A startup life for me?
I’ve spent the last few weeks with startup founders – literally 70 of them on Zoom calls one-on-one and then meeting them in person at the events I’m running up and down the country.
Founders are a funny breed. Especially when you contrast them with the corporate people I’m bringing to the events too.
The corporate people are professional, organised, quietly confident – but I know inside they’re wondering “Why am I here?”, “Am I in the right room?”, “Is this a trap?”.
The startups, by contrast, tend to fly by the seat of their pants. They’re over-eager, keen-beans, in sales mode, evangelical about their solution.
They know this event is an opportunity. But most have been here before – at events with corporates.
They know their place. The corporate holds the power: the capital, the pilots, the introductions, the follow-up meetings.
Yet in my experience many of those same corporate people - at least the ones who come to my startup events - are pretty envious of the founders: their autonomy, passion, purpose and pace.
As we get older we often prize these things more than the financial aspects of a job (although of course most of us depend heavily on those financial aspects!).
Many startup founders have a ‘wildness’ about them – they’re disrupters, breaking norms, challenging, failing and adapting. Few understand them – even their families. Most are mission-driven with tunnel vision when it comes to execution.
And this makes many startups and corporates uneasy bedfellows.
To thrive in a corporate you need pragmatism because you aren’t in control. The strategy, vision, culture, budget, team, management etc., are all controlled by others. Rarely if ever by one person.
Once you’ve left that kind of workplace and tasted that autonomy you might struggle to return – because the autonomy transfer happened quite gradually over years, likely decades. You may not have even noticed it.
When I started my corporate career I didn’t expect much authority or autonomy (which was fortunate). But the longer I stayed, the more frustrated I became: projects that were critical one day were shelved the next, budgets were cut for no good reason, a restructure stopped everything, a new boss would tell us (the kids) what we should do next.
I think I had multiple flashbacks then, sorry.
Many corporate people dream of running their own business or startup.
I did. For years and years.
I eventually left to build one and it didn’t work. Maybe because I’m not like these wild founders I love working with today. I couldn’t help but tinker and perfect, I couldn’t help see risks and try to ‘manage’ them, I wanted everything mapped out in nice linear plans.
But many corporate people go on to be great founders. Niall Riddell, who came on the Corporate Escapology podcast (here and here) a few months back is one. But as he told me, he’s a different type of founder – one who learned how to be a founder, by practising from the safety of a corporate rather than jumping in without a clue.
Corporate Escapology the book (available for pre-order) is all about doing that preparation like Niall did. Because jumping from a safe-ish job into a fantasy you haven’t properly tested, and ideally experienced, is a risk.
But the book is also about opening your mind wide to opportunities, breaking through stereotypes and narrow thinking. From outside the corporate, the world looks quite different – and it’s probably changed a lot since you left.
We have a tendency to see startups as just the unicorn apps we all have on our phones. And the founder archetypes as Elon, Zuck and Jobs etc. – when in fact there are multiple jobs that corporate people can uniquely perform for smaller businesses, including startups, because of their experience – advisors, mentors, board members, experts, consultants, project managers, business development...
And of course there are multiple types of small businesses where corporate people can thrive – from the unicorn tech types we fixate on to social enterprises, consultancies, agencies, coaches, franchises, charities, e-commerce etc etc.
The third part of the Escape Method is Explore. Be open-minded, get out of your head, network, shadow, give time pro bono – properly explore and experiment.
Maybe a startup life is for you. Or maybe it’s a starting point to explore something else.
This is an opportunity to build the life you want; it’s worth the investment.
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This week there’s a new Corporate Escapology podcast out this week, with my guest Duncan Blake. For over thirty years Duncan led bp’s brand team and developed the identity we all know so well today. But when he came to leave bp he took time to explore – not just to fall into consultancy or another corporate. And he chose to pursue a passion for cookery. Although he’s moved pretty far from corporate branding, there are many things he taking from his corporate career into what he calls his “second chapter” to increase his chance of success.
