Startups often won’t hand you a tried and tested career path... but that doesn’t mean you can’t grow. Use this 3-part framework to shape your development, track your progress, and get promotion-ready.

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Hey Fellow Accelerators,

If you choose to pick the startup career path, you'll quickly become aware that most startups won’t hand you a development plan.

What I mean by this is that many corporate jobs, apprenticeships, and graduate schemes come with baked-in career progression like timelines, development milestones and salary bands. You know what to do and roughly when to do it, and this allows you to effectively map out the next five years of your career with relative ease if you so wish.

Whereas in startups, you most likely start with a loose job description… and that’s it.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t grow... because what startups lack in structure, they more than make up for in opportunity.

In fact, some of the fastest progress I made in my early startup career came because there was no roadmap.

Now, this didn’t start off feeling like an opportunity. It felt like I’d been thrown in the deep end… alone… with no coast guard to be seen... in shark-infested waters.

But with the right framework, boundaries, and mindset, you can be sailing the high seas as captain of your own ship in no time.

🚧 A Quick Story...

My first taste of this came in my very first startup role (and my first ever job out of uni). I interviewed for a junior developer position at a social advertising company, where I was told I’d be joining a team of devs.

I got the job and turned up on day one, eager to show my value and learn from those who had already walked the path.

What I learned instead? I was the development team.

Just me.

No onboarding. No growth plan. No internal developer documentation. Just one external contractor in a different time zone (whose first language wasn’t English), and a company full of people expecting results.

This presented me with an interesting scenario. While having no senior devs around meant there was no one to learn from, it also meant there was no one to question my code quality, my timelines, or the complexity of what I was working on. It felt like the company just wanted to say they had a dev team, without really knowing what they needed from it. And they were happy to pay while they figured that out.

So… I could either coast… complain… or get stuck in.

And while I did eventually leave that role (because I do strongly believe there is long-term value in having strong mentors), those early years taught me something that’s shaped my entire startup career:

In startups, and life, you can either wait for someone to develop you…Or you can build your own development engine.

💭 A Mindset Shift That Changed Everything

One mindset that helped me massively in these early stages:

“It can all be learnt… but it doesn’t all need to be learnt at once.”

This pays homepage to one of the most desirably traits amongst highly driven individuals and start up founder alike... curiosity, whilst also recognising the sheer workload and time pressure for the average startup employee.

Coming out of uni, I was wired to treat work like coursework. Learn everything, master the topic, then apply what you need to the task at hand.

But startups don’t work like that.

Projects change overnight. Priorities shift mid-sprint. Systems, platforms, and even your job title can vanish in a heartbeat. And if you wait until you’ve learned everything, you’ll constantly be left behind.

What worked for me instead?

Start small. Learn what you need to solve the immediate problem. Ship it. Then repeat.

Over time, the full picture builds itself.

🔧 The 3-Part Framework I Wish I Had From Day One

If your current role has no structure, no career plan, and no mentor in sight, here’s what I’d do if I were starting again today:

1. Start With Expectations (Not Assumptions)

Before you start designing your dream career plan, make sure you know what “good” looks like in your current role.

Start by asking:

• What does success look like in this role over the next 3–6 months?
• How will my work be evaluated?
• What do the company/founders actually care about right now?

A lot of juniors skip this step and end up over-investing in side skills or irrelevant goals based on interest or assumption, only to find they’re not moving the needle where it matters and therefore not getting the traction they want.

In my first startup role, I had no mentor but I still had a boss. So I asked the questions no one had thought to answer:

“What’s the most important thing I can deliver this quarter?”
“What’s worked well in the past that I can model?”
“How will I know if I’m on the right track?”

This gave me the boundaries to play between, without the risk of going rogue.

🛠️ Action Tip:​
In your next 1:1, ask:
“Is there a past example of this task or project I can use as a reference?”

This is one of the greatest hacks I have in my toolkit... and it works on so many levels.

• It narrows your learning scope to what’s relevant now.
• It shows you what “good” looks like in your company’s context.
• It builds trust as managers will recognise the format and know it meets internal standards.
• It creates a clear framework for your work to be evaluated against.
• And crucially, it gives your manager a chance to review the complexity of what they’re asking you to do before you get too deep.

So many juniors end up stuck trying to finish something borderline impossible, only to find their manager didn’t realise how complex it was in the first place. Asking for a reference kicks off that conversation early.

2. Design Your Own Dev Path (That Serves the Business and You)

Once you’ve mapped out what the business needs, align that with the skills and interests you want to develop.

In an ideal world, you’re aiming for what I like to call the magic zone:

💡 Your Interests ✕ Company Priorities = Fast-Tracked Growth

This is where personal development stops feeling like work and starts feeling like play - driven by curiosity rather than obligation.

You're more likely to:

• Produce better work
• Learn more around the task
• Go the extra mile to get the project over the line

In my first job, I knew I wanted to level up my JavaScript skills. So I looked for projects that matched business needs and gave me a chance to practice JS in production. One came up: a real-time, data-driven client dashboard.

I scoped it. Pitched it. Built it. Shared regular updates. And when I finished, it was used to help close two of the company’s biggest clients.

No one cared that it was a “learning” project. No one remembered that I was the one who pitched the idea. Because it solved a business need.

🛠️ Action Tip:​
Once a month, ask yourself:

• What’s something I want to learn right now?
• What current project could help me learn it?
• How can I position that clearly to my manager or team?

Make learning look like shipping.​
That’s the cheat code.

3. Build-In Visibility (And Don’t Wait to Be Asked)

There are two elements to career growth:

1. The actual growth
2. Making sure people see it and understand what it means for the business

Because you might be improving… but if no one sees it, it’s not helping your promotion prospects. This is especially true in early or fast-paced startups, where everyone is too busy to notice quiet wins.

The best method I’ve found to stay visible without coming across like you’re bragging?

Weekly updates.

Just a short note to key people that says:

• What you worked on
• What’s next
• What you need from them (if anything)

Over time, this:

• Builds trust
• Creates a feedback loop
• Makes your manager’s life easier (which is always a win)

🛠️ Action Tip:​
Set a recurring Friday reminder:
“Send weekly wins + blockers update (Slack or Notion)”

Even if it’s just to your manager at first, the habit builds visibility and self-awareness.

👉 (If you’re a regular TSCA reader, you’ll notice this tip shows up a lot... and thats because it works on so many levels. It’s one of the highest-leverage habits you can build early in your career.)

✅ Why This Framework Works

This framework gives you autonomy with direction.

It helps you:

• Stay aligned with what matters to the business
• Track your own growth in real-time
• Advocate for yourself when the next opportunity arises

But maybe most importantly?

It gives you a sense of control even when everything else around you is shifting.

Because startups won’t hand you a roadmap. But they will give you a front-row seat to opportunities…if you’re paying attention.

✨ What I Hope You Learned Today:

• You don’t need a dev plan to grow... but you do need to define and take control of your own success
• Self-directed learning works best when tied to business outcomes
• Visibility (done right) isn’t bragging... it’s building trust and momentum

💥 Your Challenge This Week:

• Pick one skill you want to develop
• Map a project that lets you practice it
• Send a quick update to your manager sharing the plan

Here’s to clarity in the chaos.​
Until next time…
​Hayds & The TSCA Team

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