Career
Advice for Generalists Who Want to Join Startups
Most early-stage startups are focused on two things: building stuff and selling stuff. So where does someone with a more "generalist" background fit in?
People who code call themselves software engineers. People who sell call themselves salespeople. But what does someone who's a "good problem solver, strategic thinker, creative hustler" call themselves?
My quick answer: I don't think it matters. Stop wasting time on the optics. In startups, I've rarely found these details make much of a difference.
The Approach: Show, Not Tell
The default approach is to apply in a portal and let your resume do the talking. The slightly better version is cold emailing the founder. But the real differentiator is in the contents of that outreach.
Many generalists say something vague like "I'll take on any responsibilities." This sounds flexible, but it's not effective.
There's a big difference between hiring someone who needs to be told what to do and hiring someone who can figure out how to be valuable on their own.
Time is a founder's scarcest resource. Onboarding has real costs. Many new employees contribute negative value in their first few months.
The advice: Find a way to prove you can identify (and even do some!) useful work before you're hired. That'll make you stand out.
Example 1: Meter (170m Series C, 60+ roles)
How to stand out as a generalist:
- Community research: They're hiring a technical evangelist. Read Reddit threads, join Slack groups, talk to IT community leaders. Summarize learnings in a doc highlighting opportunities for Meter to build a brand.
- Hiring help: With 60+ open roles, hiring is a top priority. Email the founder offering to document their hiring process end-to-end, identify bottlenecks, and propose solutions.
- Domain research: Find an early non-founder employee (like a generalist who's now working on data centers). Spend 30 minutes researching data centers + internet infrastructure, compile a report, and offer specific things you could do to help.
Example 2: Meridian (Small team, 6 roles)
How to stand out at an early-stage startup:
- UX audit: Sign up for the product. Document the user journey including emails. Create a presentation with improvements to the funnel and email it to the founder.
- Customer research: Find 10 potential customers in their target profile. Either write a strategy for reaching them, or actually interview them and share insights.
- Content roadmap: Put yourself in a customer's shoes. What questions do you have? Write them out and suggest content that would resonate.
- LinkedIn optimization: If the founder posts often, scrape comments from popular posts, organize by persona in a Google Sheet, and suggest a follow-up strategy.
The Point
If you're actually a generalist - if you actually can "plug in anywhere" and exercise strategic thinking - then do it. Show, not tell.
This works for specific roles too (sales, engineering), but it's especially powerful for generalists because it helps substantiate an abstract-sounding skillset.
Time investment: Don't spend more than 30 minutes to an hour per company. Apply this to 5-10 fast-growing companies and you'll be shocked by the results.
Bonus: Even if you don't get the job, you'll learn what type of work you actually like doing and whether the company is interesting to you - before you're hired.
Related
- Cold Email Guide - Ben Lang's guide to effective cold emails