I get asked a lot: Why am I here? Why Startups? Here is why.
Large corporations are built to withstand a few broken cogs in the machine. Unfortunately, by design, this requires that nearby cogs should overlap and that no cog can be responsible for too many functions (otherwise becoming a single point of failure). For an ambitious and hungry cog, this system is both a safety net and a glass ceiling.
By contrast, Startups, by necessity, have much fewer resources. They require cogs to have minimal overlap and that individual cogs must be responsible for too many functions (otherwise it won't get done). For an ambitious and hungry cog, this system is risky but boundless.
No resources, no funding, no large workforce - these constraints force agility, foster creativity, and forge mastery. Often, a matter of days can mean life or death for the company*. Startups, on a budget, have to find creative ways of obtaining users and keeping them**. And, in a consumer web application startup, an average number of users supported per engineer over 500,000 is not unusual***.
I love Startups. Do you?
* In The Paypal Wars, Peter Thiel's ability to make deals fall into place quickly (for funding in a down economy) was key to their early survival.
** Prerna Gupta, CEO of Khu.sh, uses JUST YouTube to get traffic towards her app. The best part? Less than a year in, they're profitable. [source]
*** Reddit's number is at least 1,000,000,000. Yep, that's a billion users per engineer. [source]