Lessons - Should You Join A Startup Or A Large Company? | Sandeep Chennakeshu - Author & Fortune 500 President

Welcome to the lessons episodes of Success Story. These lessons episodes will be shorter clips from past guests, accomplished value community members, and myself. In each short episode, we'll feature concise and insightful actionable conversations and tactics, providing you with real-world strategies and tips to help you achieve your personal and professional goals. If you're seeking a no-nonsense approach to growth and progress, you've come to the right spot. Settle in, take notes, and enjoy. Would you recommend that somebody earlier on in their career follow paths similar to yours where they go into a large corporation and jump into roles that they may be are not quite ready for and learn, or do you think it's more beneficial for somebody to work and start up? It depends. It depends. You know, they're both different. They're very different. And it depends on each one's personality. You know, I went into a big company because there's so much more to learn. And in every area, because it's quite established, right? So there are a lot of people you can learn from. And you can go from one compartment to another compartment and learn more and more. In the start-up, it is not as organized. It is a little more chaotic. And you have to basically be extremely, you have a lot of knowledge to kind of rotate the department and department. And so it really depends. If you're someone who's very structured and you have a particular way of learning, then I would say a big company is better. You know, if you're somebody who actually thrives with an informal structure, then a start-up is definitely better. So it's a little difficult, right? I found my journey. I learned a lot more in a big company and I could contribute more to a start-up when I went there. Because I could bring all that knowledge from a structure, systematic structure that I built in a big company into a start-up without a bureaucracy. Very good. I love that answer and I think that's just wise words for somebody that I think there's a little bit of an over-emphasis and excitement to join startups and a big advocate for helping people understand what they're getting themselves into. Sometimes if they don't quite understand what a startup really is and it's not as fun sometimes as maybe some college grads think it is when they're jumping into it and it's very stressful. So let's talk about the thesis of what you've written. So the thesis of what you've written is that your company is your castle, which is also the name of the book and obviously that's all going to go in the show notes and people can go check it out. But what does this thesis mean? Your company is your castle. I've heard the term moat before when it comes to business in terms of business analogies but I've never heard the analogy of the company. The entire company is a castle. So walk me through what this means. Yeah, so I asked the question. I actually read this in an article in Forbes that why do two-thirds of all companies fail within 10 years? You know, 20% fail within two years, 45 and five years and 65% in 10 years. Then a whole bunch of reasons. It's well-crimeical. And so I said, you know, I thought about my own career and why companies that I worked in went to the highest of highs and fell down to the Y. And the common answer to what I've read researched and experienced in my own companies is that sometimes speed is not as important as systematically building structure. And when you go for speed, you miss a lot of things. And so I basically said, OK, if I want to basically build the way I've been successful in building companies, I began with, you know, this company called Ericsson Mobile Platforms where I was sent to Sweden to help realize its potential. You know, the company had invested a very large amount of money. We had nothing to show. We were bleeding for every dollar we made, we lost a dollar. Our customers were getting anxious and everybody was contemplating our failure. And I put this framework to work. And in the year we became profitable. And within a few short time, thereafter we ate up 30 percent market share in the work. And I said, what was this structure? And of course, I repeated this formula multiple times. And it always worked. It's even working in my startup now. So what was this? And I said, the analogy I used, I said, take the medieval castle. I was looking for a methodology and an extended metaphor. And I said, look at the castle. Medieval castles have lasted, some of those that have lasted have lasted 500 years. Plus, all around the world, whether it's in Japan, in India, in England, Wales, the Czech Republic, etc. So these castles had a number of structural elements that have made them withstand nature's elements over the centuries, as well as in betas. And a company likewise needs to withstand macroeconomic factors like recessions, depressions, pandemics, etc. And a whole lot of competitors. So it was a nice analogy. And I said, what are these elements? I said, if you look at a castle, you have to find the right location, which is unassailable. Hopefully, you need a solid foundation to take the weight of the castle and build it all castle. You need a perimeter wall that protected it from invaders. And right in the center was the key, where people lived. They stored granaries, they stored their emunitions, etc. And that turns, you know, that has a certain meaning. And then you have to protect the strategy, which is the perimeter wall, with towers. Because you don't want people scaling these long walls around protected. Or you don't want them tumbling underneath. And then you also talk about, so there are a number of towers. And then you talk about, you know, the central portion of the castle, the key, needs a roof to prevent it from enemy arrows and from hail and snow and rain, etc. And so, you know, I took these elements and said, I likened them to a business. And in my analogy, I said, you know, the picking of the location is the business model. You want your business model to be as unassailable as possible. The foundation is cash flow, without cash you can't do anything, without cash you can't build a big, big business. And then I said, the perimeter wall of this was the strategy. The strategy surrounds the entire business. And that wall has to be protected by a number of towers. And those towers are product creation, products or services, it could be either. Products creation, product delivery, you know, sales channels and execution. Because in each of these, any of these fail, the walls are not going to stand for long. And the central portion of this castle, the key is the culture. You know, strategy is what you want to get done. But culture determines what you actually get done. And when culture falls, the entire castle falls because it doesn't matter who the walls are standing. And so I talk about culture as the key. And then the room from the key is stakeholder confidence. And there are three stakeholders. You have your investors, you have your customers and you have your employees. And they're the triangle of trust. If you break the trust with or any of them, you're toast. So I go on to explain how these elements actually build a very, very strong castle or a strong company and how they've interrelated. And then the last part of my book is, I talk about now that you've learned to build a strong castle. And I give you a lot of recipes and checklists. But at the end of it, I say, now, how do you basically build yourself to run such a castle? And that's the whole book.