Hey Startup, Maybe It's Time You Need a Corporate Culture and Set Up Your Company!

In the world of tech startups/entrepreneurs, the lack of appreciation for 'corporate' culture can be seen clearly. This is the main reason people enter the startup world, where everything is fast, agile, spontaneous, and there is no bureaucracy like the corporate world. However, there is a reason why corporate culture has persisted today to such an enormous size, and that reason is organization and scalability.

The thought of anti-establishment, anti-corporate culture, it has to stop, every entrepreneur will realize this at some stage in their company. When your company is just starting out, especially for a technology company, the concept of agile, fast movement, spontaneity and a culture of risk taking must be nurtured in order to get innovative products to release, get as much feedback as possible, revise and keep growing. For product development, this approach works well.

But in its development, when existing companies begin to mature, the company culture must also become more mature. The bigger the size of your company, the more products you have, the more customers/clients you have to manage, that's when you need to incorporate corporate culture into your company. Of course there will be conflicts here and there, but this is a necessary adjustment. Corporate culture helps you to manage your operations more efficiently and remain effective.

In my personal experience running DailySocial, startups can be very messy when it comes to operational matters (financial, HR, legal, etc.) and the more time you waste resisting corporate culture, the sooner your company will die. I'm telling you, it can be difficult for a startup to embrace a corporate culture, but it's an important step if you want to take your company to the next level.

Companies like Apple, Google and Facebook started out as product companies with rock star technicians who didn't listen to other people and focused on the product and that was it. But once the company went into REAL business, they hired someone with a strong corporate background who knew how to manage people and business, their mission was to streamline operations and prepare the company for bigger business.

Apple recruited Sculley, Google recruited Schmidt, Facebook recruited Sandberg.

So startups, when your company is in a period where you need to develop company operations, I think having someone from a corporate background can be a good choice. Of course there is no right/wrong way to become an entrepreneur, there are always exceptions. But still, I think we can learn a LOT from corporate culture rather than just mocking and denying it.

After all, you don't want your company to remain a 'startup' for the rest of its life, do you?

h/n: Heriyadi Janwar and William Henley to start the conversation that ultimately sparked this writing.