Favorite Parts of Working in the Startups and Online Education Industry as a Founder
Gerta, Founder at YourNegotiations.com, thrives on the "creativity" and "freedom" of the startup world, particularly enjoying the lack of a blueprint and the autonomy afforded by not being venture-backed. This allows Gerta to focus their time and energy on their company's mission of helping people negotiate better job offers and contracts, a pursuit they find deeply rewarding because it directly improves "people's careers, livelihood, their families".
Entrepreneurship, Startups, Negotiation, Online Education, Career Development
Advizer Information
Name
Job Title
Company
Undergrad
Grad Programs
Majors
Industries
Job Functions
Traits
Gerta Malaj
Founder
YourNegotiations.com
Wellesley College
MIT
Mathematics, Data Science, Statistics
Coaching, Speaking & Writing
Entrepreneurship and Business Owner
International Student, Honors Student, Scholarship Recipient, Immigrant
Video Highlights
1. Gerta enjoys the creativity and freedom of working in the startup industry, especially in online education. She highlights the lack of a blueprint for startups as both challenging and rewarding, allowing for unique solutions and independent decision-making.
2. She values the freedom from investor pressure, as it allows her to focus on her business without the added stress of regular updates and justification of decisions to external stakeholders.
3. Gerta finds her work particularly fulfilling because it directly helps people improve their careers and financial situations through negotiation skills. She is passionate about helping people achieve better livelihoods for themselves and their families.
Transcript
Here's the cleaned transcript:
Q7: Favorite parts - industry
What do you enjoy most about being in your industry?
My industry encompasses startups and online education. There are a couple of things I really enjoy about it.
First, I truly appreciate the creativity involved. As I mentioned before, with startups, there isn't much of a blueprint. While some information is available, it's very different from a regular job where you have clear expectations and a manager.
With startups, you're thrown into it and have to figure things out on your own. This can be stressful, but it also allows you to use your own inspiration to solve problems without necessarily relying on how others have done it. That aspect is very rewarding to me.
The other key element is the freedom inherent in startups. You generally have more freedom than in a traditional job. My specific situation is that we are not venture-backed.
This means we haven't taken investor money, so we don't necessarily owe anyone updates. When a company is venture-backed, you have to provide updates at a specific cadence and justify your decisions. That creates another layer of workload, as you need to consider this whole other group of people while running your business.
Not having that to consider has freed up our time to invest it back into our business, which I find very rewarding.
Finally, for my specific business, we help people negotiate job offers and business contracts. This is also very rewarding because it has an excellent mission. I am passionate about helping people in their careers and improving their livelihoods and families. When people earn more, everyone benefits, so that is rewarding from that perspective as well.