StartOut Reviews

StartOut was started by four socially awkward white G males and it continues to show in the company's culture. The founders have nothing to do with the organization except for the Awards show and that's only because it presents a photo opp. • StartOut's leadership is currently embedded with narcissistic leadership that wreaks of insincerity, exclusion, and no follow-through. As a LGBT organization, many of the decisions are made by a non-LGBT perspective, the "angry straight" that many members have actually coined. • StartOut is filled with unwelcoming cliques. Unless you're in the inner circle or went to the right school, StartOut isn't an organization for you. Attend any local event and you'll see the cold shoulder cliques form immediately. • StartOut is a continuous revolving door of members. Look at its members who have actively engaged at any point in time and in less than six months, those same members will disappear. A new batch of fresh members will replace the old only to discover that StartOut doesn't live up to its promises. • StartOut is vaporware. Don't believe the membership numbers as only a small minority (less than 1%) actively benefit from being a member. The online community is very unresponsive and direct emails to other members go unanswered. Your chance of investors responding to you in the Investor Portal is practically nil.

The pros are what brings you in and that’s what you’ll miss when you to leave. Because you will. The most senior person outside of the C-Suite has a tenure of barely 2 years. It’s simply unbearable due to one man: Andres Wydler. While Andres, doesn’t typically have his hands in day to day activities (unless he wants to step on your toes), he is the anchor that drags the staff to their death. The definition of gaslighting should simply be his face. From speaking over employees during presentations, to undermining team members expertise, to dropping random KPIs in the 11th hour, Andres may have been a great entrepreneur but he is a terrible manager and even worse leader. StartOut exists to directly counteract the benefits that are typically only available to straight cis white men however the only diversity element he cares about is changing straight to gay. Gay cis white men is who he is biased towards and who he listens to with the rare exception of a gay cis white woman. His speeches around caring for diversity are devoid of any heart or real interest especially when there are direct contradictory and condescending statements made towards black and brown, trans or Latinx founders. It’s easy to read a review from 2018 and think, maybe things have changed since then. If they have, they’ve only gotten worse. I find it laughable that there is a flagship event called the StartOut Equity Summit when the organization’s Executive Direction couldn’t care less about it. Andres cares about fundraising, meeting the KPIs presented to the board and using StartOut as his personal white savior guilt vehicle. Which, I could look past if he was open to recognizing his shortcomings and flanking himself with people and resources to handle the soft skills that he severely lacks. But he doesn’t.