If you're not concerned at the on-set, you should be. Has adequate consideration been given to growth trajectory of your new home? Who's in charge of making an impact here? If you look around and cannot find the owner of this, make it you. Remember, start-ups love to use consultants to help them push projects forward. That's completely acceptable, but if no one learns from the consultant, you and your business become reliant on someone who is not always available. Roll up your sleeves and start asking questions.
. . . start-ups have limited budgets and big important goals, goals that determine whether or not the next round of funding will make it through the door. How can someone in an operations capacity impact the destiny of this emerging new enterprise? Ask the questions no one else is thinking about.
At every cocktail party, meeting in a long elevator ride, get-together or interview, the question comes up: What do you do? For the past ten years, my answer has varied from (literally) "anything and everything" to "whatever needs to be done". This might get a guy or gal labeled with that less-than-romantic designation, Jack (or Jane)-of-all-trades. Shudder. And then one of two opinions of you are formed, ingrained in the least-pliable matter of your new friend's brain: