You’re reading the blist blog. To date, the posts have all been authored by Kevin Merritt, blist’s founder & CEO. From time to time other folks from blist will author some of the posts. Last week Kevin wrote a post on the benefits of working at a startup and shared a brief anecdote of how Paul (that’s me), interjected himself into our email marketing process. Today I am writing a more in depth post on why I decided to leave Microsoft and join a startup:

As Kevin mentioned in a prior posting, I spent almost 4 years at Microsoft before joining blist. He asked me to share my reasons for joining a startup (and blist in particular), and I’m happy to oblige. If anyone else is like me, making career changes are always a difficult situation – if you’re reading this and in a similar situation, perhaps reading some of my thoughts will clarify yours.

In the month before leaving Microsoft for blist, I had a number of goals in mind by changing jobs:

1) I wanted to work on a small (< 20 person) team. Contrary to perceptions from those who’ve never worked inside of Microsoft, there are plenty of small teams inside of Microsoft that are doing mind-blowingly cool work. I’d worked on such a team inside of Microsoft, but after a recent re-organization I found myself in a much larger group than I was comfortable with.

2) I wanted to work in a product I believe in, and my teammates also believe in. It sounds obvious, but I’ve seen both situations – and things go much more smoothly when everyone is working toward the same goal. This is related to team size – in general, the larger the team, the harder it is to keep everyone on the same page. That’s not to say a small team is immune to this problem – it may be less common to have divided vision on a small team, but the consequences can be more dire.

3) I had to work in the greater Seattle area. Although I’m originally from San Diego and still love it down there, after having just purchased my first home here in Seattle, the thought of moving and dealing with mortgage paperwork again so soon was enough to keep me in the rainy emerald city.

4) I wanted to expand my role beyond pure development. My parents have run a family-owned small business my entire life, and someday I see myself doing the same thing. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but I want to learn about datacenter operations, profit models, customer service, sales, and even negotiating commercial real estate leases. While all of the constraints above could be easily satisfied inside of Microsoft, this was what drove me to also look outside the company.

Switching teams inside of Microsoft is similar to joining another company, without having to deal with paperwork, health insurance, 401k, etc. Teams post openings to an internal website, and after a series of interviews, the team chooses whether to extend an offer. I had identified a few opportunities inside of Microsoft I was pursuing, as well as looking outside the company by contacting some other employers who had positions I found interesting. I updated my personal website, posted my resume online, and made sure I was proud of my profiles on some social networks. You’d be surprised how much these things help – employers really do look online for what information they can dig up on you – the more positive things they can find, the better it is for you.

Updating my presence on line paid off. At this point, I hadn’t even heard of blist. Kevin found my profile on LinkedIn, read my blog, and invited me out for lunch. After a long lunch discussing blist, something interesting happened: I spent that evening, and many other evenings after that, pondering the architecture for creating a service like blist. The ideas started flowing, and I realized I was more excited about building blist than any of the other opportunities I saw. Wrapping up interviews at blist and a few other places took another 2-3 weeks, and after considering a few different options, the decision was very easy.

In a future posting, I’ll talk about the differences between actually working at Microsoft and working at blist.

-Paul