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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”

#71

Post by cletus »

I saw several of these attempted at Google. They never went anywhere. Probably the most public was Google Wave.

Here's the problem: you can't create the same environment without the same risks and rewards. Google employees get compensated very well, better than all but the luckiest startup employees. If the "startup" fails, no biggie. You just move to another project.

At the same time, the "startup" needs to retain talent so you're competing with other projects. So what happens? The "startup" creates an incentive structure that rewards mediocrity that has nothing to do with the original goals.

This happened with Wave and it happened with Waymo.

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

#72

Post by jlangenauer »

nmfisher wrote: post #64
taneq wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Reward being tied to risk is only for the little people. One can point at numberous executive compensation packages where they have plenty of exposure to upside, and almost no risk (or even negative risk: a golden parachute if you get pushed out).

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

#73

Post by Qwertious »

namdnay wrote: post #63
theta_d wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What sort of thing is SAFe? Is it some sort of unsuccessful corporate pantomime of a successful practice?

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

#74

Post by andrewguenther »

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…

Agreed on this feeling within AWS. The product I worked on came out of an engineering brainstorming meeting, we had to get it funded, small team, etc. Felt very much like startups I've worked at before and was part of the reason I stayed at AWS so long.

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

#76

Post by xyzelement »

This seems kind of obvious and does this article stem from someone taking the term startup too literally?

Obviously it's not the same - nobody hears "startup in a big company" and assume start-up things like "paid inequity, on your ass if this fails, barely health insurance, etc.". Those things are part and parcel of a startup life and both create the conditions and attract the kind of people who do that.

Startup within a large company always just meant a fairly independent team that is exploring a new space, and having been "there" a bunch of times I can tell you it's awesome. I am now at a real startup that's awesome as well but different.

Just making the point that to write this scathing article drawing a distinction that is actually just obvious, seems pointless.

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

#77

Post by nojvek »

When I was at PowerBI in Microsoft, all the execs hailed it as Startup within Microsoft. Come work here instead of Uber. I worked like a dog, sometimes till 2am in morning. My manager would routinely ask us to come on weekends. I was naive, I thought we are growing customer base, this is what a startup looks like.

The ultimate realization was in a startup you have equity, a decent amount in a good startup. At Microsoft it was a base salary and set amount of stock. What we did moved very little of the top revenue metric. It made little difference if I worked like a dog, or slacked. The promos were very much “buddy buddy” system.

In the end I realized you can’t have startups in big companies (esp as an engineer you don’t have the huge upside if the startup is successful, your upside is capped)

Startups work because you have skin in the game, when you build something people want, you get to reap rewards proportional to it. That correlation and feedback loop is very important.

At big companies you don’t have the the same correlation. Some big shot exec they hired reaps far far more on the work you did.

Equity is what builds wealth.

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

#78

Post by brandall10 »

varjag wrote: post #65
pembrook wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think the point he was making is it’s a half measure compared to having no safety net. The “adjust as you see fit” would be not operating under the Google umbrella at all.

The simple act of having to do the rounds to repeatedly secure financing and letting that, or the actual performance of the business, gate growth or survival and being a cofounder or employee in this environment has a different emotional and operational strain on the business.

I worked in a company like this btw for about five years, we were started as a subsidiary of a successful medical device company by that ceo as a “what if”, to take the already developed dispensing hardware by our parent and adopt it to the general supply chain management industry. We were doing decent business ($30M ARR for a 40 person company) and were minimally profitable but eventually shuttered by our parent company after it became apparent the hockey-stick like growth was not coming.

I’ve also worked at startup that failed after about 6 years. The difference between how those two companies screeched to a halt was stark. In one case it came out of the blue and suddenly 1/3 of the employees were sucked up into the parent company and the rest got pink slips. In the other case it was a really wild final year with the writing clearly on the wall, multiple furloughs and downsizing for survival.

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

#80

Post by RHSeeger »

nmfisher wrote: post #64
taneq wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

But the company isn't shouldering all the cost/risk.

> I realized that to get it to actually ship I had to sacrifice nights and weekends.

If you have to work nights and weekends, but get none of the benefits for it, you might as well work nights and weekends on your _own_ side project.

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