I've known a few people who've done this. I've also recommended to a couple people to do this when they're having a hard time finding work.
Here's the thing, most businesses don't make it and many people in this position are trying to bootstrap something with virtually zero money. So you can use these circumstances to your advantage -- use the business as an investment vehicle to build you as a product so that you can sell yourself later on.
What this means is that you should take the time between filling out applications and wasting time in multi-day whiteboard interviews to start to build up a portfolio of what you can do. Start a blog, on some topic you find interesting, engage on twitter at least once a day. Write a couple simple but good looking web apps using cheap/free tiers on hosting providers. Check some code into public code repos. If you manage to launch something live, contact the press email address on every major news site you can find -- a surprising number will put a short article up about your app -- which you can then also advertise on your site/blog/twitter feed.
All of this goes on your resume, except now you get to claim "Founder/CEO" on your resume with stunning bullet points like:
- Led social media marketing strategy
- Designed web applications for <insert vertical>
Take screenshots of all this.
Use this work as part of your resume. In an interview it's much better to claim "I tried to start a company but I just couldn't get it cash-flow positive, so now I'm back on the market." than to try to figure out how to work around a large resume gap that implies you're unhireable.
This works because companies will see you as entrepreneurial and multifaceted, capable of career growth and tackling many different kinds of problems at various levels and making independent decisions. And the best part is that, as you do this, it will become TRUE!
- So the worst case is that you just build your resume for a while (instead of it accumulating jobless gaps) -- most people I know who've done this end up in better jobs than they expected after this exercise.
- Best case, your company takes off and you just built yourself a career -- I know 2 people who've managed to do this and ended up running pretty large enterprises.
Here's the thing, most businesses don't make it and many people in this position are trying to bootstrap something with virtually zero money. So you can use these circumstances to your advantage -- use the business as an investment vehicle to build you as a product so that you can sell yourself later on.
What this means is that you should take the time between filling out applications and wasting time in multi-day whiteboard interviews to start to build up a portfolio of what you can do. Start a blog, on some topic you find interesting, engage on twitter at least once a day. Write a couple simple but good looking web apps using cheap/free tiers on hosting providers. Check some code into public code repos. If you manage to launch something live, contact the press email address on every major news site you can find -- a surprising number will put a short article up about your app -- which you can then also advertise on your site/blog/twitter feed.
All of this goes on your resume, except now you get to claim "Founder/CEO" on your resume with stunning bullet points like:
- Led social media marketing strategy
- Designed web applications for <insert vertical>
Take screenshots of all this.
Use this work as part of your resume. In an interview it's much better to claim "I tried to start a company but I just couldn't get it cash-flow positive, so now I'm back on the market." than to try to figure out how to work around a large resume gap that implies you're unhireable.
This works because companies will see you as entrepreneurial and multifaceted, capable of career growth and tackling many different kinds of problems at various levels and making independent decisions. And the best part is that, as you do this, it will become TRUE!
- So the worst case is that you just build your resume for a while (instead of it accumulating jobless gaps) -- most people I know who've done this end up in better jobs than they expected after this exercise.
- Best case, your company takes off and you just built yourself a career -- I know 2 people who've managed to do this and ended up running pretty large enterprises.