In the whole tech startup/entrepreneurship world, the lack of appreciation for “corporate” culture is somewhat clear to see. It’s the very reason people jump into the startup world where everything fast, agile, spontaneous and non-bureaucratic like corporate world. But guess what, there’s a reason why corporate culture exists, and that reason is organization and scalability.
The thought of the anti-establishment anti-corporate culture for startups has got to stop, every entrepreneur will see this during a certain phase in their company. As your company started, especially for tech companies, the agile, fast, spontaneous and risk-taking culture should be nourished in order to get innovative products out, get as many feedback as possible, revise and iterate. For product development, this approach works wonderfully.
But as your company matures, the culture matures as well. More employees you have, more products you own, more customers/clients you manage, that’s when you need to inject corporate culture into your company. Of course there will be conflicts here and there, but it’s a necessary adjustment. Corporate culture helps you manage your operations with efficiency while keeping it effective.
Personal experience running DailySocial, startups can be very messy when it comes to operations (finance, HR, legal etc) and more time you spend rejecting corporate culture, sooner you will die. I tell you, it can be hard for startups to embrace the corporate culture, but it’s a necessary step if you want to take your company to the next level.
Companies like Apple, Google and Facebook started as a product company with rock star engineers who listens to nobody and focus on products and nothing else. But as those companies grow into a REAL business, they hire someone with strong corporate background who knows how to manage people and business operations, their mission was to clean up the operations line and prepare the company for bigger business.
Apple hired Sculley, Google hired Schmidt, Facebook hired Sandberg.
So startups, when your company is in that stage where you need to scale/grow the company’s operations, I personally think someone from a corporate background can be a better choice. Of course there’s no correct/incorrect ways to be an entrepreneur, there’a always an exception. But still, I think we can learn a TON from corporate culture rather than just bashing and denying it.
Beside, you don’t want your company to stay as a “startup” for the rest of your life right?
h/t: Heriyadi Janwar and William Henley for the sparkling conversation that triggers this post
