It’s the vision that’s tough. It’s hard to see all of the steps from beginning to end. You run into what some might call ‘project friction’ where, if only you knew all of the steps to get to your goal, you could get going and do something about it. Building a business, though, is a hard thing to explain on paper.

One of the best ways to see how it’s really done (as I mentioned in my SA to SV post) is to join a startup. That’s why I joined a startup, and it’s more important than any of the 9 reasons below. I wanted to see what motivated people to work for a dream and a prayer. I wanted to see how someone ran a company going through rapid change. I wanted to see what I’d do similarly and what I’d do different.

In Dave’s first post to Enter Venture, he really touched upon the inherent risk in every job. There is no such thing as a safe job (except for the few people in this country remaining in unions). Why not find the environment that suits you best? It may be a startup. It may not.

Personally, I think you’d be crazy not to even consider joining a startup. Here’s why I like my startup job so far:

1. Lack of structure – If there’s anything startups have, it’s potential. You can be anything and everything. You’re just going to have to figure out what that is, and as a startup employee, how to make it happen. No one’s going to tell you what to do.

2. Free food - Google’s cafeteria stories have created an industry standard among startups where you HAVE to offer free food. Hell, you’re probably not getting paid too much so the founders have to at least make sure you’re eating. (Full disclosure: I like free food — a lot).

3. Casual everything - I spent the previous year wearing a suit everyday. Now, I wear a t-shirt and jeans and play with the office dog in my spare time. ’nuff said.

4. Building something new – I’m going to defer to a comment I once heard from another Columbia alum. ‘There once was a guy named Goldman. There once was a guy named Sachs.’ You can build the next big thing a lot easier as long as you’re not working for the old, next big thing.

5. Like-minded, entrepreneurial people all around you - People in startups tend to come from all kinds of backgrounds, but they have one thing in common, they want what you want. If you’re like me, it’s the other 8 things in this list.

6. Define what you get paid… sorta – At a corporation, your pay represents your years experience, your peers, your role in the company, blah blah. At a startup, you can be a part of defining the success of the company and, therefore, the success of all those options you’re holding onto. You’ll still get paid more as an engineer over an office manager, but damnt, if the office manager figures out your business model, he’s going to do pretty well for himself too.

7. Work with people, not people playing the role of Manager/Executive/Director/[insert title of someone above you here] - The problem with highly structured organizations is that people are often put in roles where they actually believe in the titles they’re given. They feel like they have to live up to it and act the part. It’s hard to act superior in a startup, especially if you show up to work in your PJs.

8. Barely a meeting to be had – Every company has external meetings. The problem with internal meetings, though, is that they’re only useful for a few people. Everyone else uses them for doodling and quality ceiling-staring time. There are better things you can be doing for your startup than polishing your doodling skills.

9. Work on the most important stuff, all the time - There are always a million things to do. On any given day, you can only do those things that are the most important. Whoever liked doing the bullshit work, anyways?

If any good comes from the financial crisis, I’m hoping that it helps developers on Wall Street realize that there are paths they can take other than the supposedly “stable” employment that large banks provide. Scratch that — I’m biased. I’m hoping they realize there’s one specific path they should be taking: working at NYC-based startups.

After talking to a few of my friends who work in IT for various large financial institutions, it doesn’t seem like the crisis has had the effect I’d hoped for, yet. Instead of it giving them cause to seek out greener pastures, they seem to be happy that they still have jobs. Rather than adjusting their appetite for risk (or exposing the real risk associated with Wall Street), some developers seem more attached to their jobs than ever.

Now, this isn’t universal, but the fact is, a lot of blood has been shed on Wall Street. Lots of folks are looking for jobs and plenty more will be at risk. The risk/reward of working in IT on Wall Street will surely change even if that’s not obvious now. The alternative — working in a startup — needs to be better publicized.

Josh Kopelman is doing a great job leveraging the financial crisis to tackle this issue head-on with his new website, Leave Wall Street, Join A Startup. That’s the kind of awareness I’m looking for. He lists out plenty of reasons for joining a startup that are dead-on, from the work environment, to creative control, to the potential equity upside.

I love his approach. The startup community in NYC needs to jump at the opportunity, build sustainable solutions, and attract technical talent. It might be easy to hire talent in the short-term, but long-term solutions are needed to ensure success when the crisis ends (and they always do). With companies like Lehman and Bear Stearns tanking, there aren’t many left to complain about startups’ lack of credibility or brand equity. What other objections are there?

A long-term solution begins with creating a better funnel between the various local educational institutions and the startups that reside here (shameless plug: this is one of the goals of Columbia Venture Community). We need more insitutions like CVC, NextNY, and the NY Tech Meetup that can provide continuity of awareness and thought leadership and broadcast success stories throughout the rapid turnover of the startup lifecycle.

The long term solution also requires more awareness and a bit of a reality check. There’s as much risk in your Wall Street job as there is with a startup. Bail yourself out.

First, though, you need to get a startup job. Here are 10 sites (in no particular order) that I found helpful in my startup job search:

1. Doostang – Doostang may be the exclusive career community for top young professionals (whatever that means), but it’s also a great place to find startup jobs. A lot of startups are created by ex-young professionals, ergo, ex-young professionals are already on registered with the exclusive career community for top young professionals. They want you to join them in their “ex” status.

2. LinkedIn – For those of you that live by the “getting a job is all about who you know” mantra, well, you probably don’t work at a startup. With LinkedIn, “who you know” certainly helps you get started, and that’s sort of comforting.

3. Startuply – Startuply is quickly becoming the it place for listing startup jobs. A lot of the blog job boards further down in this list have 100-200 job postings, not even necessarily all for startups. Startuply currently has just under 1,000 startup jobs listed. They provide background information on the companies, and it sounds like they’re just getting started with their feature set. I have nothing but great things to say for their outreach efforts too. They quickly responded to a bug post I reported, and I was happy to send over a screenshot to help them out.

4. craigslist – This came as a surprise to me too, but craigslist turned out to be a halfway decent option for my startup job search. Startups are pretty tight with their cash, and craigslist has a price and distribution that can’t be beat. There are just two things you need to keep in mind with craigslist. One, there will be hundreds of resumes submitted for every job. Two, because there are hundreds of resumes submitted for every job (including the one you’re applying to), pick only those jobs that fit you perfectly.

5. Crunchboard – TechCrunch’s job board is one of the best places to find startup jobs because TechCrunch is where you go to find startup news. Makes sense, no? (Also, kudos to TechCrunch on the redesign. It’s about time.)

6. 37signals Job Board – 37signals job board is another blog with a great job board, especially if you’re a developer or designer.

7. Silicon Alley Insider Job Board – SAI’s job board is obviously a great place for New York startup jobs, especially with the startup boom in New York. What’s less obvious is that there are a few west coast jobs sprinkled in. You might get lucky with one of these.

8. Authentic Jobs – I’m not sure how I found Authentic Jobs, but I know that I found some of the most interesting opportunities on this site. There’s a mix of freelance jobs you can scope out too.

9. Company Websites – The great thing about applying for startup jobs is that you’re often applying to companies you’ve heard that have websites you’ve actually used. When you read about a new company on TechCrunch, go check out their website to see if they’re hiring. (Hint: They usually are.)

10. Get out, ask questions, meet people, make friends – (OK, I lied, 9 websites and a dose of the real world). You need to do a whole lot more to get a startup job than merely visiting job board sites. This list wouldn’t be complete without mentioning that. I was able to meet a few people during my search and most people were more than happy to send my resume along. People understand what it’s like looking for a job, and if they work with startups they certainly want to see them succeed. Everyone likes playing matchmaker.

(Also, worth checking out even though they helped only minimally in my search were Joel on Software’s Job Board and the Crayola Crayon-looking StartUpers site.)

Update (9/14/08): When I made this list, I focused on the startup job sites that were most helpful for me. It wasn’t a list of all the startup job sites out there. If I had done a bit more research, I would have noticed Sean Aune’s post with 18 Startup Job Sites (damn, 18 is more than 10) to help bolster this list. A lot of these are general sites, but there are a few in here worth mentioning that have some potential:

• CoNotes – I’d never seen this one, but it looks promising. If anyone’s used it, let me know what you think.
• GoBigNetwork – I’m not convinced this is a the best place to find a startup job. It seemed like a better place to find a startup partner or investor. The quality of job postings isn’t as good as some of the other sites in this list eiter.
• Mashable Jobs – The same logic works here as with the TechCrunch job board. It wasn’t as helpful for me, but it likely would be for others.
• nPost - nPost is more strictly technical though there are a few non-technical jobs in here. I used nPost to some success, but it’s more like a Joel On Software job board for startups.
• Venture Loop – Venture Loop lists companies backed by VC firms and so fills a need I mentioned in #10 of my original list. People like playing matchmaker in this industry, especially when they have an interest in that match’s success.