There are many fundamental differences between life in a big corporation and a small tech startup.
Many of these differences are obvious. Others are more subtle — and many of these are hard to realize without experiencing both environments. For example:
- Startups have less people, less bureaucracy, and less money than larger companies
- There are less people to tell you what to do
- There are less rules to follow
Along with these differences comes a freedom to create, to try things, to make mistakes, and to learn.
Startups don’t have all of the answers and part of any employee’s job is to help them figure out solutions to problems that are yet to be solved. Startups are hard but the opportunity to learn and develop new skills is unmatched in the corporate world. As Paul Graham writes in his 2004 book:
Economically, you can think of a startup as a way to compress your whole working life into a few years. Instead of working at a low intensity for 40 years, you work as hard as you possibly can for four.
Working at a large corporation will teach you many important skills. Many of these skills will be transferable to life in a tech startup and will be part of the reason you are hired and why you are able to succeed.
However, there is one key thing you won’t learn in (most) big companies — something which happens to be vital to your success at a young startup and to the success of the company as a whole.
After all, startups are trying new things, approaching new problems, and are often operating in young or even brand new industries where there is no clear recipe for success.
Some common startup failures that you’ll experience if you decide to work at a startup are:
- You have learned that employing an individual with this background may not be the right approach
- You have learned that targeting businesses of a certain size or type is not right for this stage of the startup’s life
- You have learned that this particular product is not solving a tangible problem.
But failing is OK – because it is the quickest way to learn in a startup. In fact, the best startups and the best startup employees are those that are able to fail fast, learn a great deal, and iterate away from earlier mistakes to a position of success shaped by previous learnings.
Tom Kelly, GM at renowned product design firm Ideo, may have summed it up best when he said:
Fail often so you can succeed sooner.
There are very few startups that have not failed – it is how failure is learned from that really matters.
