👋🏾 Hi friends!

There is something very odd about sitting in a park on a Saturday afternoon in September in the UK and having to find the shade because it is just. that. hot.

I’m now praying for a time when I don’t have to start off these newsletters with a nod to the weather (though no doubt I’ll just complain about how cold it is instead).

In this weeks Off Balance, I’ll be chatting about:

🔬 The UK’s return to the Horizon programme.
🚀 How to transition your career into startups.
👮🏾 Term Sheets and Control.

Also if you have any feedback or if there’s something you’re desperate to see me include, just reply to this mail or ping me online - I’m very open to conversations.

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Now let’s get into it.

Broaden Your Horizons

Anyone that knows anything about me will know I am no fan of the UK’s decision to leave the EU. After all, I studied languages at university and my wife is Italian.

And sometimes the stupidity of the whole thing - at least in my opinion - is brought into sharp relief when we find ourselves celebrating winning back something we should never have lost in the first place.

A case in point is the UK’s return to membership of the Horizon programme.

The country’s scientific community has been in limbo for the last few years as they remained frozen out of the programme as a result of wrangling over Brexit between the UK and EU.

Some scientists have complained that the hiatus has led to damage to relationships, losses in funding and the ability to collaborate with the scientific community on the continent in the same way.

As scientific progress is very much an ‘on the shoulders of giants’ endeavour whereby advancement is often as a result of building on the research of other scientists in the same field, being locked out of such an important programme has definitely hindered researchers here in the UK.

But as universities start priming researchers to apply for grant funding, in this particular case it seems that the pragmatism has overruled emotion and a rational approach has prevailed.

You may be asking yourself why I’m even covering this here - it doesn’t feel like that much of a startup issue, right?

Well the reality is that we often only think about startups from the perspective of software businesses that don’t seem to have that much science behind them.

But there are a large number of deeptech ventures that not only may have been born out of large research projects, but continue to be dependent on them to push the envelope even further.

These may be businesses in fields as diverse as biotechs, quantum computing, spacetech or AI. So it is essential for those companies to have access to the latest research - and researchers - in these various fields.

According to the Russel Group, 2,000 UK businesses participated in Horizon 2020 and secured awards of 1.4bn Euro. 60% of the businesses were SMEs and received 840m Euro of that total funding.

This is a win for the startup ecosystem here in the UK, it’s just a shame that we needlessly lost a couple of years of progress in the process.

How can did I add value?

One of the questions I’m frequently asked is how to break into startups.

Whilst ordinarily this sort of a question may come from someone at the start of their career, I occasionally get asked the same thing by someone who is quite progressed along their career path.

And when this is the case, they are often trying to make the transition from a large corporate and find it difficult to understand why their credentials aren’t having the traction they would expect them to have.

I had one such conversation with a switched on finance director at a well known listed company in the finance space recently. A lot of our discussion is pretty applicable to anyone coming out of a corporate who’s looking to move into startups.

Here are some of the questions I’d pose and some of the pointers I’d give:

Why do you want to work with startups at all?
Let’s face it, they don’t have much money, they are notoriously chaotic and lack structure.

Pretty much the opposite of working with a larger corporate or multinational.

Here are some of the best reasons you might want to consider taking the leap into an early stage business:

• Your a generalist and want to have more diversity in your role.

• You are considering launching your own business and want to get some experience.

• You want to learn new skill sets on the fly.

• You’re interested in technology and innovation and want to be part of that ecosystem.

The wrong reasons are money or ‘glory’ - the chances of you picking a startup that is going to ‘make it’ are pretty low.

You may end up kicking yourself and asking why you ever made that jump when your last month’s salary doesn’t get paid after taking a 30% drop in salary to join in the first place.

You may have been top dog before, but in a startup, you know nothing.
I have seen a lot of founders make the mistake of bringing in someone with a corporate background only to find that they are unproductive or completely out of their depth.

Startups are built with scarce resources. The likelihood is that in a corporate, you will have been a cog in a rather large machine.

This means that there will have been a whole infrastructure around you that will have carried a lot of the load, probably without you even realising.

But in a startup, you’re having to do everything from start to finish. And there is not an insignificant chance that someone that is - in theory at least - way more junior than you and has much more experience of the multitude of processes you’re now faced with.

You have to actively unlearn a lot of the stuff you would have picked up in corporate life.

There is no-one else to cover your backside, no machine to fall back on, no team that masks some of your knowledge gaps.

It’s just you… naked and alone.

(OK maybe not quite naked or alone, but you get my drift).

How do you find a startup to work with?
I remember a graduate asking me how to know if you’d chosen the right startup to work with, i.e. whether you’ve picked the next unicorn.

The simple answer?

You don’t.

So actually, if you are looking to get started working with early stage businesses, you may as well pick any.

But here are some good places to look:

• Otta

• Work In Startups

• UK Startup Jobs

• LinkedIn

• Wellfound

• AngelList

• Y Combinator

• Founders Factory

Or, and this is my favourite, look for companies you’d really like to work for and find a connection of a connection to give you a warm intro. Either that or just cold email the founder and explain why you’d like to work with them and what value you could add.

Similarly, you can look at VC fund websites to see if they have portfolio companies that are recruiting, or just reach out to people who might be willing to have a coffee and put in a good word.

The reality is that a bit of hustle, especially when you know that you don’t have the sort of experience that is going to make you a shoe in for your ideal role.

What sort of role should I look for?
Frankly whichever makes most sense for you and the startup. If you have a finance background it might be a Head of Finance, or Controller. If it’s marketing it might be Associate or Head of Content.

The point is that you shouldn’t be too picky over title or even scope of the role.

Just get in and get your hands dirty.

That way you start building up experience, whether that’s in finance, ops, marketing or something else altogether like product.

The great thing about startups is that, unlike with corporates, people move on regularly and often. There is no stigma attached to being in a role for a year or two and then jumping to the next opportunity.

Startups don’t attract ‘lifers’ because as they grow, the roles and needs morph quickly. The manager you hired yesterday, may not be the leader you need tomorrow.

One thing that you have to get comfortable with is that, until you have built up your credentials, you may need to come in at a slightly more junior level than you expect in order that you can gain the knowledge and experience that you need to navigate early stage businesses.

Be prepared to get bitten by the bug.
It is very rare that I see someone go from startups back into a corporate role.

Most people when given the opportunity to explore the phase space of their skills and areas of interest are loathe to return to ‘nine to five’ in the traditional sense.

But it is worth remembering that startups aren’t for everyone.

If you are someone that likes process, likes routine, likes stability, likes structure and needs a team around them to shine, you may not love working in a startup.

And that’s also ok.

I know that, conversely, I would be absolutely AWFUL working for a corporate having spent close to a decade with early stage businesses and two decades with entrepreneurial ones.

I love the autonomy, the ability to explore new ideas, new technologies and be able to solve different problems on a daily basis. I also am not great with authority 😬 so would struggle in a slow, bureaucratic organisation.

What about you? Have you made the transition from corporate into a startup - how did you find the move?