Entrepreneur Vacation
Why I quit my startup and joined Google
In September of 2013 my company, AppCertain, was syndicated in several major TV news outlets in cities across America. We almost doubled our user base, from 900 monthly active users to 1700. In October we more than doubled our user base to over 4000 monthly active users and were in conversations to sell the company to Apple. From this perspective we should have been riding high.
But, what was really going on was: we ran out of money in September. The team was falling apart, as people were simply burned out. Our sale to Apple was a last ditch effort, one where we learned that we should have focused on the technology problem (automatically analyzing iOS apps) instead of the revenue or people problem (better parental controls for iOS devices). The cherry on top was when I realized I had built a parental control company, instead of a mobile security company, something I wasn’t passionate about. At all.
So we decided to take a break. A vacation, if you will, from the startup world. And that led me to Google in November of 2013.
Pros
I’ve been at Google in Pittsburgh now for a bit longer than a year. I started as a Software Engineer in Test and transitioned to Product Management after two quarters. I’m not sure it’s been as much of a vacation as I was hoping or expecting, but there are some good reasons to take a big business break:
- More dependable income
- Less crazy hours (usually)
- Less responsibility (usually)
- Great health insurance
- Networking within Google
- Regular trips to Mountain View
- I’m learning a crap-ton, especially about very large businesses
Cons
Google has a reputation as a great place to work, and the people I’ve encountered in my day to day work are great. That said, I’ve run into some issues as well.
- It’s still a big business
I’ve seen some projects move very quickly. Think a working demo or experiment within a month. This is rare though, as most thinking is done in terms of quarters at best. Furthermore, there is red tape, and not all of it is as transparent as it would be in a smaller organization.
- They seem to own a lot of any work I might want to do
My employment contract has wording that indicates almost any coding and other technical work I do is owned by the company. I haven’t tried to toe this line, and often feel limited in the income I can generate as a result. I have already encountered limits on what I can do to earn more income, such as which cases I can be an expert witness for.
- I get home tired
Not that I wasn’t tired at AppCertain…It’s just a different kind of tired now. I think I don’t feel like I’m making as big of an impact.
- There is an expectation of consistency now
My wife is happy about this, and I don’t blame her. I know that I will eventually want to go back to the startup grind though, and I don’t want us to get too complacent. This is especially tough because we now have
- Dependable income
So we’re saving up and trying to prepare better for our second shot.
