4 ms·

There's a different mental model for employees in a corp vs startup. I fully agree with nonstrademons quote, "if you do nothing - is that you run out of money a

There's a different mental model for employees in a corp vs startup. I fully agree with nonstrademons quote, "if you do nothing - is that you run out of money and starve". Put it this way: A startup is like the reality show Survivor. People scrambling around, focusing on the most important problem at hand - making fire. If you're not contributing, it's easy to see and you get voted off the island (or run out of money and starve). A corporation is a much different setting. You're not alone in the dark on an island. You don't care about fire, you have electricity, some other guy figured out fire and electricity. You have your marching orders to focus on but they're abstract. Contributions are usually not as visible The big problem is too far away. The real problem is not understood anymore. The real question is, how do you take away electricity and get the corporate group to focus on fire like a startup? One option is the corporation needs to borrow some of those fire making talents to spread the thought of flame. Acquisition could be one route. When you have people starting to leave the safety of electricity it's because the primal thought of making fire is more appealing and exciting. You need to bring back the flame.

analogwzrd 12y ago
When I was looking for jobs my senior year in college, I noticed a pattern at the job fair. Large companies head hunt GPAs and small companies are much more interested in personality and hands-on experience. I thought about why this would be the case and came to the conclusion that if a large company makes a bad hiring decision, then the slack created by one bad employee is distributed across several dozen other employees. If a small company makes a bad hiring decision, it could cause culture problems as well as bring the company/project to its knees. I just got assigned to a project at my company that's underfunded. So, they put together a group of junior level engineers and put them in charge - with mentoring senior level engineers in the background. It's trying to simulate the start-up environment, but it doesn't quite get there. You have a limited amount of time/money, and junior engineers eager to show what they can do with the responsibility they've been given.
k__ 12y ago
What does big corps prevent from founding their own start-ups? I mean, MS could simply throw out $1,000,000, seed about 5-10 start-ups and wait whats happening... Since they know where their problems are, they could pre-filter the start-up ideas and increase the success ratio.
- meric 12y ago
  It's called Google Ventures, I think. https://www.gv.com https://www.gv.com
- beat 12y ago
  That lasts until half those startups fail, and someone asks why that department has a 50% failure rate. Or until a startup needs to pivot, and they're not allowed to pivot because it's not in the business plan. Et cetera. Here in the Twin Cities startup scene, we talk a lot about enterprise-oriented startups (because what we have here is the richest concentration of Fortune 500 HQs in the world). On one hand, it'd be nice to get Target or 3M or someone to step up on investing and mentoring for our startups. But odds are the cure would be worse than the disease.

analogwzrd 12y ago

When I was looking for jobs my senior year in college, I noticed a pattern at the job fair. Large companies head hunt GPAs and small companies are much more interested in personality and hands-on experience. I thought about why this would be the case and came to the conclusion that if a large company makes a bad hiring decision, then the slack created by one bad employee is distributed across several dozen other employees. If a small company makes a bad hiring decision, it could cause culture problems as well as bring the company/project to its knees. I just got assigned to a project at my company that's underfunded. So, they put together a group of junior level engineers and put them in charge - with mentoring senior level engineers in the background. It's trying to simulate the start-up environment, but it doesn't quite get there. You have a limited amount of time/money, and junior engineers eager to show what they can do with the responsibility they've been given.

k__ 12y ago

What does big corps prevent from founding their own start-ups? I mean, MS could simply throw out $1,000,000, seed about 5-10 start-ups and wait whats happening... Since they know where their problems are, they could pre-filter the start-up ideas and increase the success ratio.

meric 12y ago
It's called Google Ventures, I think. https://www.gv.com https://www.gv.com
beat 12y ago
That lasts until half those startups fail, and someone asks why that department has a 50% failure rate. Or until a startup needs to pivot, and they're not allowed to pivot because it's not in the business plan. Et cetera. Here in the Twin Cities startup scene, we talk a lot about enterprise-oriented startups (because what we have here is the richest concentration of Fortune 500 HQs in the world). On one hand, it'd be nice to get Target or 3M or someone to step up on investing and mentoring for our startups. But odds are the cure would be worse than the disease.