Employee #1: Chasing the Unicorn

Take a journey with me on an adventure! We'll explore the perils and excitement to starting something great as employee #1. 

After all, there's nothing like leaving a salaried job, with a mortgage and family, and taking a bag full of D7, PHP7, EC2, Jenkins, and Pattern Lab to pursue an enterprise unicorn.

Movies and blogs make 'doing a startup' so whimsical. They show a person an idea sitting at home. They then montage their journey from a pitch to a quirky office and lots of smiles.

How does that happen? What are the signs to know to go after that opportunity? How do you do it if you have a lot of financial responsibility, like a family and a mortgage?

This session is about my journey and what I've learned 2.5 years later.

We'll talk about the prep work of evaluating opportunity and (somewhat) financial preparation. We'll also talk about my journey of pre-seed to seed to series A while growing from 3 to 15 team members from around the world. 

We'll explore the phases of a business, a product, what it means to play in the 'enterprise space' as a newcomer, and how to balance best practices that are expensive (in time and money) with GTD.

Finally, we'll talk about the crucial skill of attitude, especially when it comes to leadership of a team vs. technical leadership.