I've never been a founder of any start-up. Instead, I enjoy playing the role of "first employee" or "early employee". 

Working closely with founders and supporting them throughout various aspects of the business is something I love.

Here's an early employee thread:

First, some background:

While in college I was an early employee at 3 different start-ups and participated in the branding, marketing, and operations sides of the businesses.

Like most start-ups, the founders had created their companies to solve a problem they personally faced.

One was an engineer, another a nurse, and the third a designer. Each was a founder for the first time.

As an early employee, I entered these businesses at a place where the to-do list was through the roof.

They needed help in every part of the business which was no surprise. That's what I signed up for.

The ability to prioritize and communicate is difficult, especially for first-time founders.

A constant shift or miss-communication of priorities takes a huge toll on the business and leads to a lot of tension and frustration.

You think you're aligned one day and the next it's "Why are we spending time on X ?"

The problem: we were prioritizing everything verbally.

Things get lost with verbal communication (no shit)

To combat this, I started documenting everything.

Conversations, slack messages, and emails. I'd place them in a doc so the founder and team could see everything.

The document isn't meant to be used as a "gotcha", but rather a reminder of past conversations and WHY we're working on particular things.

This system has its flaws, but I found it relieved a lot of "he said, she said"

I'd love to hear other challenges early employees have faced working in start-ups!