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

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

#151

Post by yowlingcat »

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #31
corty wrote: post #9

I'm not sure why everyone seems so focused on the cafeteria thing. I'm not sure people and their attitudes towards amenities are really the problem here. From my understanding, the differerence is the companywide attitude to risk. A startup has a "grow at any cost, or maybe perish" attitude. If things go south, bankruptcy will take care of the leftover excess risk (barring criminal charges). A bigco cannot easily go…

> So the only means to have a situation where you don't risk bigco for a single department is not making it a department. Make it a Ltd. in a holding or something. I was thinking that as well. Can anyone explain why this isn't common practice?

> I was thinking that as well. Can anyone explain why this isn't common practice?

If you squint a little bit, this is exactly what the whole premise of corporate VC is. Take the funds that you'd allocate to long shots and operate as a VC would, provide strategic distribution where you can add value as a bigco, etc. Problem here is that compared to pure VCs you risk portfolio conflict in a different way that may not be as attractive to founders, but at least it's viable.

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

#152

Post by tlb »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #150
aerosmile wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I didn't want to make too much of a point of that, because if you filtered just for founders with prior exits, you might have a hard time scoring early opportunities with them (they usually have plenty of people to fill the first 20-50 jobs). But yes - joining Square the day it was announced that Jack Dorsey started another startup would have been a no-brainer for that career path (same with Max Levchin's Af…

This is very cherry-picked. Actually research has found that prior business success does not predict future success at all. Though failure does predict failure, so at least avoid that.

How is it mathematically possible for prior failure to predict failure, without prior success predicting success?

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

#153

Post by softwaredoug »

Maybe you can't have startups at big companies, but you can look at your career and personal brand like an entrepreneur. Who are your customers/employers? What market niche are you capturing? How good are you at demonstrating your leadership in that niche? What do you need to change to put yourself in a better position with current/potential employers?

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

#154

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

nojvek wrote: post #77

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 Microso…

I don’t think the issue is that working at a pseudo startup doesn’t pay enough while a real startup does. Startups almost always pay less than big companies. Even most of the successful ones. For a worker, the pseudo startup is a great option. You get a high base salary, and a large stock grant, and the high growth stock we’ve seen at a lot of the big companies over a reasonably long period. By the end of your vesting, your $125k cash + $75k RSU = $200k/yr has (using apple growth, which is reasonably FAANG representative) grown to $125k + $245k RSUs = $370k/yr assuming no promotions and a linear vest.

Equity does build wealth, and BigCo equity does it much more reliably than a real startup.

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

#155

Post by ryandrake »

westurner wrote: post #136
Swizec wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern Silicon Valley lets you do both. Why not throw the dice and still make around $200k cash? As a [good] engineer you can have your cake and eat it too. Sure it won’t make you a billionaire but you can live a comfy life, maybe win the lottery, and retire at 50 if the lottery fails.

Living and working elsewhere with the wages of the region reduces expenses and opportunities; but the wealth of educational resources online [1][2] does make it feasible to even bootstrap a company on the side. Do you need to borrow money to scale quickly enough to pay expenses with sufficient cash flow for the foreseeable future? Income sources: Passive income, Content, Equity that's potentially worth nothing, a bac…

I’d you are going to start something on the side, carefully read your current employment agreement, particularly the part about IP assignment. Most Silicon Valley companies I’ve worked with, including FAANGs, claim ownership of everything you produce, inside or outside of employment, at home or in office, using their equipment or yours. You don’t want to lick into a unicorn idea and have your former employer’s lawyers send you that letter...

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

#156

Post by Viliam1234 »

DebtDeflation wrote: post #103
nojvek wrote: post #77

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 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…

In my humble opinion, Bitcoin is a better lottery that equity, because it does not require you to work till 2am in morning.

Instead of equity, ask for higher salary, and invest the difference in cryptocurrencies, stock market, and even the old-fashioned lottery. Maybe a bit of everything, to balance the portfolio. Your chances are not worse, and you can go sleep before the midnight.

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

#157

Post by ryandrake »

ma2rten wrote: post #110
nojvek wrote: post #77

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 Microso…

You can have payouts proportional to success even in big companies. Google famously payed $120M to Anthony Levandowski. This is because there was an agreement in place to pay projects in X based on the value that they create.

True, but this is a vanishingly small edge case. You generally have to be a certain person to negotiate something like this with a big company. Surely the "Ninth Cog Engineer From The Left" at Waymo will not have the negotiating power to get this kind of profit-sharing or pay-for-value comp package.

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

#158

Post by iancmceachern »

Viliam1234 wrote: post #156
DebtDeflation wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

In my humble opinion, Bitcoin is a better lottery that equity, because it does not require you to work till 2am in morning. Instead of equity, ask for higher salary, and invest the difference in cryptocurrencies, stock market, and even the old-fashioned lottery. Maybe a bit of everything, to balance the portfolio. Your chances are not worse, and you can go sleep before the midnight.

Great thought! It doesn't have to be crypto, it could be any reasonable investment...

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

#159

Post by xwolfi »

Viliam1234 wrote: post #156
DebtDeflation wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

In my humble opinion, Bitcoin is a better lottery that equity, because it does not require you to work till 2am in morning. Instead of equity, ask for higher salary, and invest the difference in cryptocurrencies, stock market, and even the old-fashioned lottery. Maybe a bit of everything, to balance the portfolio. Your chances are not worse, and you can go sleep before the midnight.

Well but how do you get the money to buy any bitcoin in the first place ?

You don't invest in crypto currencies, you join early enough to sell to the next level of the pyramid you convince via social media post :s

But well you're right to say people should balance portfolio, I however don't see the value of the lottery, it's like paying taxes twice, with no chance of winning ever. At least bitcoin slowly loses value, a lottery ticket will lost its entire value a few days after purchase in 99.9999% of cases

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