How to onboard to your new role at a startup
5 tactics to get up to speed quickly
Over the past few months, I've had several people ask me about onboarding to their new business roles at startups. To me, that’s good signal that I should write an article!
I onboarded myself to a new startup ~2 years ago, and looking back, there’s a lot I’d do differently. More recently, I’ve helped new folks joining my team onboard as well.
There are 5 big recommendations I make to new hires:
In general, this should be useful for someone starting in a business-focused (i.e., not product or engineering) role at a startup. If you’re reading this as a PM or engineer or data scientist, consider yourself warned! (though some of this should still be useful).
Let's dive in!
Build a list of key terms
One common pitfall for newcomers is not understanding the specific terminology that’s used in your new job. If you don’t understand the terminology (e.g., “PR”, “diff”, “Pubsub”, etc.) you can feel lost and out of the loop.
The fix? Write down every unfamiliar word you encounter.
This can be done in any format during meetings, but over time, your goal should be to build an exhaustive glossary of terms. Some things will be easy to define (i.e., “what’s an API”) some things will be tricker (i.e., "why does our CEO say dub dub dub when he’s talking about our website”) but unless you face it head on, you’ll risk being embarrassed when you’re 3 - 4 months in.
Some words or phrases will be easy to define, some won’t. If you can’t easily define a term on on the internet, ask someone else at your company.
Ai tools (ChatgGPT) can also be extremely useful. You can paste in a whole list of terms, with a prompt like this:
“Help me create a glossary for these terms, within the context of ________, my startup in the _______ space”
…and it’ll spit out a full glossary for you.
Once you have this list, share it with your manager or peers! Chances are they’ll appreciate your initiative and be eager to help you improve it. Over time, it can be a very useful resource for other new hires.
Learn how to demo the product
Another huge failure mode for business hires: a lack of understanding of the product.
This is advice you’ll get from almost everyone, but it’s hard to pin down. What does it mean to “know the product”? Where do you draw the line?
I think the best definition for “knowing the product” is being able to demo it well. If you’re alone on a sales or partnership call (or if you’re just showing it to your friends), you should be able to speak confidently on what it does, why someone should use it, and answer follow-up questions.
Start by watching demos from various sources (public-facing content, internal videos, recorded sales calls, etc.). Then, start joining some live calls to see how the best sellers & spokespeople for your production position it.
Then start practicing your own demo. Ask anyone who’s good at demoing (sellers, PMs, etc.) to help you practice - chances are they’ll be super excited that someone wants to learn, and offer great feedback.
From there, keep refining your demo until you're confident, then find ways to lead external demos. It’s okay to "good enough" rather than perfect, but the effort will make a huge difference, build credibility and make make you self-sufficient in any partnership or sales-adjacent work.
Get some quick (and dirty) wins
The death spiral for new hires is that they don’t build trust early, so no one gives them things to do.
You want to very quickly be in a position where people are bringing you problems to solve, rather than having to find work. If you’re a month into an ops / strategy role and you don’t have people (other than your manager) regularly asking you for help, then you’re in trouble.
The best way to avoid this position is to track up some early wins that demonstrate your competence. Focus on small, tough, unsexy problems that you can solve quickly.
Great examples of this include:
Proactively organizing company files
Building a 1-pager on a competitor
Fixing the company’s room scheduling system
Cranking out a few SEO blog posts
The point of these isn’t necessarily to be super impactful; the goal is to take care of something that someone else never got around to, and make them say “wow, that was awesome. I wonder what else they could help me with?”.
You should engage with your team to find these opportunities. Ask your manager or peers where you can help immediately, or which lingering items you could just take care of.
Soon enough, you’ll have a bunch of people trying to give you work - which is great! Now you can start to be choosy about what you take on.
Frame the big picture
Once you've secured some quick wins, it's easy to get bogged down by small tasks. To avoid this, you need to understand the company's broader goals and start to seek impactful work.
The easiest way to start to understand “the big picture” is to study key company documents: board notes, all-hands slides, financials, and strategy documents. These should give you a good sense of where priorities are.
There are a few other good heuristics you can use:
Where does the CEO spend the most time?
What do people seem the most stressed about?
Which functions seem “underwater”?
Once you start to formulate your own hypothesis about the company's biggest problems and focus areas, you should test them with your manager and peers. Again, this sort of documentation / effort is generally very appreciated - it shows that you’re going out of your way to understand the business.
Once you have a sense of these problems, start to explore ways you could help. Even without subject matter expertise, you could probably be useful as a project manager, analyst, or just an extra set of hands to write copy.
Focus on relationships
The biggest “win” you can book in the first 90 days is creating strong relationships with your peers. If you end your first few months feeling like your have friends & advocates in the org, you’re going to have a great time in your role.
Even if they’re busy, people love to get to know new people. Don’t be shy about scheduling 1:1s with people across the company (even if they don’t work closely to your function). To be clear, that doesn’t necessarily mean you should throw time on every function lead’s calendar; you should be egalitarian with your outreach, and take a genuine interest in getting to know the whole team.
While you’re doing this, find ways to make an impact beyond your specific role. Ask people what they’d like to see fixed, or what you can help with and take a few of those tasks on (this is related to point #3).
Another great way to build relationships is taking the lead on small, company-wide, fun events. At most startups, there aren’t a ton of organized happy hours or dinners or team outings - so make these happen! People love more chances to interact with their coworkers (especially when someone else plans it).
These sort of things will get harder to do as you get more bogged down with work. Plus, it’s embarrassing to admit that you don’t really know someone after 6 months in the role… so take the opportunity to meet people early. It’s fun, and pays off big time down the line.
Closing thoughts
Your manager will probably give you much more specific tips on how to get up to speed, but these tactics should be useful in pretty much any company or environment.
A few other, more specific things you’ll want to figure out early, including:
How to approach task management in a new role (more on that here)
What to do with your options & equity (ask a trusted peer early on)
What you’re hoping to get out of the role (more on this coming soon)
One last thought: #1 piece of advice I’d give is to get all of your “dumb questions” out of the way. As your onboarding, you have a complete license to look like an idiot. After a few months… not so much. (I’ve learned this the hard way)
Hopefully this helps you get up to speed quickly! Please leave any questions / suggested resources below :)
Thanks to Statsig for employing me (note - this is a test for Statsig SEO).