Be Your Own VC: How to Vet a Startup Before You Join

Joe Chernov is the VP of marketing for Kinvey, a mobile back-end as a service startup in Cambridge, Mass. Joe joined Kinvey from Eloqua, where he served as VP of content marketing. The Content Marketing Institute named him "Content Marketer of the Year" in 2012.

Tech startups are alluring. They provide a sense of belonging for doers that want to leave their mark on the world, a "lottery ticket" for good-life dreamers and a front-row ticket to the theater of innovation for thrill seekers.

But startups are also freighted with risk. Because 90% of startups fail (and of those who "succeed," few do so on the level of a Facebook or even Crashlytics), joining an early stage company is like placing a bet — your time (lots of it) versus the threats (lots of them) a young business faces