Ask HN: How did you land an early job at a future Unicorn?

4 points by nosduhz 6y ago ↗ HN

I'm using the word Unicorn loosely here.

For those that were first/early employees of eventually very successful companies, how'd you hear about and get the job?

3 comments

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[deleted] 6y ago ↗

(comment deleted)

creatornator 6y ago ↗

My first co-op in 2016 was 6 months at Desktop Metal. They're worth at least $1.5B (Forbes article from 2019). I got the co-op through school--Northeastern has a well established co-op program and they have lots of connections to companies looking to hire college students. I'm pretty sure I found it through the school's own career planning tool. When I joined they had only been in business for around a year and half but were already doing very well in the metal additive manufacturing space.

dpeck 6y ago ↗

early is going to depend on what you mean by early, but first means you either know the founder(s) or you know a friend of the founder(s). Generally you will have worked with them in the past.

My last one we weren't a unicorn (though did aspire to be :)) and I think we were a year or so in before anyone was hired that there wasn't an existing connection to.