How To Land A Startup Job: A Success Story, With Advice

Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley

This is the one book on the list that I think everyone needs to read, regardless of whether or not they’re an MBA student or working at a startup. It was recommended by more than one of the executives I consulted for advice on this article and was my personal favorite read this summer.”

Universal Principles of Design, by design guru William Lidwell

McAuley quotes Wealthfront VP of design Kate Aronowitz, who recommended the book: “It’s less about teaching someone to design, and more about the language of how it works. Understanding these principles will allow you to better spot what’s working and what’s not and give articulated feedback.”

Inspired: How To Create Products Customers Love, by Marty Cagan, a partner at Silicon Valley Product Group and former executive at eBay, AOL, Netscape, and Hewlett-Packard

Cagan lays out concepts in a clear, intuitive manner while delivering content that is highly practical and aimed at those operating in the real world.”

Data Smart: Using Data Science to Transform Information into Insight, by John Foreman, chief data scientist at email marketing firm MailChimp

Data Smart contains enough instruction to start running actual analyses right out the gate.”

• Wealthfront Engineering Blog posts by Avery Moon, Wealthfront’s VP of research and engineering and a former senior director of engineering at LinkedIn

It is really difficult to recommend a text that is sufficiently comprehensible while still accomplishing our goal of providing perspective on how to think like an engineer. Fortunately, Avery Moon . . . has published some really pithy blog posts on decentralized learning using data and the engineering-driven culture at Wealthfront that I think provide this perspective while being very accessible to non-engineers.

Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers, by Geoffrey A. Moore, organizational theorist and management consultant

This is one of those books that everyone in Silicon Valley has read (probably more than once). Geoffrey Moore shows how successful technology product adoption follows a pattern called the ‘Technology Adoption Life Cycle.’”

Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist, by Brad Feld, long-time early-stage investor and entrepreneur, and VC Jason Mendelson

Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson explain the ins and outs of venture capital from the perspective of the entrepreneur, demystifying the term sheet and explaining the tradeoffs between economic value and control.”

DON’T BOARD A SHIP TILL IT’S SAILING

McAuley, in Medium, posts two addenda to his list: an e-book guide to tech-sector careers by Wealthfront co-founder and chairman and Stanford Graduate School of Business management lecturer Andrew Rachleff, and Wealthfront’s Career Launching Companies List of mid-sized U.S. tech companies on the rise. It should be noted that Rachleff, in that 2013 Silicon Valley Career Guide, advises MBA students to go into accelerating mid-sized firms initially before doing “something more amazing” later. McAuley believes Rachleff isn’t trying deter students from startups, exactly, but rather encouraging them to seek work in companies that have proven their product/market fit, and raised money for growth. “Then you’re not betting on whether or not the company might work,” McAuley says. “You’re betting on how fast and how big can the company grow, how much impact the company can have.”

Questions about this article? Email us or leave a comment below.