Robert Hatta

People who work for big companies approach me all the time, saying that they want to work at a startup. Many of them don’t understand just how different it is to succeed at a startup. There are obvious challenges like perceived risk, the lack of established business infrastructure, and fewer resources. However, most corporate types know this already. What really hinders successful transition is what I call excess muscle mass that develops from succeeding in big companies.

Much like a professional bodybuilder, a successful big company executive is an elite athlete. They work hard and they build muscle mass for a very specific purpose – looking strong. But have you ever watched a professional bodybuilder swing a golf club or run a 100-meter dash ? Not pretty. All that mass holds them back, and adapting to a different athletic task takes a lot of time and retraining of different muscle groups. At big companies, most of that muscle mass develops around two areas: decision-making and the pace of change.

Succeeding in a big company is certainly about getting results. But the path to getting results is very different than it is in a startup. At big companies, you can get fired for being 5% wrong about a decision. So most of the effort goes into preparing detailed plans, looking for minor contingencies, building other plans for how you’ll react to those contingencies, and building consensus throughout the process. To do anything, “you need an airtight business case,” says Lauren Gruenebaum, Chief Product Officer at Root . She joined Root, a data-driven insurance tech company, as one of its first dozen employees after spending eight years at large corporations. At startups, successful decision makers are right 50% of the time. “It’s more like 30%,” according to Lauren. She notes, “It’s less about what you know with certainty going in, and more about what you quickly learn along the way. You have to be comfortable making mistakes that might get you fired at the big company.” Speed matters way more than accuracy. At startups, failing to adapt your strategy to what you learn on the ground is what gets you fired.

That learn-as-you-go pace also requires a comfort with change, another area where many corporate employees struggle. For Lauren, it was a mindset shift, “looking back at my first six months, my job changed on a daily basis. I had to first get comfortable adapting to that change and then become a driver of change myself. At [unnamed big company], I’d quickly lose support for my projects if I tried to do things differently or challenged existing plans.” Even if you don’t get into trouble for going against the grain, pushing for change in a large company can be exhausting and demoralizing. Many give up and invest energy in developing muscle mass elsewhere.

Not all muscle mass is useless, however. Sulabh Agarwal spent 15 years at Epic Systems before joining Civis Analytics , a data analytics and software startup, as its CTO. “At its core, software engineering is not that different at big companies versus startups. Being user-centered and shipping high quality software on time still matters.” But Sulabh brought with him years of best practices and processes the startup badly needed. The trick he says “is recognizing what is good process to build and what is bad or unnecessary process for a company at this stage.”

So how do corporate types adapt to startups as successfully as Sulabh and Lauren? Like any responsible blog, here are your four easy steps to transitioning from big companies to startups. Zing. Zong. Boom.

While at the big company, do things to keep you from getting too bulky. In his 15 years at Epic, Sulabh worked on or owned responsibility for over half of the company’s 60 product lines. He had built things from scratch as well as maintained legacy platforms. Moving around a lot gave him an opportunity to develop different muscle groups, preparing him for both the pace of change and constant learning required at startups. If you’re moving to your first startup, make sure it’s in a domain you really understand. Both Lauren and Sulabh came to their new jobs with deep experience in terms of the industry or the technology domain. According to Sulabh, “changing domain and adapting to startup life would have been very tough.” Resist big company strategies like hiring a team before doing the work yourself. “The temptation on day-1 is to hire your team because that’s what’s expected when you step into a new role at a big company,” says Lauren. However, you don’t yet know what’s going to work and the type of people you will need on your team. Doing the work first, yourself, will often translate into hiring a very different team than you would have otherwise. Don’t try to get into a startup. Try to get into a specific startup. As I’ve written before , target startups that are building teams or solving problems that you care about deeply. That determination about a company’s mission will motivate you to learn and do many new and uncomfortable things. Unlearning things that made you successful in one context (but hurt you in another) is super hard. But it's possible. Just look at this guy .

Fun YouTube videos aside, there is serious reason we need people from large companies who can adapt to startups. Big companies make up the majority of talent pools in the Midwest. And selling to or disrupting incumbent industries like manufacturing, supply chain, logistics and agriculture requires domain knowledge. This is especially the case in highly regulated industries like insurance and healthcare. Recognizing the challenges and adapting to them are as much the responsibility of the company as it is the person. Said differently, the startups that help talented people successfully shed that muscle mass and adapt quickly will be the winners.

Robert Hatta

Columbus, Ohio, United States 8K followers 500+ connections

See your mutual connections View mutual connections with Robert Sign in Welcome back Email or phone Password Show Forgot password? Sign in or New to LinkedIn? Join now or New to LinkedIn? Join now

About

Experience

Ten-X Talent

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

Education

Stanford University

Recommendations received

Kishan Shah

Douglas Hardman

View Robert’s full profile

Other similar profiles

Phin Barnes

Peter Flint

Brian Ascher

Jason Fiedler

Melissa Taunton

Keith Titan

Bill Geary

Ron Palmeri

Matt Harris

Christopher Ramsey

Matt Gieseking

Drew Goodmanson

John Frankel

Judith Iglehart, Ed.D

W. Patrick Connelly

Rob Rosenberg

William Lehmann

Amit Shah

Andrew Artz

Chris Ji

Explore collaborative articles

Columbus, Ohio, United States

8K followers 500+ connections

View mutual connections with Robert

Welcome back

Email or phone

Password

Forgot password?

or

New to LinkedIn? Join now

or

New to LinkedIn? Join now