1) Onboarding I had previously worked for another company with relative product offerings/customer focus so jumping into the deep end was something I anticipated. For new professionals in the industry, don't be surprised if you are expected to "just know things" very early in order to meet aggressive/unrealistic performance targets. My advice....get into a weekly check-in cadence with a mentor and focus on the "essentials" and build up from there. I did and I couldn't recommend it enough! 2) Communication - I was the only technical support for the US market and relied on the German sister company for specialized technical Q&A. The 6-hour time difference was difficult to manage "urgent nuanced customer requests" that only the German team would know. This made communication externally and internally difficult. 3) Leadership - Like most emerging technology startups, operational issues stem from misalignment with upper management. The expectation from VCs is for their investments to constantly grow ARR year-over-year. This typically results in rapid changes ("pivots") in the strategic direction/focus and can be jarring to teams without proper change management. If you compound this with not paying your people market competitive compensation and not partnering with them to grow into new roles/responsibilities your staff will surely burn out and ultimately churn.