The path to professional growth for startups is different than in established corporations. With limited employees, budgets and time, startups must prioritize where they invest those resources. While it is understandable for startups to be cautious where they spend in this stage, there is one internal investment that startups should never overlook when working toward growth: training and development programs.

Studies show that during the COVID-19 pandemic tech employees are working longer hours, skipping breaks and experiencing a general fatigue toward remote processes. Such exhaustive behaviors are problematic when considering the demand for tech workers has remained high throughout the crisis.

When Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced in May that employees would be able to work from home—or from wherever they’d like—indefinitely, it marked a major change in the tech industry. Soon, other Silicon Valley companies, including Square, Slack and Upwork, followed suit, announcing their own plans to shift to a remote model. And as COVID-19 continues to spike in California, more tech giants are likely to do the same.

There’s a persistent myth in the startup world that to build an innovative company you need a freewheeling culture that lets everybody do things their own way.

If I told you two years ago that you would hire graduates from the class of 2020 without meeting them in person and without them ever setting foot in your office, you would have been rightfully incredulous. But this scenario doesn’t sound nearly as far-fetched today.

If you’re reading this you may be telling yourself, “I need a new career.” So what should you do if you want to work at a tech company, but feel like you don’t have the right experience to break in? In short, you should target specific tech companies whose mission aligns with what you’ve accomplished in the past.

Let’s talk about how to create and build a pitch deck.

In a time of such polarizing leadership, there’s a good opportunity to reflect on our paradigms and retool our thoughts on how to be the leaders our employees, co-workers, friends or family deserve. This is the first post in a three-part series walking you through the idea of leadership versus management and the challenges I had making the shift.

Taking ownership of a failure or shortcoming is difficult. Our egos, self-worth or even careers can take a massive hit when we execute poorly or fail at a task. When we are wrong or when we fail, our natural reaction is to become defensive and blame someone else, but this just exacerbates any previous problems we had.

202 SoCal VC Funds

Entrepreneurship Guide: Index

Active VC’s in LA