Startup vs. corporations: Which allows you to grow faster?

Formula 1. Startups versus big companies.Where can you go further and faster? That's where the car comes in.

It's ugly to say, but definitely in a startup.In a startup, you grow faster because there is no set path.

In a startup, you create your own story, your own path,your own adventure. Obviously, it has many more risks.

The chances of failure are also higher, but you can grow and you can develop without limitations.

In a large company, and I would say that Microsoft is a prime example of this,and, very importantly, by talent and constant development,regardless of department, regardless of location of that person's career.

But it is true that in the end, in any corporation,There are clear lines of professional growth or development.

Because otherwise it would be impossible.If you don't define a path in a company of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people or tens of thousands of people, it's very difficult.

Therefore, there is much more structure, which gives you security,but this also limits your growth rate.

In a startup, when I've hired people,I tell them: if you want, you can be part of the executive team in two years, three years.

Obviously, the company is smaller, there are fewer levels up to the executive layer.

In a large company, you can have the same impact,be the top performer, win all the prizes available, and you will grow, but at a slower pace.

How complex is communication in a startup, and then also in a large company?

That's a mathematical problem.The more people you have, the more channels of communication there are.

And in the end, it's a problem that grows exponentially.

In startups, that's why many times, especially in the scale-up phase,there is a point at which there are many silos at the communication level because they have not been established those channels, and the company suffers.

In a corporate world, those silos are intentional.

It is inevitable and unthinkable that everyone knows what others are doing.

So you also have to practice letting go and knowing that,hey, only you can know about this part, which is frustrating because if you come on top of that in the startup world, you want to know everything about startups, and if you are the CEO and want to know what is happening in the department in detailed communication.

And you can achieve that, but in a corporate world you can't.

There are many channels of communication, even subcultures created within that it is a large organization, so communication is very different.

It is also much more hierarchical.In a startup, you use Slack or Teams and can even write to the CEO.

If one day you find yourself worrying, whether you're new to the job or very junior,you can write to the CEO.

In the corporate world, you can't do that.The only time I've ever been severely reprimanded in Microsoft was once one of my team members wrote an email asking for support for an opportunity at a company to my manager's manager, the person who was the president of all of Europe.

And within a minute of sending that email, which I had been working on for two or three weeks, I received a reply saying that I had been hired.the company, I said, "Hey, I don't know if it's better for me to take a look at it first." "No, no, trust me, nothing will happen." He sent it and copied quite a few people on the leadership team,and half an hour later Two people called me: Hey, let's talk.

And they said to me, "What is this?" And in the end, you think about it and it's normal.

You also have to create a certain degree of abstraction for people which manages 3,000, 10,000 people.

You cannot allow 10,000 people to reach a certain leader.

There is a tremendous bottleneck.Therefore, you have to make sure that there are certain rules,sometimes written and sometimes unwritten, about how to communicate within within a department and between departments.