What is an Angel Operator?
The Startup Employee's Perspective
There is a tremendous amount of valuable content around the web on company building from the perspective of founders and VC's, but little from the perspective of the startup employee.
Specifically from the startup employee that was early on in the company's lifecycle and had the opportunity to have an outsized impact on its business and growth.
Sahil Lavingia, founder of Gumroad, penned an article in which he identified this person as an "angel employee". It was an article clarifying a tweet he sent making a statement that joining a startup as an early employee was almost always a terrible financial decision, which was met with a ton of controversy from the startup founder and venture capital community.
In the article he stands by his tweet, but makes a few key clarifying points which resonate deeply with me. While I agree joining a startup as an early employee most likely will not result in a life changing financial outcome (especially in the short-term), there are plenty of employees that have had great financial outcomes from exits and IPOs (and not just from the Billion dollar exits and flashy IPOs that the media glamorizes).
So Why Join a Startup as an Early Employee?
Since any great financial outcome is far from a guarantee, why should you join a startup as an early employee? As Sahil highlighted, a couple of the non-financial reasons are:
If you want to eventually start your own company.
If you want to learn a lot and grow.
Reason number two is by far the biggest benefit from being in the trenches at a startup as an early employee.
You simply will not be able to have the opportunity to learn more or grow more doing anything else...period.
Early Employees are Critical to a Successful Startup Ecosystem What was less controversial in Sahil's article, and the real point he was trying to make, is how critical the startup employee is to a thriving startup ecosystem. He points out the media's fixation on the founders and investors of these startups, while the startup employee goes largely unnoticed.
I don't want to wake up one day in a world of company-starters and company-funders — but no company-builders. I don't even want to imagine what that world would look like.
Why "Angel Operator"?
I tweaked the name Sahil coined as "Angel Employee" slightly to more accurately describe the role of this employee as operating across several functions to help build and grow the business. Hence, "Angel Operator". This also aligns to the common description among the startup and venture communities ("Operator" defined as founders/employees of startups). There is also a growing theme of Startup Operators turned angel investors or concurrently operating and angel investing (Operator Angels).
I have personally been lucky to have had the experience of working as an Angel Operator for three different startups, with my journey beginning when I joined my first startup in 2010.