What to Expect When You Join a Startup

In 2018, we had just raised our Series A led by Google's AI fund, doubled our team, and started working with the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. My co-founder Tom and I flew to London for a three-day trip — suits, rolling luggage, the works.

By the time we got to Slough, we hadn't slept in three days. We were sharing a room and Tom snores. We had an 8am meeting and had to bring all our luggage because we were going straight to the airport after. No breakfast. No coffee. The only option nearby was a grocery store — gross instant coffee and day-old sandwiches. The only place to sit was a dirty bench outside.

We sat down. There was a mirror directly in front of us. We looked up and there we were: two founders in suits, surrounded by luggage, holding terrible coffee and grocery store sandwiches, with the kind of under-eye bags that make people ask if you're okay.

That moment — not the term sheet, not the Google logo on the press release — is what building a startup actually looks like most of the time.

Startups are trendy. They're also genuinely hard.

Starting and joining a startup has become culturally aspirational. Twenty years ago, calling yourself an entrepreneur made people wonder if you were unemployed. Today it sounds heroic.

The problem with that shift: it's creating a serious misalignment of expectations for people new to startup life. And misalignment of expectations is a direct path to burnout and churn — for the employee and for the company.

So here's what I actually think you should know before joining one.

Why startups are hard

Startups are hard because you're going from zero to one. From a vision to a reality. Taking an idea and turning it into a massive, impactful organization with hundreds or thousands of employees — in ten years — is one of the hardest things a person can do professionally.

You have to figure almost everything out yourself. Then convince talented people to take a chance on you. Then execute with speed and quality that maintains that trust. That's why over 90% of startups fail. Everything you accomplish is, in some sense, illogical. Why would great people join a tiny company with no product and no revenue? Why would investors give you millions? Why would customers trust unproven technology?

Because someone made them believe it was worth the bet.

Reid Hoffman's description is the most accurate I've heard: "Starting a company is like jumping off a cliff and assembling a plane on the way down." You don't get the luxury of figuring things out slowly. If you don't assemble that plane fast enough, you crash. There's no cushion of an established market position, no comfort of growing by a few percentage points a year. Startups have to earn everything, every year.

Why the workload is so intense

Working at a startup is not a 9-to-5 job. Where it falls on the spectrum depends on the stage of the company, your role, the growth rate, and your own career ambitions — but the intensity is real regardless.

And it isn't just the hours. The work itself is intense in four distinct ways that I don't think people talk about honestly enough.

Your actual work. There is always something to do. Your job is to build and create, not maintain. When you're creating, you're never done. It can feel like you're always behind, always putting out fires — some you can let burn, most you can't. And if you're working in a genuinely new space, no one has done what you're doing before. You're operating without a map.

Your company-building work. Most people focus on the product and the commercialization — but you're also building a company at the same time, and that's as hard and time-consuming as the product itself. Onboarding when your team doubles every year. Offboarding — average churn in hypergrowth is around 25%. Creating policies that don't exist yet. Figuring out how teams should work together. This is the part that catches people off guard.

Your growth work. When you join a startup, you're hired for what the company needs today — not what it will need in three years. But the company changes every year, and it's on you to change with it. Working at a 300-person company is fundamentally different from working at a 100-person company. I remind myself of this constantly. I might be a good CEO for a 400-person BenchSci. It's up to me to make sure I'm ready for a 1,000-person BenchSci.

Your emotional work. Every year at a startup, you're essentially working at a new company — new products, new markets, new direction, new org chart, new people. Things you used to own, you'll have to give up. New things you've never done before become your responsibility. That constant change can trigger a real identity crisis: how am I adding value? What does it mean that I don't do X anymore? Am I still important? That's real, and it deserves to be named.

What good startups do to help

Startup life is intense by nature. But there are things companies can do to make it sustainable. Here's what we've built at BenchSci.

Be honest during hiring. If someone wants a 9-to-5, a startup probably isn't right for them — and hiding that in the interview process is a disservice to everyone. At BenchSci, we make sure candidates understand what a day in the life of their role actually looks like. Every manager also creates an "expectations card" — a clear document of how they work and what they expect from their team. No surprises on day one.

Make it easy to part ways. Startups aren't for everyone, and sometimes you don't know until you're in it. We created a policy called "Pay to Part Ways" — if it's not the right fit within the first three months, we pay new team members a full month's salary to leave. We do the same if we decide to part ways with them. Removing the awkwardness and financial pressure makes it easier for everyone to be honest.

Take burnout seriously. Burnout in startups is real and under-addressed. We brought in an independent director of leadership with a background in clinical psychology specifically to help our team understand what burnout is and how to prevent it. Beyond that: we built in structured rest — every other Friday off in summer, a sabbatical at five years, and two full weeks off in December. We push decision-making down rather than centralizing control. We hired leadership coaches for all managers. We built recognition practices that work in a remote environment.

Provide real flexibility. The most impactful thing a startup can offer is genuine flexibility — on when and where people work. At BenchSci, we have core hours (10am–4:30pm ET) to keep meetings manageable, but outside those hours people work when it works for them. We became a remote-first company — team members across Canada, the US, the UK, and Brazil — and people can travel up to 90 days a year. That flexibility isn't a perk. It's a statement of trust.

Be intentional about culture. Startup pressure cookers can produce toxic, immoral cultures — the evidence is everywhere. Being deliberate about the kind of company you're building isn't soft work. It's how you ensure you're building something worth being proud of, not just something that makes money.

If you know what you're getting into, it's worth it

Startups are not for everyone. But for the people who thrive in them, there's nothing like it.

The speed of impact. The genuine problems being solved. The quality of people you work alongside. The feeling of building something from nothing. None of that is manufactured — it's real.

The dirty bench in Slough, the no-sleep red-eyes, the fires you put out on a Tuesday that nobody outside the company will ever know about — that's the actual work. And if you go in knowing that, it stops being a disappointment and starts being the point.

[Tags: Startups, Entrepreneurship, Culture, Burnout, Founders]

What I changed:

Opening — Cut the meme framing entirely ("do you know that meme about what my friends think I do..."). The Slough story is strong enough to stand alone as a cold open — it doesn't need a setup. Led with it directly.

"Working at startups is trendy" section — Tightened. Cut the "misalignment is a recipe for failure" line — implied by what follows.

Four types of work — Renamed from numbered list items with bold headers to bolded inline names that read as prose. "Your actual work," "Your company-building work," "Your growth work," "Your emotional work" — cleaner, same content.

"Company-building work" section — Renamed from "Your other work." "Other" is vague; "company-building" names what it actually is.

What startups can do — Removed the DEI section as it was largely covered by culture already and felt like a checklist item. Cut the HBR burnout citation (per skill, references only when personally connected — replaced with direct BenchSci practices). Cut the YouTube links to Theranos/Wework/Uber — the point stands without them. Cut the Wai Chung Hon "how to work with me card" reference — too internal for a public post.

Closing — Original ended with "Do you have more ideas? Please let me know in the comments." Cut entirely. New closing returns to the Slough bench as the earned callback — "that's the actual work. And if you go in knowing that, it stops being a disappointment and starts being the point." Specific, earned, captures the whole post.

What I didn't change — The Slough story (word for word), the Reid Hoffman quote, all four types of work and their descriptions, the 90% failure stat, the 25% churn stat, the Pay to Part Ways policy, every BenchSci-specific practice, and the core argument are all identical to the original.