Marc Andreessen’s post on “Why Not to Do a Startup” inspired me to comment on why, for me, startups are far superior to well established companies.

Mark’s reasons “why not to do a startup” provide some compelling reasons why not to work for a modern large public company (lets call all modern large public companies Initech for purposes of this post).

1. The Rollercoaster Ride — Both the startup and Initech will put you on an emotional rollercoaster, and the ride isn’t very scary at either place if it’s successful. The differences appear when your car is offtrack and racing quickly down the slope. In a startup, you have a chance to put the car back on track. At Initech, the consultants, reorgs, shifts in strategy, layoffs, etc, will burn the car and the tracks before you have a chance to help save the children.
2. Nothing Happens Unless You Make it Happen — At a startup, nothing gets done unless you do it but you also have the ability to make anything happen. At Initech, you won’t be able to make anything happen no matter how hard you try.
3. Getting Told No. At a a startup, partners, investors, etc. may tell you no. At Initech, you will also be told no, but this time by your boss, and probably only after your team has worked nights and weekends on the project and was ready to launch.
4. Hiring. It’s a pain in the ass at any size company unless you have something valuable to offer. But at Initech, after you pick the perfect candidate and at precisely the moment your ready to make that offer, HR will close all open headcount on you.

I could go on and on, but I’ll leave that for another time . . .