Why I think everyone post college should start a startup
I'll never forget the moment. I was sitting in a office cubicle, working at a corporate company as a software engineer.
I came across a quote that I feel like everyone should read. Of course, it was from Paul Graham.
Now we look back on medieval peasants and wonder how they stood it. How grim it must have been to till the same fields your whole life with no hope of anything better, under the thumb of lords and priests you had to give all your surplus to and acknowledge as your masters. I wouldn't be surprised if one day people look back on what we consider a normal job in the same way. How grim it would be to commute every day to a cubicle in some soulless office complex, and be told what to do by someone you had to acknowledge as a boss—someone who could call you into their office and say "take a seat," and you'd sit! Imagine having to ask permission to release software to users. Imagine being sad on Sunday afternoons because the weekend was almost over, and tomorrow you'd have to get up and go to work. How did they stand it?
I remember sitting there, looking up at those fluorescent lights, and thinking to myself, "is this it?". I worked so hard to get into college, I worked so hard to play college sports, I worked so hard to get a job and I did it all for this? To sit in a cubicle, working for someone else, and be told what to do?
Sure I was working at at my dream job as a software engineer, but this was super corporate. I couldn't even release software to our non existing users, without asking permission from my boss. I hated it. I love my co workers, but I hated the work, it was soul crushing.
I remember one day sitting in the lunch room, talking with a colleague of mine, and he starting teasing me about being an entrepreneur. I remember telling him that I was going to start my own company, and he laughed at me.
This moment changed something in me. I realized that I was not going to be told what to do. I was going to be my own boss. I was going to be my own person. I was going to be an entrepreneur.
I had no idea though! I thought you had to have a genius idea to start a company. I also was super risk averse. I was willing to take risks, but I couldn't just quit my job without a backup plan? Right?
So I did what any 23 year old should do in my opinion. I started a company on the side for the sake of starting a company. My first company was Tesla Media & Design (Horrible name, I know). But It was simple. We were a full service marketing agency. We did everything from social media to web design.
I started it on the side as a solo founder while working as a full time software engineer. I was able to learn a lot about business, marketing, and sales. I was able to learn a lot about myself as well. Even after working 8 hours in an office, I was speeding home so I could work on my small little company.
And for being my first company, it was quite successful. Within 6 months, we were making about 100,000 ARR in revenue. The whole time I kept working at as a software engineer, while putting in 35-40 hours a week on this before and after work.
Why a side hustle is a great way to get started
Even though I was still a 9-5 employee, Tesla Media & Design was a great way to get started. I learned so much about starting a business. I learned how to sell to customers, I learned how to network and build relationships, and eventually I even had a team of 5 people working part time for me.
It's was such an easy way to get started with entrepreneurship. You just need to find your niche, and then you can start selling to customers. I focused on Google ads. I would charge $500 to set up the google ads account and then $1000 a month to manage and run the ads. They would also put in $1000-$3000 a month for the ad spend.
With this model, all I needed to return was $5000+ in month in revenue for my clients to make a profit. I did this for medical practices, a law firm, a luxury car dealership, and a few other clients.
If I had to suggest to someone in their early 20's how to get started with starting a business, I would always tell them to look at something that is working and just copy it. You don't need to build a spaceX or a Zip2 on your first try, just get your feet wet and start learning about building things.
But was this a startup?
What is a startup? By definition, a startup is "a newly established business", so technically Tesla Media & Design was a startup...
But It wasn't a real startup in my eyes. THe reasoning was because it was mostly service based, we didn't have a new product, and it wasn't truly scalable. I could only handle about 10 clients at a time without having to hire more people for every new customer we got. By my definition of a startup, it wasn't one.
For me a startup is a new business or company that is designed to grow very fast and achieve 1B in valuation in under 10 years.
Tesla Media & Design didn't fit this description, so I started looking for something that could fit this description.
Speed round of WunderGraph History
Since I want to focus this post on why startups, it's important that I share my story, but I want to do that at a later time, I will quickly speed round the history
- Met Jens online and starting working together
- Met Dustin through Open Source and he joined us
- Bjorn joined us from connection to Jens when they worked together
- Raised 3.0M in 2022 to start WunderGraph
- Pivoted in 2023 to GraphQL Federation. (Company was dying)
- Profitable, growing, expanding, and exciting news coming in 2025
So why a startup?
So now that you have my history of startups, let's talk a bit about why you should start a startup? For me, startups offer 4 things:
- Insane Experience
- Career Growth
- Personal Growth
- Fun
I truly don't think you can get these 4 things in a typical corporate environment.
Let's start with insane experience. If you join a early enough startup, you can learn more in a single year then you would with 5 years of experience at a typical corporate job. For me, a typical corporate job would mean being a software engineer and there isn't anything wrong with being a software engineer, but that's what the typical corporate job meant in my case. Funny enough, I would be make twice as much as a software engineer, vs a startup founder but it was never about the money for me.
At a startup, the reason you get so much experience so quickly is because you have to wear so many hats. Startups are a mix of controlled and uncontrolled chaos.
Controlled if you don't really have PMF(Product Market Fit) and uncontrolled if you achieved it. The biggest thing at a startup if you are "unlucky" is that you don't really have someone to hold your hand. I remember when we raised our seed round, and I was like "Oh shit... Now what?", Startups don't offer you guidelines or a ladder you can climb, you are suppose to figure out what moves the needle and than go do that.
For me, that is why startups offer you an insane amount of experience. By the very definition of "sink or swim", that's exactly what a startup is. You either figure out how to swim or you sink, and there isn't a lifeguard near by.
I've found that when humans are backed into a corner and need to survive or figure it out... we tend to actually do it and corporate environments don't offer this survival instinct.
During my time at WunderGraph, I've worn many hats to just get the damn plane off the ground, including:
- Software Engineer
- Head of Growth
- Customer Success
- Developer Advocate
- Demand Marketer
- Podcaster
- Event organizer
- Conference organizer
- Account Executive
- Sales Development Representative
- Procurement Officer
- Community liaison
- Chief Customer Officer
and many more... And this was all within 3 years. When I talk with people who I went to college with, I don't see the level of growth or knowledge they've gained since college. I don't mean this in a bad way or negative, but startups age you quicker, I've had buddies in the same engineering role since we've graduated and they see the world completely differently than I do, and it's not a bad thing, but just different.
If you want insane experience, join a startup, preferably one that has PMF or one that is just starting so you can help figure out PMF.
Career Growth
Career Growth even when you don't what you want to do in life?
When you are early at a startup you might be hired for a specific role, but you should expect to wear many hats. This was true when I worked at startups and even when I started my own startup. This is a huge benefit early in your career because it allows you to experience a lot of different things / skills in a "controlled" environment.
When you work at a startup you also get to work with so many different teams and get exposure to the front lines if you will.
Our engineers at WunderGraph get DIRECT access to our customers. They see who their code impacts and benefits. They build relationships and trust with our customers and this is something you don't get in a typical corporate environment.
Startups allow you to try and taste a lot of different things in a way thats not normally accessible. We're open about everything with our employees and this allows them to see and taste all aspects of the business, something that big companies usually don't do.
This is a huge plus if you are early in your career because you might not know what you want to spend the next 40 years of your life on, and startups give you a buffet of careers to try out and see which ones you like and want to pursue.
Failure is a good thing?
The thing about startups is that failure is actually celebrated! Failing actually isn't a bad thing at all.
Have you ever seen this scene from Meet the Robinson's?
This is how startup failures are celebrated.
Every startup founder who I know personally that has failed during their startup journey, I've seen them leapfrog into a successful role or company after their failure. The reasoning being that they had such a unique set of skills from their startup, that they were sought after.
Raising money, hiring, building a product, selling a product, all of these skills in themselves are entire roles at companies.
Working or building a startup allows you to experience all these skills in such a high speed way that it's like playing in the premier league. The Premier league is one of the best soccer leagues in the world and if you start your career at 18 and play in a first team until you are 21, you have more experience than 90% of professional footballers because of the pace and level you played at.
The same analogy can be applied for startups, and one thing that I've noticed from the biggest companies in the world is that they operate as a collection of startups. Facebook/Meta, Google, Apple, OpenAI, Spotify, Shopify, etc... all of these companies love hiring ex-founders/entrepreneurs and working at a startup gives you a leg up in this hiring process.
We have a joke among my startup friends that none of us could pass through a FAANG engineering interview, but since starting a startup, all of us have been recruited to work at FAANG because of our experience.
The worst thing about failing at a startup is that you'll have to go work that comfortable 9-5 FAANG job making 200K+. THat's legit the worst thing that could happen and even if you do fail, you'll get an easier time in applying for a job with your startup experience on your resume, than if you worked as a software engineer for a couple years at a corporate company.
So keep moving forward... and startups allow you to jump forward in your career. Knowledge wise and title wise.
Personal Growth
Personal growth is different from career growth because you are not your job, career, or startup. This took me sometime to realize this. Working at a startup and especially when you start one, it becomes really easy to let it overtake your life. There isn't a single day that goes by where I don't think about WunderGraph or what we can do next to push the needle forward. I thought as we get more successful, that maybe my mind would focus on other things, but I haven't seen it happen.
This becomes tricky because it's been said to not let something consume your life. Don't be obsessed with your job. They can replace you at any moment. Don't become obsessed with your company, it's just a company. These are some of the things / reasoning i've been told and my opinion on this is that it's wrong.
I think you should become obsessed. I think you should care. When did it become so wrong to care deeply about something? When you become obsessed with something, you see a sort of personal growth in yourself you haven't seen anywhere else. Obsession is always the difference between winning and losing. Maybe it's the athlete brain in me, but you'll always lose to the person who is more obsessed with their craft. So that's why if you start a startup or start working at one, you should really care about the company mission.
Every time I've see myself level up personally as a human, it was because I became obsessed with something. I truly believe in the mission of WunderGraph and my goal is to bring the ultimate API collaboration platform to life, and as a person I've grown 10x to who I was 3 years ago vs today.
Startups push you in a way that I don't see in a typical corporate environment and the way they do that is by not allowing you to slack. In a 250+ company, it's REALLY easy to coast by. Just do what is asked of you, be a really nice and easy person to work with, and you'll easily last at your job. At a startup, this isn't the case. You have to deliver and perform, because it's really easy to see when someone isn't performing.
These environments create growth in you as a person. Stressful and high pressure situations allow you to learn about what you can do as a person, and you should seek out these environments. Look for the challenge. Look for the unpaved road. Look for the uncharted course. These challanges and paths are very easily found in startups because everyone their is just trying to figure it out.
Figuring it out is where most of personal growth comes from and a startup allows you to do it at least 2x faster than you would at a typical job.
Fun
Imagine being sad on Sunday afternoons because the weekend was almost over, and tomorrow you'd have to get up and go to work. How did they stand it? - Paul Graham
Maybe it's me. Or maybe it's my startup friends who feel the same way. Or maybe it's just survivorship bias, but I haven't felt like this in 3 years. I used to get dread and anxiety on Sunday's because the next day I would have to go to work. Now I look forward to my Sunday's because in the evenings, I get to plan my week at WunderGraph.
I look forward to the week because I truly love our customers, my team, and my co-founders. I've built my perfect "job" and the best part? It's really freaking fun!
Every quarter we have new challenges. We have new targets to hit. We have new goals and objectives to hit. We have new things to figure out and it's a rush! We're in this boat together and our goal is take it to the moon.
Being apart of a team that believes in something is magical. We all want a sense of belonging. It's why we feel an emotional connection to our favorite sports team. It's why we love being an Alumni of your universities. Joining a startup allows you to create that connection to a mission, and it becomes fun to work. Fun because you are apart of the team building and putting this mission into the universe.
A perfect example?
Startups offer a sense of freedom, belonging, and fun that I haven't seen or experienced anywhere else. What is life if it's not fun? Even Elon Musk the richest person in the world gets fun and pleasure from working towards a mission thats bigger than himself. Look at all the people involved in this mission? They changed space travel. Look at the excitement they get throughout the video from being apart of something so amazing.
Final Thoughts
We most likely are very different and have different goals in life. Maybe startups are not for you. Maybe a startup is exactly what you are looking for. Startups and WunderGraph have changed my life in every way possible, personally and career wise. I wouldn't be who I am doing, or know what I know today if it's wasn't for WunderGraph. Each year I look back on myself and wonder how did I know so little last year. I can only attribute this to startup life. Take the plunge, try it out and see what you think.