Working at a mature startup could be your perfect alternative to corporate life.

How Jasper got from corporate banking to being an advanced stage startup’s product manager

When you meet Jasper van Nistelrooy, you’ll be surprised to know that he seems to be startup guy, although he actually started his career within a financial institution. Young but experienced, Jasper was one of this brilliant fresh graduates who joined the management traineeship of a top Dutch bank. By the end of his traineeship, he realized he did not feel as enthusiastic about the job as his co-workers did.

If a corporate career can fit nearly all young graduates’ skills, it clearly does not fit everyone’s personality and not everybody can be inspired from a corporate life. The truth is corporate life mostly brings financial security and stability.

Jasper’s Entrepreneurial Call

Following his traineeship, Jasper answered the “entrepreneurial call” and dived into the exciting world of startups.

He founded Achieved, an online platform aimed to accelerate education for everyone. After a great start and being selected by StartupBootCamp Berlin, Achieved eventually did not really lift off. “It nonetheless has expanded my horizon and I gained a lot of valuable experience. My startup and corporate experience combined gave me the possibility to join AppAnnie as a Product Manager.”

AppAnnie is a larger tech company that embraces many aspects of startups, it is also successful enough to be a safe place to work that offers great employees benefits as well as the possibility to work in an international environment.

“At AppAnnie, I travel very frequently and I have the chance to experience different company culture and mentalities. I particularly enjoy the Vancouver office as a place where my co-workers have a great balance between their private and their professional life.

How Is It Like To Work at AppAnnie?

“As a well developed global startup, AppAnnie was an amazing alternative between an early stage startup and a corporation”, according to Jasper

“There is not such a big hierarchy. You can make decisions for yourself; you have a lot of space and you can decide what strategy you want to use to develop your product. It also allows you to be faster”

It does not only give you freedom and independence in the way you work, it also provides you the opportunity to be part of a large team. Internationally located from Vancouver to Beijing, AppAnnie provides more security than early startups, which often cannot afford to provide competitive salaries to highly educated and experienced people.

AppAnnie also has the specificity to combine different types of culture and to build broad and diverse teams. Its culture has something to do with a great openness and the pursuit of excellence. Team members come from several backgrounds: they are startups co-founders, former corporates people and former talents from international tech companies such as Google.

Furthermore, besides offering a challenging work environment, AppAnnie provides a “flat hierarchy culture” in which, interactions with top management are smooth and easy. When you ask him what he enjoys the most about AppAnnie, Jasper shoots:

“The broad company culture, the flexibility and the freedom to organize yourself and to discover many different ways of working and different company cultures from one country to another.”

Although Jasper’s entrepreneur experience did not exactly work the way he expected, it surely gave him enough experience and knowledge to join a successful global startup. Working at AppAnnie combines the most positive aspects of a corporate career with the exciting and challenging environment of a startup.

Jasper’s story definitely is a great inspiration for those who question their current corporate career but are still to be convinced in joining an early stage startup as they can bring a lot of uncertainties.

Can you recognize yourself in these values? Well, you could be the next talent for AppAnnie or another later stage startup. Sign up for Cocoon and check if you could be a match!

Cocoon is a job matching app with a Tinder like UI that makes finding a job an equal and smooth process.
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