channel, which is highly powerful, that you may not fully realize, which is you are Princeton alumni. And I will tell you that there there has almost never been a time in my experience where I couldn't simply go, LinkedIn who at this company, went to Princeton and call them and say, I am at Princeton, or I have graduated from Princeton. I am considering something with your company. Can I just talk to you about the company and the nose will will be very few in number, and most other alumni will happily answer the phone for you. Take advantage of

Unknown Speaker  1:15:01  
Can I add to that phone call thing? Actually I are did I did have her phone number, but I had to pay a lot whether that's appropriate to call? No, I don't know.

Greg Brooks  1:15:12  
Yeah. Now you should. I mean, from my perspective, you absolutely should. Because worst case scenario, you you leave voicemail and at least you've tried to get to them immediately because you know, email can be, you know, a whole other form communication and if someone picks up their phone, then you'll have your answer right away. And it'll you'll be top of mind for that individual.

Unknown Speaker  1:15:32  
Question here though. Yeah, I guess my question would be more for Tom. So if you're looking at a startup, and you're evaluating based on criteria, like how much revenue they have, like what their growth rate is, but that information is not always publicly available, like you guys mentioned. What source do you look for to give you the hardest data you can find on the future of the company is crunchbase. Sometimes people debate the weight of the valuation Have the company as a good sign as to where it's going. Like what what is something that you can grasp on to?

Tom Vander Schaaff  1:16:09  
So, again, I I'd be shocked most startups are pretty loose with information. So I think okay, the verbal questioning is you're probably going to get directional ranges that are sufficient. Much. But there are lots of data sources of things I would look at for success markers are more like things like Glassdoor where you can measure how much hiring they're doing, how quickly they're growing, things that and then I look at their capital raising both their investors as well as amounts, you're probably not going to get valuation information that is particularly clean. That's stated it's usually not widely shared. But those would be the kind of success indicators that I would look at would be an employee. Accounts over time. And then capital raising depending on the stage consistency.

Lauren Bender  1:17:09  
You know, it's getting towards the end. So I want to make sure you guys have enough one on one time, because I'm guessing some of you in the room may have one on one questions. So, but as I said, I will send out the presentations to everyone who registered. If you didn't register, come find me and give me your email and I'll add you to the list. I want to thank our speakers, especially Rachel and Greg, who drove here in this terrible, terrible weather. And you guys did jack here, but a little bit less far

Unknown Speaker  1:17:36  
away. But I thank you very much. Anyway,

Unknown Speaker  1:17:38  
I would have walked.

Unknown Speaker  1:17:41  
I did walk in like as Neal shamed me into it.

Lauren Bender  1:17:44  
I had an umbrella. No, but thank you. And these are Princeton alums and resources for you. And honestly, you'll find that the Princeton network is great. Again, the entrepreneurship Council, we have office hours platform with a lot more alarms as well. Well, we're ready to help you if you have questions about an offer about it, about your career about a specific company about your own startup idea. We're all here to help you. So,

Unknown Speaker  1:18:10  
question about how to tap into the network. Yeah. Yeah,

Lauren Bender  1:18:18  
yeah, exactly. And thanks to all of you for coming out in this weather

Transcribed by https://otter.ai