To start-up or not to start-up? That is the question.

All the way back in 2010 I made the decision to leave Microsoft, where I’d been working for six years, to join a start-up in the mobile app distribution space called ‘Getjar’. I’d been happy at Microsoft, was part of a great team (many of which I am still happy to call friends and colleagues today), was continuing to develop professionally and felt secure in my working life. However, once I’d made the decision to leave I quickly decided I wanted to go into the start-up world rather than join another large company. I felt at the time that my decision-making was logical; I’d worked at a number of very large companies; Emap (now Bauer), Viacom and then Microsoft. I was attracted by the idea of something new and different. I wanted the chance to learn fast, go through new experiences, build new skills and hopefully also secure a long-term financial future for my family along the way. I felt I had the chance to accelerate my career and, if it all went wrong, then I was still employable and could always get another job. It seemed so simple. 

As I reflect back on that decision to leave Microsoft and also on my experience working at Getjar over the course of five years I thought I’d share some things I learned along the way in case you’re ever considering making a similar move.

Appetite for risk?

Clearly no two start-ups are the same. Back in 2010 Facebook was still considered a start-up (I’d lost a few of my team members to them). On the other end of the spectrum were purely boot-strapped companies and even further along was the opportunity to start something of my own. For me I wanted to maintain a sense of security, my wife was heavily pregnant with our second child, I had a mortgage and I couldn’t afford to not be in work for any length of time. Setting up my own thing was a risk I wasn’t ready to take. Fortunately Getjar had secured some significant investment from a top tier VC; $18M Series B from Accel Partners. This investment was not only the catalyst for international expansion but it also gave me the confidence that I needed that this was a business with a long runway in front of it.

My advice then is to spend time deeply understanding your personal appetite for risk. At LinkedIn we talk about ‘Intelligent Risks’; considering the upside versus downside, but critically also thinking through decisions based on the broader portfolio of risk across your entire business and / or personal life. This is an important process to go through to land on the right profile for you of any company you may be considering giving your service to.   

WIBIT? / WIFIT?

Confession. I’ve had some jobs that aren’t on my LinkedIn profile. McDonalds? Five stars? Check. Peeling onions for pre-pack salads for twelve hours a day? Check. (I haven’t cried since). Grading and checking apples for super-markets? Check.

It was in this apple packing factory in Lincolnshire where I first saw the phrase ‘WIBIT?’ I was confused, but it was everywhere. After some time I asked one of the apple factory lifers to explain it to me. It meant; ‘Would I buy it?’ and was intended as the simple acronym to guide quality assurance. No one likes a bad apple. I’ll leave the analogy there.

So, as it relates to start-up’s I think this is a great question; ‘WIBIT? WIFIT?’ Would I buy it? Would I fund it? We’re not all in the position to invest our own capital in start-up’s, but by joining you are actively funding. Funding with time, with energy, with your valuable experience.

If you wouldn’t buy it or wouldn’t fund it then don’t join it.

The opportunity to learn and grow

There is no doubt that working in a start-up helped me grow professionally. Decisions made at the speed of light, pivoting quickly and experimenting with new business models quickly became part of the cut and thrust of daily life and there is no substitute for living through these experiences first-hand. I still feel the benefit of these things regularly today, particularly as it relates to change management and being excited and motivated through times of uncertainty. However, the opportunities to grow within large companies can be under-estimated vis a vis start up life. If I compare the amount of time I spent in company led training at Getjar versus either Microsoft or more recently at LinkedIn and it’s night and day. Both Microsoft then and LinkedIn now provide me with so much opportunity to train, learn and develop my skills in a way that a start-up would struggle to. In a start-up you need the discipline to take ownership of your own development, fuel your own growth and focus on your own learning. This may not come from the company in the same way it would in a larger organisation. Give careful consideration to the type of learning you need to invest in and ensure you put the tools and processes in place to enable that to happen, wherever you are working.

Package, perks and financial reward

This one’s pretty simple, at least generally speaking. You don’t leave a big company to go to a start-up for the perks. If perks are important to you then don’t do it. There are other places to work. My experience reinforces this. That said, the financial rewards of start-up life can be significant, but come with higher risk. Stock options assume an exit and usually an exit at an increased valuation. Give careful consideration to the overall benefits and their relative value in multiple scenarios from crash and burn to IPO. Make sure you are not reliant on assumed increases in valuation that may or may not materialise.    

Responsibility

For me, working in a start-up meant reporting into the Chief Revenue Officer; my now friend and mentor Bill Scott. I also had a direct line into the CMO, CFO and CEO. There is no doubt that you learn a tremendous amount through these relationships and access to these communities is more direct in smaller companies. Our CFO Tom Burke had managed exits on the buy-side and sell-side, our CEO Ilja Laurs was a serial entrepreneur and our CMO Patrick Mork a maverick and disruptor whilst our COO (and later CEO) Chris Dury was only ever a phone call away. I still smile when I remember Patricks; “Steve Jobs is not our dad” press release after we received a cease and desist letter from Apple for using the term ‘App Store’. It is in the nature of small companies that you have more responsibility and at Getjar I felt an intimate connection to the direction we were headed in as an overall business. However, this comes with a note of caution. My first morning was spent in Dixons and Carphone Warehouse buying a laptop and phone, then Rymans buying stationary followed by a meeting with Regus to look at a serviced office space. Responsibility shakes both ways. You get the benefits, but you have to deal with some shit along the way. Embrace the shit, it’s part of the experience.

I didn’t see my family in five years.

The cliché here runs that there is no ‘work-life balance’ in start-up life. Not my experience. I worked the longest hours I’ve ever worked in my early years at Microsoft when MSN was kicking ass, in the days before social media, when ‘homepage take over’s’ were flying off the shelves like hot-cakes and our inventory management system was on a whiteboard. What I’ve come to learn is that companies both large and small have a responsibility, even a duty of care to their employees to set a culture that allows people to thrive as human beings over the long-term. However, it is the individual that carries the ultimate responsibility for managing their own work-life balance. As my wife would say; “know your value and be intentional”. Yes, the working hours in a start-up can be long and high intensity, but sleeping well, exercising, turning your phone off and nurturing your personal relationships doesn’t stop in the land of start-up. Start with self-compassion, there is no pride in burning out. I never let it happen to me in a start-up, I’d learned that lesson elsewhere.

Life afterwards

I’ve now been at LinkedIn for four years and was very fortunate to come back into a company that I’d admired from the outside and that I’d specifically targeted as a place to work when things at Getjar started to run their course. It’s not like that for everyone, getting back into a great company in a senior role can be hard, very hard. Before you leave the comfort of a large company for a small one, you should not under-estimate the effort that it can take to find a new place that feels like home when things change again, as they almost inevitably will. In getting my role at LinkedIn I have my network to thank for helping along the way, not least Jon Williams. Maintain your network, nurture it, take care of it, feed it, be helpful to others, help people be successful. The payback is significant and it’s good for the soul.

In summary, I have no regrets that I made that leap, maybe I stayed a little too long in the end, but I strongly believe that having the balance and experience of working at both large and small companies has added a dimension to my professional self that would have been difficult to craft if I’d stayed only in large organisations my entire career.

My advice? Make the leap, but be sure to look very carefully before you do.

I’d be really interested to hear what your experiences have been.

Thanks for reading.