One of my colleagues has been interviewing with a startup whose co-founder I worked for in a previous life. My first reaction was a “Hell yeah, I’d go work for that guy again.” But when the subject came up again this week I had other thoughts. Like this guy walked away from the business as quickly as he could. When the business eventually sold for like two or three hundred million, roughly half went straight into his pockets and hardly any of the wealth was spread amongst the employees whom had grown the business by several orders of magnitude over the previous few years.
My co-worker says that he sees the “Serial Entrepreneur” in this guy. I wonder what that really means. Maybe it’s my head cold, but I’m hard pressed to think of anyone that has followed up on a smashing success with another startup that could stand on its own. I would think very hard before going to work at a startup where the founder’s penalty for failure isn’t having to go find a real job. Especially if their offer wasn’t exceptional.
But that’s just me.
My office friend also tells me that they’ve also got the former CTO from the old company, whom I deeply respect and owe a huge dept of gratitude to for preventing me from making what would have been a colossal career blunder.
If only he’d been around to stop me the next time…
