If You’re Interviewing With a Startup, Here Are Three Questions To Ask Their Investors
I’ve Spoken With Hundreds Of Potential Employees, Most Don’t Ask Everything They Could
The other day I was sitting in a New York City park, talking to a senior engineer who had an offer from an early stage startup we backed. His questions of me were pretty comprehensive — trying to understand our rationale for investing, getting a VC’s perspective on what they needed to accomplish for the next financing, and most importantly, gut-checking some important cultural attributes which mattered to him. Two days later, he accepted the offer to join!
I’ve written before about how much I enjoy participating in the hiring process and how I try to make it about the candidate picking the company, not the other way around. The candidate I mentioned above did one other thing, which I often employ when I’ve referencing an individual or doing diligence on a company. Finish up with the open-ended “is there anything I didn’t ask about but should have?” (another way of phrasing when trying to get smart about an industry, “If you were doing investor diligence on this company, what questions would you be asking that I failed to raise?”).
