You just finished university: you know what you left behind but you have not a clear understanding of which one is going to be a successful step for your future career. The rivalry between corporate and startup world will stay there even many years after you graduate right because it is one of the main debates between entrepreneurs and people who want to become founders.
You could have an idea for a new business and an attitude coming from your personality, but in any case you don’t own a company yet and that is were a decision is needed: should you start yours or should you go work for someone else’s idea?
Lama, the Q&A app (a startup itself!) has asked some of the main users and founders what they think about this topic and their answers have shown quite contrasting opinions based on different backgrounds and experience.
“When I left college I worked for five years at Google and I think it was really important to have some corporate experience before I started a company. (…) The majority of people use the corporate experience to know how to hire and structure a company” says Daniel Araùjo, Co-founder & CEO at Attentive, a desktop and mobile platform that delivers just-in-time information for professionals.
When a company is structured around a leveraged model, as in the corporate world, they usually build ecosystems around them and the same environment teaches you how to manage and present the product or the service. Large companies can give employees a sense of order in their lives, with fixed tasks and deadlines, holiday days and income.
Someone like Yovanka Sanchez, producer and director, who founded La Mariposa Film, a production company in 2015 seems to be of the opposite opinion of Araùjo: “I would definitely say: go for the startup. Time is very important and building something is a long road. Someone is going to benefit of it in the corporate world, so why not putting all that time and energy into something you are passionate about, something that you really want to do like your dream (…). Take the risk, take the plunge.” Her aim is to engage, inspire, entertain, make people laugh and touch through world-class content and original film projects.
Creativity plays a leading role when you have an entrepreneurial mindset, as well as a clear understating of the field are working on. It is easy to be substituted in a corporate chain as well as it’s tougher to make yourself a difference in a short term, compared to a startup, where it’s tough to be substituted and quite easy to make a big difference because the destiny of your company depends entirely on yourself and the people you hire.
“Startup gives you the opportunity for a diverse job, you will be experiencing different tasks while in a corporate world you have a very specific and narrow field in which you have to operate.” Problem solving attitude is the key, according to Ruben Vergara Meersohn, owner and CEO of Wall Street International, one of the most constructive media companies and in-depth journals in the field of online publications.
The main questions you have to answer are first of all related to yourself. Does working in a startup suit you? Do you feel that your corporate job is clipping your wings?
The advice that Eleonora Raggi, photographer and founder of Snap-Bits, gives is to… travel! She says that “you have to understand who you are. Are you that person who’s going to take risks? You have got to question who you are and what you want to do in life.”
“All generalizations are false, including this one. Think about the 5 and the 10 year timeline, whether you go into the startup world or go into the corporate one, it is probably going to take between 5 and 10 years of really hard work for you to become recognized and excel at what you do. Ask yourself ‘where do I want to put my energy?’” is the question that asked himself Jeremiah Smith, before founding Startup Tracker.
What is then the right direction to follow? There isn’t an answer that is right for everyone. One sure thing is that you have to move around and get in touch with what you love, know yourself and push your limits. Be willing to learn from scratch, challenge yourself every day and remember that you are the maker of your own destiny.
