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Should an Aspiring Entrepreneur Work for a Big Company After College, or Join a Start-Up?

Ben Casnocha

Posted Jul. 19, 2008
Tagged: Work, GettingAJob

Originally posted on Ben Casnocha: The Blog

If you're a recent college graduate who's entrepreneurially inclined, there seem to be two paths:

Go work for a big company.
Go work for a start-up or start a company yourself.

The past few weeks I've heard both sides of the argument.
If you go work for a big company (Apple, HP, Yahoo, P&G, whoever) you will "learn how to do things right" say some. I actually think you'll "learn how things get done" at that kind of organization, whether good or bad. The biggest benefit I see, though, has more to do with the number of people you'll interact with. Go work for a start-up with a few people or start a company yourself, and you're exposed to just a handful of minds on an everyday basis. At a big company you'll see a range of management styles, methods for running meetings, sales techniques, time management strategies, etc.. The main downside for an entrepreneur to working in a big corporation is that the bureaucracy may deplete your entrepreneurial instinct. It's no fun being a cog, but unfortunately, most first jobs in big companies are cog positions.

If you work for a start-up or start a company yourself, you will assume a range of responsibilities and experiences that simply cannot be matched if you're one of 10,000 employees. You will be involved in every facet of the business, from accounting to marketing to HR. The risk here is that you will fail. Since you've never done it before, you probably will fail. The question is how do the lessons from failure in this case compare to the lessons you acquire humming along in a big company.

In the end, it depends on the person, his/her goals, and the opportunity, but I'm more upbeat about the potential good that can come from working in a large corporation for a short period of time than most of my entrepreneur friends.

Ben is the author of the bestselling business book, My Start-Up Life: What a (Very) Young CEO Learned on His Journey Through Silicon Valley (Jossey-Bass, May '07), which the New York Times called "precocious, informative, and entertaining."

He founded Comcate, Inc., an e-government software company, at age 14. Ben's work has been featured in dozens of international media including CNN, USA Today, CNBC, and ABC's 20/20.

At a conference in Paris, PoliticsOnline named him one of the "25 most influential people in the world of internet and politics". BusinessWeek recently named Ben "one of America's top young entrepreneurs." He writes prolifically on his blog, which the San Jose Business Journal called one of the "Top 25 Blogs in Silicon Valley." He also writes commentaries for NPR's "Marketplace".

Ben has given speeches at dozens of universities and organizations around the world. He has traveled to more than 25 countries. He also co-runs the Silicon Valley Junto, an intellectual discussion society for business and technology executives.

In his free time Ben enjoys playing chess, ping-pong, reading, and writing. See Ben Casnocha's other posts and profile.

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