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The Startup Career Accelerator

The Startup Career Accelerator is the go-to newsletter for first-time startup employees who want to navigate chaos, fast-track their growth, and land their first promotion within 12 months. Get practical advice, real-world strategies, and proven frameworks to help you thrive in high-growth, low-structure environments.

Featured Post

The Startup Career Accelerator Advent Calendar -> Week 4

Hey Fellow Accelerators, Its the final working week before the festive break and we get it... you’re tired, your calendars are packed, and the impending food coma is calling you. But theres still a few days left and you still want a few wins on the board. well here are seven easy, high-signal moves to finish 2025 strong and roll momentum into Q1... without skipping the celebrations. Day 1 (Mon): The Christmas Eve Founder‑Friendly Update What: The final working week before the break has its...

7 easy, high‑signal experiments to build promotion currency We all know that December attention is as thin as ice, but with end of the year targets looming opinions can get as loud as a crowded pub on Christmas Eve. What cuts through the noise is evidence. This week’s Advent drop gives you 7 tiny experiments you can run in under an hour to build promotion currency: cross-functional context, a living evidence wall, faster references, MVPs, tighter meetings, relationship capital, and...

7 High-Impact Scripts for Busy Startup Weeks December, like any other hectic time of the year, rewards people who communicate clearly and make decisions easy. This week’s Advent drop gives you 7 copy-paste scripts to cut through the noise. We've got updates that reduce pings, trade-offs that protect priorities, escalation that shows judgment, and 1:1 prompts that get you coaching. How to use it: Copy -> personalise -> send! Pick one script per day... or just choose the two you’ll use all...

7 mini frameworks to keep your momentum during the chaotic festive season December’s a juggling act with family commitments, social plans, and year-end pressure at work. All while trying to enjoy the festivities. So this month, TSCA is running 5 simple Advent Calendar style editions for ambitious startup folks. Each Monday, you’ll get 7 tiny, actionable prompts (one for each day). No fluff. No guilt. Just practical ways to stay visible, protect your energy, and end the year with momentum you...

The 4 advanced frameworks you can use every day to manage stakeholders, own 1:1s, and earn bigger opportunities... fast! Hey Fellow Accelerators, As promised, we are back with part 2 of this weeks TSCA. Earlier in the week, we covered mindset and momentum moves... today we’re levelling up and breaking down how problem owners operate with stakeholders, in 1:1s, and when asking for bigger scope. So, where should you start... In order to be treated like a leader, you need to remove uncertainty...

The mindset switch and first 3 moves I used to stop being “the doer” and start being “the problem owner.” You may have noticed we missed releasing an article last week. So to make it right we are coming to you with 2 fresh editions this week and with that in mind we wanted to try our first 2 part edition. This is where we take one topic we know is causing issues for our readers right now, and go deeper than we ever have before across 2 full length articles in a week. The topic this week.......

18 Copy-paste lines that reduce uncertainty and speed up decisions. Hey Fellow Accelerators, We are following on from last weeks edition and going off script once again with this weeks edition of teh TSCA. We wanted to give you a scannable article that builds on the action tips we have shared over previous editions to the point where every line is something you can use right now. So bellow we have collected a whole bunch of useful questions, frameworks and viewpoints that you can use to have...

Real stories… that taught me hard truths… that compounded into promotions. Hey Fellow Accelerators, No long playbook this week. Instead, just some hard lessons learned from the trenches. Throughout the previous 12 articles I’ve always tried to ground the takeaways in real situations from my personal startup journey. So this week I’m bringing together some of the most formative ones. Here are 3 short stories from my early startup years. The completely unexpected shocks that forced me to grow,...

Promotions in startups often don’t go to the loudest or the longest‑working person. They go to the person who reduces uncertainty for the team. That means the guy/gal who provides no surprises, clear trade‑offs and visible progress. And the best part is.... you can engineer that. The bottom line is early‑stage teams run on speed and trust. If your work is invisible or your asks are vague, your growth can stall. The fix isn’t “work more" but to build your operating system to thrive. The...

Your early days can make or break your trajectory. This framework helps you map stakeholders, extract expectations, and make learning look like shipping. Most startups won’t onboard you. And by that I mean you probably won’t get some dedicated time to work your way through a structured presentation or folder of documents to bring you up to speed gently on the company and your roll. Even if they set out with that in mind, what you’ll likely get after the first few days is a real deliverable,...