Getting your foot in the startup door: find side hustles to fill in your experience gaps (while keeping your day job in clinic)
Don’t apply to 100 roles at once. Learn how to get startup experience while keeping your clinical job first to make your full pivot much easier.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
Question: How do I get my “foot in the door” for startups without giving up my salary from the clinic?
Answer: Find win-win situations for startups lacking bandwidth
Pivot(s): Role, Industry
Resource(s): Stages of VC Funding — Corporate Finance Institute
Relevance: Pre-seed and Seed Stage startups present an interesting opportunity to exchange time for skill attainment
Final Thoughts: Don’t overpromise and underdeliver.
Help will always be given to those who ask for it.
Albus Dumbledore was a wise fellow. I’m sure he was well aware that his sage advice to Harry Potter was also, in fact, entirely applicable to clinicians looking to grow their careers beyond traditional patient care roles. If you quickly landscape the internet, the advice of “find ways to fill in your skill gaps” pops up everywhere…just check out this article on Indeed as an example.
However, where’s the actual step by step instructions? Yeah, we get it…we need to fill in skill gaps. But, how do we actually do it? I’m tired of trolling the internet for high level articles after 12 hours in the clinic…how do I actually do it?
Well, you’ve come to the right place. For today’s article, we’re going to focus on the different stages of venture capital (VC) funding, how these stages of funding correlate with the needs of the founders receiving funding (zooming in on the pre-seed and seed stages of funding), and how this knowledge can help us fill in knowledge and experience gaps on our journey beyond traditional patient care roles.
Let’s dive in.
Step 1: Identify specific organizations that can help you fill in your highlighted skill gaps.
Step 2: Reach out to these organizations, and offer a “win-win” situation.
Step 3: Create specific guidelines and guardrails to protect your time and sanity in advance.
Step 4: Execute!
Step 1: Identify specific organizations that can help you fill in your highlighted skill gaps.
First, let’s get a general overview of VC funding — its stages, the purpose of these stages, and the type and size of businesses that seek investment at these stages (deep dive from the Corporate Finance Institute here). We’re going to focus on pre-seed and seed stage for this article for one main reason: this is the stage where a company or product is just getting off the ground, with minimal resources and small teams. In real-people terms: there is a ton to do, not enough time and resources to do them, presenting the highest chance for you to successfully exchange your time for skill acquisition in an environment where you can learn A LOT of stuff in a very short amount of time.
Caveat: you need to deliver on what you promise to these startups. Do NOT go in guns blazing, ego waving, and chest pounding in the sense that you can launch their business for them; this is a recipe for disaster. Take a more measured, structured, focused approach.
With that being said, how do we find potential early-stage startups that are both interesting and offer opportunities for professional growth and skill acquisition? Easy. Google it.
Step 2: Reach out to these organizations, and offer a “win-win” situation.
An early stage investor I have deep respect for is Maria Rotilu, Principal of Octopus Venture’s First Cheque Fund. She’s always kept it absolutely “100” with me — honest, real, and super helpful. So, for the purposes of this article, I’m going to arbitrarily select Octopus Venture’s pre-seed/seed portfolio as an example.
When scanning through Octopus Venture’s Health investments, there are a couple that stand out where a clinician could get some valuable experience leveraging some of what they’ve already learned and practiced through direct patient care. I’m going to select Oto, a startup democratizing tinnitus treatment by making care more accessible for patients, to walk you through this case study. I’ve never met the Oto team before, nor do I know anything about them beyond a scan of their website, which probably makes this particular scenario even more relatable to all the clinicians out there delving into the wide world of startups for the first time.
If you scroll to the bottom of the page, there’s a “Contact Us” link that populates a chat bot on the screen, like so:
Click it, and move on to the next step.
Step 3: Create specific guidelines and guardrails to protect your time and sanity in advance.
The next part is very important. Founders at this stage are simultaneously strapped for time, and “building the plane” as it’s flying. There a very real chance they will never get back to you, so don’t get your hopes up. Rather, spread bet across a few startups where you know you have some overlapping knowledge, and offer a “win-win” situation, which could look something like this:
“Hi! I’m a clinician treating tinnitus, and I’ve recently come across a win-win situation where I can offer support for free in exchange for building a more well-rounded skillset. Specifically, I can offer 5–10 hours a week for 6 weeks to further build my Excel skills; do you have any projects that you don’t have enough time for where I can offer assistance? Happy to chat further if I can be of help.”
Click send, and move on.
Step 4: Execute!
If you’re lucky, you’ll get a response and opportunity to meet virtually or face to face. Again, I want to reiterate — you have to be able to deliver on what you promise. If you don’t know Excel, don’t offer Excel skills! Maybe offer patient insight generation, or clinician perspective, or something in between. But really, this is a two way street — you are absorbing risk by offering your precious free time, and the startup is absorbing risk by taking a chance that you could help them. Do not abuse this transaction. Truly create a win-win.
Just remember — it’s much easier to get any job if someone else has vetted you before, startups included. If you’ve got startup experience from this process, it’s highly likely the next time you apply for full-time roles this initial experience will be a positive in proving to whatever company you’re applying to that you can be successful in roles beyond the clinic.
So, remember this: be kind to your bank account and find ways to get startup experience while keeping your day job in clinic!
Looking for other creative ways to build your skills? Find a win-win with a company you’re interested in, and a mission you believe in!
Interested in meeting other clinicians who share your same interests, as well as learning more about startups in the healthcare space? Check out the “Careers in clinic (and beyond)” group as well as Next Degree — the next-gen healthcare job search designed to help you build a career you love, whether that’s in clinic — or beyond.
