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There’s no such thing as “a startup within a big company”

hunterwalk.medium.com

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Re: There’s no such thing as “a startup within a big company”

#61

Post by taneq »

virgilp wrote: post #29
sixhobbits wrote: post #5

I mean, sure, but it also misses the point a bit. "Startup in a big company" doesn't mean "yo take some cashdollar and try build and release something to the public", but it does mean "hey, take a small team and do your own thing with less oversight and process overhead from higher-ups". The team I worked in at AWS was like this and it felt a lot like startup teams I've worked with. That didn't mean we could take 'br…

While I worked for Adobe, one of the executives there (Mark Randall, serial entrepreneur that was "acquired" by the company, awesome guy) launched the "Red box" initiative that eventually become https://www.kickbox.org/ . The red box was essentially a "toolbox" that he created on how to build a startup (set of training materials + $1000USD credit card that you could use however you wish), and the purpose was to get e…

> I didn't get to keep any upside. I had most of the risks of a startup, but very little of the payoff.

That sounds super exploitative tbh. Using people’s passion and naivety to give you free moonshots.

Re: There’s no such thing as “a startup within a big company”

#62

Post by virgilp »

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #37
virgilp wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I worked for Adobe, one of the executives there (Mark Randall, serial entrepreneur that was "acquired" by the company, awesome guy) launched the "Red box" initiative that eventually become https://www.kickbox.org/ . The red box was essentially a "toolbox" that he created on how to build a startup (set of training materials + $1000USD credit card that you could use however you wish), and the purpose was to get e…

Super interesting. Would you mind sharing more about it?

I wouldn't mind, but I don't know what - ask if you have specific questions. There's ample material on https://kickbox.org and https://home.getkickbox.com/ (basically all the contents of the red box, minus the cash), plus it appears one even has access to a "kickbox community" from what I can tell.

Re: There’s no such thing as “a startup within a big company”

#63

Post by namdnay »

theta_d wrote: post #19
cs02rm0 wrote: post #13

It's just big company talk to pretend they're cool and innovative. Obviously ridiculous garbage that probably got someone a good annual review score. A small company I was working with had heard that IBM, who had a customer in common, were operating some sort of "garage" thing that the customer really liked. Rumours were flying around, someone had heard it was a video conferencing app, they were desperate to know mor…

When I worked at IBM Cloud they copied the Spotify model of squads and tribes and guilds. I remember having to watch a video about it on my first day.

Woah I think we've stumbled on something here.. Spotify seem to be the source/example of all these new management fads. I remember having to sit through that hand-drawn sketch video (is there a name for these things?) describing how Spotify does SAFe (if you don't know what this is, pretend you never read it and continue your life as usual, please) and how awesome it is and why we all need to do it.

Re: There’s no such thing as “a startup within a big company”

#64

Post by nmfisher »

taneq wrote: post #61
virgilp wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I worked for Adobe, one of the executives there (Mark Randall, serial entrepreneur that was "acquired" by the company, awesome guy) launched the "Red box" initiative that eventually become https://www.kickbox.org/ . The red box was essentially a "toolbox" that he created on how to build a startup (set of training materials + $1000USD credit card that you could use however you wish), and the purpose was to get e…

> I didn't get to keep any upside. I had most of the risks of a startup, but very little of the payoff. That sounds super exploitative tbh. Using people’s passion and naivety to give you free moonshots.

I agree that an incentive structure is probably needed as a matter of practice (since few people will want to do extra work with zero upside), but I wouldn't call it exploitative.

You're an employee, you work for a guaranteed salary now in return for someone else shouldering the risk. That's the nature of the deal. If you want to share in the upside, you have to share the risk.

It's not like anyone's being forced to do this extra work (unlike, say, game dev, which is exploitative). It's just an option for people who want to tackle interesting projects.

Re: There’s no such thing as “a startup within a big company”

#65

Post by varjag »

pembrook wrote: post #57
varjag wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the environment startups exist in due to economic realities of having little money to go on rather than some grand strategy. There is a possibility a better balance of risk/reward (say 5% of ownership and 150k salary) could well produce just as good or better outcomes.

The problem is, if this employee is the perfect person to create this business, why are they working at Google and not on their own starting this venture already? Why waste time letting one of your clearly risk averse in-house employees (hence why they work at Google in the first place), fumble around for 5-10 years trying to build something? While your competitors might be doing the same thing and will actually succ…

I assume 150k at Google is enough salary demotion to provide motivational filter, but feel free to adjust the figure as you see fit.

Re: There’s no such thing as “a startup within a big company”

#66

Post by paulryanrogers »

pembrook wrote: post #57
varjag wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the environment startups exist in due to economic realities of having little money to go on rather than some grand strategy. There is a possibility a better balance of risk/reward (say 5% of ownership and 150k salary) could well produce just as good or better outcomes.

The problem is, if this employee is the perfect person to create this business, why are they working at Google and not on their own starting this venture already? Why waste time letting one of your clearly risk averse in-house employees (hence why they work at Google in the first place), fumble around for 5-10 years trying to build something? While your competitors might be doing the same thing and will actually succ…

Big companies buying startups looks like the most likely 'successful' outcome today. Yet with effective antitrust maybe it shouldn't be.

Re: There’s no such thing as “a startup within a big company”

#67

Post by redis_mlc »

muglug wrote: post #35

I know this is not what the article is talking about, but there have been some success stories of companies incubating startups. An obvious example is Tinder, incubated at IAC.

I'm not sure Tindr is a good example, since it has a more complicated founding history and IAC was initially not the sole owner:

> In March 2014, media and internet conglomerate IAC increased its majority stake in Tinder

Also, IAC (Match Group) owns most of the top US dating sites, so they were already in the dating market.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinder_(app)

Re: There’s no such thing as “a startup within a big company”

#68

Post by bitwize »

sixhobbits wrote: post #5

I mean, sure, but it also misses the point a bit. "Startup in a big company" doesn't mean "yo take some cashdollar and try build and release something to the public", but it does mean "hey, take a small team and do your own thing with less oversight and process overhead from higher-ups". The team I worked in at AWS was like this and it felt a lot like startup teams I've worked with. That didn't mean we could take 'br…

The word for this is "skunkworks". Even the most independent skunkworks still serves big-company goals, often taking advantage of big-company resources and generating IP for the big company.

In some ways, a skunkworks is startup-like but in many critical ways it's way different.

Re: There’s no such thing as “a startup within a big company”

#69

Post by wiremine »

I'm a VP for a software firm focused on IoT. I work closely with both actual startups and Fortune 500s companies looking to launch new connected products.

I agree there is no such thing as a start up within a big company.

But that's not the point.

The point is to innovate. And a lot of innovation can happen within a true start up. But a lot of innovation can happen inside big companies, too. I see it all the time. Most of it, though, is just incremental innovation, not massively disruptive innovation.

But that's true of most startups, too. Most startups (the ones that survive) are incremental in their impact: they make incremental improvements to some part of our world, and they get bought. Very few transform into the next Fortune 500 giant and have that level of impact on society.

Final thought: I have seen a few world-shaking ideas emerge from corporate America. The problem is it typically cannibalizes the core business, or is so outside the core business, and the C-suite doesn't know what to do with it.

Re: There’s no such thing as “a startup within a big company”

#70

Post by kenrose »

My own experience ([1]): the biggest different between "startup inside BigCo" and an actual startup is availability of resources.

"Startup inside BigCo" generally revolves around spinning up a new team that's product focused and delivering quickly.

Depending on which BigCo you're at, delivering quickly could be a departure from how things are normally done. e.g., You don't have to worry about writing a big up front proposal doc, going to the architectural review board, or using the standard infra tooling.

For engineers on a team, this "feels" like a startup. There are daily standups. They talk to users and have a sense of ownership on what's built. There can even be some sense of urgency to ship quickly.

While "BigCo startup" teams mimic a lot of the same procedures and activities as a startup, there is an underlying support structure at BigCo that isn't there in an actual startup. IMO, that makes the experiences substantially different.

Some examples:

- The cost of failure is different. At BigCo, if the project fails, it's generally OK. Each engineer can be reassigned to some new team at BigCo. At a startup, if the project fails, the entire company fails.

- There are more people to ask for help. At BigCo, if you're stuck on some hairy engineering issue, you have a swell of engineering talent to lean on for help and guidance. At a startup, you have StackOverflow, Google, and maybe some folks in your personal network to lean on for help.

- There's more than just product development. At BigCo, generally only the engineering / product development team is structured like a startup. After the code is "done", the regular product marketing org, marketing org, and sales org (if that's a thing), can kick into gear. At a startup, there is no such massive support structure.

- On the topic of marketing, having the brand of BigCo is a huge boon to a new product. For mobile apps, there's a lot more trust in seeing "NewProduct by BigCo" vs. just "NewProduct" in the app store. Your rockstar CEO may even tweet out the launch announcement to his millions of followers.

- And yes, at BigCo, when it's lunchtime, you can go to the cafeteria and decide if you want the steak or the coq au vin for lunch. (well, before COVID at least)

---

[1] - I've worked for really small startups (< 8 people), really big companies (I was person 2000+), and small companies that became big (joined at 20, left at 200+, now at 500+).

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