In economics there is a research subject called "Theory of the firm". In 2016 Holmström and Milgrom got Economics Nobel for their research of theory of contracting and incentives especially as applied to the theory of the firm. It's theory that is actually interesting to read. They have papers like: The firm as an incentive system, The Boundaries of the Firm, Incentive Contracts, Asset Ownership, and Job Design, An Economic Theory of Promises, The Firm as a Subeconomy,
There’s no such thing as “a startup within a big company”
111–120 of 326 posts
Re: There’s no such thing as “a startup within a big company”
#112Earlier 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.
> That sounds super exploitative tbh.
It's not, at all. You know very well what you get into, and have every option to get out at any point, with zero downside to your career. You get paid, get to learn a lot, get to experience building a product with basically zero risk for yourself. Why would the company also give you the upside? They put a lot of resources into this program.
Also, it appears that Mark enhanced the program in the meanwhile/ I was one of the early participants. There's more structure now, and there's a "goldbox" that suggests he figured a way to give employees some guaranteed upside.
Re: There’s no such thing as “a startup within a big company”
#113There is no such thing as "a startup within a big company" on it's face is a tautology, so we can assume the author was not speaking literally.
So if he's not speaking literally, what does 'startup' mean? Is it characterized by the ownership structure? The maturity of the market? The culture of the team? The flexibility and nimbleness of the management team to pivot and move targets?
Since none of this is clear I think its possible that there is some disagreement even with the best intentions on both sides.
Re: There’s no such thing as “a startup within a big company”
#114When 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 Microso…
>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. I joined a startup in 1999. There were 3 founders and I was employee #2 after that. I received a ton of options (this was before RSUs became popular). We had a great product and a great team, but 18 months later ran out of money and unfortunately it was right after…
>Time is the most valuable commodity you have, don't squander it for lottery tickets and empty promises.
That goes the other way around too, the only way to have massive amounts of free time without going FIRE is to win the lottery. So why not throw the dice once or twice when you're young and then settle into a stable corporate job if it doesn't pay out?
Re: There’s no such thing as “a startup within a big company”
#115When 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 Microso…
Equity is what builds wealth. In exceptional circumstances, yes. In most circumstances equity in a startup ends up being worthless, even in the event of exit. Starting your own startup, or joining a startup as a very early employee can make you rich; anything else and you might as well be buying lottery tickets. That's not to denigrate startups in any way . Working in a startup is amazing. It's just not how you get r…
Yeah if your stake isn't significant even in case of a huge exit, you're not making even close to what you'd make at a faang even in case of a massive ipo
Re: There’s no such thing as “a startup within a big company”
#116When 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 Microso…
It’s a no true Scotsman scenario. Obviously working on a “startup” in a big company isn’t the same as starting a new company.
But... you get to enjoy the bigco benefits and security while avoiding a lot of bigco bullshit. I did something like this in a public sector org. We got to do something new and exciting, many of the team ended up getting promoted, and the big shots got to pay themselves on the back too. We did not get rich, but we did not risk much.
Generally speaking, if you want to build wealth on a short horizon, working for someone is the hardest path.
Re: There’s no such thing as “a startup within a big company”
#117When 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 Microso…
> Startups work because you have skin in the game, when you build something people want, you get to reap rewards proportional to it.
Eh... not really. Especially not for the rank-and-file employees. Most don't get proportional rewards even if the company exits successfully. Unless you're a founder or one of the early employees, for the high percentile of successful startups, rewards are proportional with what you'd have gotten at FAANG companies during the same time.
Not to diminish your experience, but I think the idea there was that you get to work on something 'risky' but regardless of its success you'll still get your paycheck, health insurance benefits. And if it goes belly up, you can just do a lateral move to Azure or whatever instead of worrying about the very existence of the company.
Re: There’s no such thing as “a startup within a big company”
#118I 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…
Glad you shared your experience. The title of the article is completely misleading and many people in the comments who claim it's impossible are either wrong or don't understand the meaning of this phrase.
I have been a (very happy) part of two such startup-within-a-big-corpo initiatives during my career in investment banking.
Although on different (in my opinion: better) terms, it does happen, although quite rare.
Re: There’s no such thing as “a startup within a big company”
#119When 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 Microso…
Off topic, but were you involved in PowerQuery/PowerPivot as well?
I have moved away from Excel, but was one of the first users of PQ/PP, it was a great step forward and my understanding is PowerBI was an extension of that.
Congrats because everybody I know loves PowerBI! Well done, even if the rewards may not have been commiserate.
Re: There’s no such thing as “a startup within a big company”
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
Equity is what builds wealth. In exceptional circumstances, yes. In most circumstances equity in a startup ends up being worthless, even in the event of exit. Starting your own startup, or joining a startup as a very early employee can make you rich; anything else and you might as well be buying lottery tickets. That's not to denigrate startups in any way . Working in a startup is amazing. It's just not how you get r…
Even when they’re not worthless, most startup options end up being worth less than the salary that one could’ve gotten at a non-startup. Last time I looked into it, and it was a while ago, the median startup option package was exercised for a profit of $30k, not nothing but far less than what one could’ve gotten at a large company like ... Microsoft. Arguably the existence of several different types of stock options…
> the median startup option package was exercised for a profit of $30k
That must be one of those cases where "median" and "average" are very different.