My First Four Weeks At A Startup

tl;dr

People that share your work ethic and personal investment, long crunchy hours, but all marching towards a common goal.

Reflection

I got my degree in December of 2015. Since then, I've worked at a large corporation, a medium company trying to stay relevant, a small international company living on the edge of media app technology, and finally a startup.

Startups come in all shapes and sizes. This would be my first startup. I'm used to the conservative (not politically) corporate cultures that my father always prepared me for. The corporate I worked for was all too familiar. Sure, they let us wear what we wanted, but you felt judged more closely for it. I worked 8-5, Monday through Friday. It was safe, but uninteresting.

What it's like

Enter the wild-west frontier of startup culture. Got something that needs to be done and it's "not your job"? Do it anyway. Now it's your job. Yes, you already wear 3 other hats, but that's OK.

It's been fun, exciting, and challenging. I like a good challenge. This is also my first time using React. React is fun. I've used Angular and Vue before, but I feel somewhat more marketable knowing React.

I've gotten to use my corporate knowledge about DevOps and automate my deployment pipeline.

Corporate vs Startup

Corporate: We need to automate and go faster! "Great! Let's push this off until next year to keep the business salivating with features"

Startup: We need to automate and go faster! "Oh, I just merged that in. We're pushing to production now."

We just launched our early access program and we're just now ramping up new features towards our big launch at the beginning of next year.

The hours are long, but I'm enjoying it. I get to work with great people and play with all the tech I want.

What's the Startup?

Ever seen America's Funniest Videos? Think that, but bigger. We're disrupting video sweepstakes by giving away more prizes, more often.

Without sounding like too much of a salesman, we're giving away some pretty big money.

Weekly: Win up to $100
Monthly: Win up to $2000
End of Year: Win up to $50,000

It could be a video of anything. Your pets, some programming fails, anything. Get enough votes and you can win one of 5 prizes.

We are World's Greatest Videos

I would love love love for someone in the DEV community to win.

Right now, we need some data and traffic. I don't ask y'all for much, but if you have a minute, pop over and create an account. Watch some videos and vote on your favorites.

If you find some good ones, post them below. If you have some good content, WE NEED IT. Please upload and share. You'll automatically get a vote from me.

Right now our monthly winners are looking a little dry. Surely you all have some better videos?