Elevator Pitch
Starting your own business is a nightmare, and keeping that business running isn’t the easiest thing, either, no matter your role. Two bozos share their experiences working for a tech start-up: the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Description
Raj Singh and Ryan Price worked at a tech start-up together for over 4 years. For Ryan, it was his first job out of grad school; for Raj, it was the first job where he knew he could make a difference. For both, it was four years of constant hardship and learning. From data quality issues, to 3 AM debugging sessions, to a complete lack of automation, we share our story of the lessons we’ve learned being caught up in the culture craze, and the roads we paved towards a better work-life balance along the way. We plan on buffering time for plenty of Q&A, so if you’ve ever been curious about the inner workings of the tech start-up scene (or heaven forbid, want to start your own company!), you won’t want to miss this session.
Notes
Technical requirements
There are no technical requirements for this talk, though there will be discussion about technical matters.
Why us?
Raj & I (Ryan) were thrown head-first into the tech start-up scene when our company began its life as a purchased business unit. We spent literal years working to improve our daily work lives, and simultaneously drive business value with the processes we put in place. Some talks by start-up-types spin their tales to obfuscate how difficult the journey is, or leave out the struggles entirely to focus on how they’re now billionaires. We don’t believe there’s any justice in that for the audience. We want to share the raw, full nature of the type of work we were engrossed in for so many years, and tell the full story, in all its grotesque beauty. We’re both immensely grateful for the experiences we had, and sharing those with others is something we love to do.