'Building the Beast': What It's Like to Be an Early Startup Employee

As part of our series The First 100, Mashable has been introducing readers to employees 1 through 100 at successful startups such as FourSquare, BuzzFeed and BarkBox. Along the way, we've heard from early hires about how they withstood turbulence and embraced the risk and uncertainty that comes along with the nature of building a business from scratch.

"Believe it or not, the biggest difference from my first day to today is that everyone is even more passionate and driven," says Pardot's 38th hire Ryan Johnston. Like Johnston, employees who join early on in the game actually help to shape the future of the startup — hence, an invigorated passion for their little "company-that-could" grows each day Read more...