As the title suggests, I thought I'd do a post on how working at a start up vs working at a corporate Job has been for me as an on-again-off-again entrepreneur, and what I would do differently based on what Ive learned, should I start a start up again
A bit of backstory for context: I have an engineering background but began my career in sales
Here are some stats for comparison (these will be important for later)
I've worked at both places in for a comparable amount of time in adjacent enough roles, and since the companies are similar in that they are spearheaded by leaders of similar origin/education and both work in SaaS, I thought it made sense to be able to adequately compare the two experiences.
What's more is that I took a break after leaving Motive to apply my learnings to my own start up (which failed miserably and ended up closing in 1 year) before I transitioned to Jibble so I had a lot brewing in my head which I wanted to pen out
Here's what I noted most distinctly
- Hiring:
It took the same amount of time surprisingly to get hired to both places (A month) about 3 rounds of screening and a final interview. I found Jibble to be more personalized in the interview process where they gave me a form to fill out that asked me completely off-topic questions, which I'm guessing were to judge if I was a cultural fit v.s at Motive, where they didn't care too much about culture as they were mass hiring.
- Training:
Motive spent about a month training me and 150 other hires in cohorts, for the job, their whole motto was, hire fast, train, evaluate and then fire if before onboarding if the person didn't meet the cut off at the end of the hiring process. In Jibble, it was different, I was in a more senior role, so the onboarding was almost immediate, I was expected to contribute rather than learn
- Approachability:
In my corporate Job, I had a boss, who had a boss, who had a boss who had a boss..lol vs in the startup I was directly under one manager who reported to the CEO, whom I could approach with any issues or problems (though thats a company culture thing and differs from startup to start up)
- Rigidity in workflow:
We used Salesforce and salesloft at Motive, and anyone thats been in sales and has used those Jurassic era softwares knows just how absolutely terrible and frustrating they are, but because the company was so big and they probably because of the difficulty of moving mass amounts of data. In Jibble it was different, the team was pretty lean this gave us the flexibility of trying out a number of unique approaches without letting "breaking" the company
- Meetings:
Again, surprised to see that we have about the same number of meetings in both places, one major meeting a day, one check-in every 2 weeks and then a Town Hall where all the departments show up
- Accountability:
Startups will make you more accountable in a personal sense, but Corporate Jobs will teach you to work in team (ironic I know) that was my experience. In my corporate Job, if I didn't do well, most of the blame went onto the manager, since we worked in teams of 4-5 with a manager on top, and if we didn't meet targets, sure you failed as an individual but what hurt more was that the "team" failed and your manager might also get kicked out, so that made me feel like we were working in a sports team, everyone would edge each other on, there was more competition, but that's just sales, the product side is not like that ofc.
- Many Hats vs 1:
In Jibble, I was supposed to do the work, find solution even if it was a a little out of my jurisdiction at times, which is to be expected in a smaller team. You can take this positively or negatively, if you're the type of person that wants to learn and grow, you wont mind the extra work because it'll push you out of your comfort zone, otherwise you'll see it as a hassle. In Motive we knew exactly what was expected of us, and they didn't ask any more and certainly not any less. If you missed targets, you were replaced fairly quickly
- Churn:
I mean this in the software sense and the people sense. Corporates see a lot of churn the closer to the bottom of the pyramid you get, near the top you have a lot of folks that have cemented their places. A start up like Jibble is more rectangular slowly morphing into an octagon
- Simmering Stew vs Pressure Cooker:
In motive it was a roaring flame, the pressure was intense, you anxiety was palpable, especially in your junior hires, if you were lucky you could even catch your manager breaking a sweat after his 1-1 with his superiors too. Nothing was ever good enough, every day was a "New day" each target was just the "Next Step" (again all in the context of sales), every night was a feast. In Jibble, the team was focused on the product more, fine dining was the name of the game. The team figured the product was not for everyone, so spent time perfecting it and waiting for those that appreciate it to seek them out, instead of chasing passers by.
- Social Media Presence:
Motive CEO Shoaib Makani was only available during Town Hall meetings after the company went public, publicity wise, its more easy to see him in an interview in BCC or CNN, for the start up, the CEO Asim Qureshi is more visible on public platforms like Quora and LinkedIn - this became an important lesson later because I had clients come up to me and try the product because they felt some sort of solidarity with the company since they consumed content by Asim
In my experience, if your aim is to learn about process and workflows and want to improve yourself in one specific area, join a big Multi national company like Motive and you'll learn a ton about outsourcing basically polishing and optimizing one cog in a well oiled machine
If your goal is to be more well rounded, learn a bit of everything before committing to one area and question existing workflows and methods, then definitely try to work for a start up
Here's what I would apply to my startup should I start again:
- Be focused on the product - make it excellent, make people question why theyre getting so much value
- Niche down, build for an audience you know well (esp if its your first time)
- Maintain a personal brand, your startup might tank, but you can learn and rebuild by leveraging your reputation, plus people buy from people
- Work hard to provide genuine value, people now can smell out b.s from a mile away
- Understand that venture capital injection means giving up creative control at some point
- Never, ever give up based on what others will think, give up only if you no longer want to do it
- Be courageous enough to be public and try non-conventional approaches, because people will talk regardless.
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