Startup Vs Enterprise How to choose your next endeavour ?

Startup Vs Enterprise.?How to choose your next endeavour ?

Most of us are excited to work in Startups and a lot of Buzz has been created around perks of working with Startups. But most of us are still not sure how much of this is real and how much of this is part of their marketing :).

After spending 15 years in this industry and seeing both sides of it, here I am giving an honest evaluation of the pros and cons of both sides. This will hopefully help you identify which among the two careers paths would be a better fit for you as per your lifestyle and phase of life.

When I evaluate an organization, I consider below 8 parameters. I have kept them in a descending order of priority, based on what matters to me personally.

• Work-Life Balance
• Learnings
• Compensation
• Risk
• Growth
• Autonomy
• Personal Brand Building

After going through these metrics you could be even more perplexed! How on earth can one make a decision by looking at this big table? Should I or should I not jump on to a startup bandwagon??

Let me make it simpler for you. So my answer to this would be, before making any decision you need to follow a step by step procedure.

Step 1 : Self Assessment of Personality

You should do a self assessment of your personality. A self assessment of personality traits is available here.?

Assessment of your likes and dislikes, passion and hobbies, goals and achievements.?

Step 2 : Introspecting about Risk Taking Appetite

During my journey of 15 years I have given priority to growth and learning, hence out of 7 times when I resigned only 3 times I had an offer in hand and rest 4 times I have to find my next endeavor post resignation. This is called risk taking capability. Not every individual is comfortable with the risk of sitting at home without a salary.?

Some individuals want to plan their next endeavor by taking a systematic approach. While some others jump-off just like that and build their parachutes while falling down!

So you need to identify how much risk you are willing to take. If you are confident in your expertise and talent, and you know that you could crack an interview any given day - then you could probably take the risk of joining a startup. This is one of the major hurdles that most individuals have to overcome while thinking about working in startups.

Step 3 : Prioritize between ‘Craving to Learn’ and ‘Work-Life Balance’

Every individual has a love for learning. Few achieve with a constant pace and few try to achieve with exponential pace. It’s a personal choice but exponential pace requires a definite compromise with work-life balance. When you are on a roller coaster of learning and managing too many portfolios in a Startups (which is a usual case and scenario). You tend to lose out on your health and sleep cycles. Late night code fixing and firefighting is very common in Startups.?

So here you have to be a little wise while making a decision. Exponential learning at the cost of health would not be a good Idea. So before joining a Startup make it very clear what is the expectation from the role.

Step 4 : How much do you value Personal Brand?

Upto some extent everyone wants to build a personal brand. At the end of the day many of us might have dreams to become an influencer like Akshat Srivastava or Ankur Warikoo. If not this, then others might dream about becoming CXOs of a billion dollar company.

This definition of success is quite popular in the techie-generation of our time. And there is nothing wrong about it, because every generation has its own idea of ‘ultimate success’ based on trends of its own time. But how to achieve it is a big question. In this particular aspect product based MNC’s (like Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Amazon or Big4) have an added advantage. Candidates who have worked in these organizations are valued across industries. At the same time, individuals who have worked in Startups have made their own niche. They are considered more agile than others, and this trait is now being highly regarded in the industry than ever before.

Step 5 : Compensation and benefits

Startups are ready to share growth with the early stage employees and that's why they have a concept of ESOP’s. And that makes them stand out of the crowd. At the same time ESOP is the gray area in Salary compensation. Most of the seed stage Startups give high value ESOPs to employees but do not disclose complete details about the excise policy. And that's the reason many employees feel cheated after not being able to exercise their ESOP options. One such popular case happened in the case of Red Bus. Cautionary tale is mentioned here?

Still there are good Startups who have really helped their employees to make a big earning out of company growth. One huge example is Freshworks.?

Conclusion:

It's a choice which you would be making after evaluating your current conditions and needs. As an example, after running a startup (Ntalents.ai) for 4 years and taking it to a successful exit, myself and my co-founders have now decided to take exactly opposite career decisions. I want to take one more chance with another Startup and while they would explore product based MNCs. Choices are different for each individual and the choice should make you happy. As a human being our goal should be to be hale, hearty, healthy and hence happy :)

I hope this note will help you to make your decision simpler and easy.?

Good Bye.