Start Small. Think Big.

In the first months of starting my company, I had six employees. This was not an accident; it was a decision.

I could have started with a larger team. I was leaving a career in international banking – I had the contacts to fundraise and start my business from a larger employee base. But it was my decision to start small. I believed it was critical in those first months to be a small team. Here’s why:

Small = Resourceful. Because we were small, we did not have every skill we needed to succeed. So when we ran up against a task we didn’t know how to do, we learned to do it. I still recall handing one of my earliest teammates a book about SQL and telling him to learn it so we could use that programming language to build our e-commerce platform. He gave me a look of horror and disbelief. But he did it. When you are a small company, you learn to be resourceful.

Small = Integrated. One of the complaints you often hear in big companies is that of “silos.” Departments tend to talk amongst themselves and not share vital information. A small firm does not silo, and that promotes the flow of information throughout.

Small = Energetic. In a small team, there is no one who is not giving their “all.” And we did – we worked all hours, we traveled all over the country to sell our service, face-to-face. We had more energy, as a small team, than I have seen in many big companies. Our success relied on our own energy and we knew it.

Starting small had many benefits. Something else that helped Rakuten in its early days was that we always thought big. In fact, we thought huge! We didn’t simply set goals, we set crazy goals.

When you start a business, you may be tempted to go slow and focus on small successes. Certainly, this is important. But even as you do this, be sure to also set the big goals, the crazy goals, because those are the goals that inspire greatness.

Big goals may seem crazy at first, but they are necessary, even in the early days, to encourage everyone to push beyond their limits and go for something great. Everyone in my company knows I am fond of setting big goals. When starting Rakuten, I set the goal of becoming the world’s top Internet company. When I wanted to globalize, I set the goal of everyone in the company becoming proficient in English within two years. These crazy goals set us on our path toward becoming the company Rakuten is today.

Goals are more than items on a checklist to be crossed of as they’re accomplished. They are levels of inspiration. Crazy goals have opened trade routes, discovered new lands, even sent man to the moon. Set them wisely, even in the early days, for maximum results.

My advice is to start small but think big. It worked for me. It can work or you too.