I have IB and buyside experience. I'm thinking about greener pastures in the startup world. What are the "best" positions to target at startups? Best in terms of career mobility and how valuable you are. Most of the postings I see online are for late-stage startups that are looking to fill specific business roles. Should I look for corporate strategy titles?
Also, is it true that business roles (strategy, finance, operations) take a backseat to engineering roles/product management at tech startups?
"Best" in terms of how valuable you are: Founder, co-founder.
If that's not the answer you're looking for then second answer would be sales (if we're talking non-technical roles). This can be customer sales, selling an investor on financing terms, selling a new hire on why they should work for you, selling a partnership deal, sell sell sell.
If you're strategic, can sell, and can execute on ideas you'll be valuable. Startups don't need excel jockeys but knowing how to build simple models helps. Also, I wouldn't put much emphasis on the title.
As far as business roles taking back seat to engineers - not really. They drive each other. Engineer/product team pushes new feature, business sells it, gets feedback, relays feedback to engineers, engineers fix/update, business sells again and the cycle continues.
That makes sense. I guess the closer to the founders the better.
Aside from sales, are the other front-office business roles - marketing, business development, strategy equally good and I should honestly just choose based on my interest? I'm coming from a finance industry mindset where one would rank IB above accounting above FP&A, etc. Not sure if there's a similar ranking in the startup world. I do see some strategy roles asking for ex-IB or PE people, maybe I fit in there
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