--- title: How Does Working for a Startup Compare to Working at a More Established Company? description: The three main differences between working at a startup compared with more established companies. image: http://www.cobloom.com/hubfs/Images/blog/How%20Does%20Working%20for%20a%20Startup%20Compare%20to%20Working%20at%20a%20More%20Established%20Company.jpg --- [![Cobloom logo](https://www.cobloom.com/hs-fs/hubfs/logo/white_small-548326-edited.png?width=139&name=white_small-548326-edited.png "Cobloom logo")](https://www.cobloom.com) - [Grow Your SaaS](https://www.cobloom.com/how-to-grow-your-saas) - [How We Help](https://www.cobloom.com/how-we-help-saas-businesses) - [SaaS Pricing Services](https://www.cobloom.com/how-we-help-saas-businesses/pricing) - [Growth Marketing](https://www.cobloom.com/how-we-help-saas-businesses/growth-marketing) - [Marketing Software](https://www.cobloom.com/blog/marketing-automation-software-tools) - [About Us](https://www.cobloom.com/about-us) - Content - [SaaS Growth Blog](https://www.cobloom.com/blog) - [SaaS Careers Blog](https://www.cobloom.com/careers-blog) - [Cobloom Insider](https://www.cobloom.com/insider) - [Growth Resources](https://www.cobloom.com/saas-resources) - [SaaS Jobs Board](https://www.thesaasjobs.com) - [![Request Consultation](https://no-cache.hubspot.com/cta/default/312370/549a4a39-d4bf-4092-93c7-17f595736031.png)](http://cta-redirect.hubspot.com/cta/redirect/312370/549a4a39-d4bf-4092-93c7-17f595736031) # How Does Working for a Startup Compare to Working at a More Established Company? By Emily Smith on Wed, Nov 2, 2016 When I joined Cobloom in 2015, I became the fourth member of the team – and the first member of the team who wasn’t a co-founder. Between graduating university and joining Cobloom, I’d had 2 jobs in 4 years: first at a small but long-established company with <10 employees; and second at a much larger company with 250+ employees. Having worked at established companies large and small, today I’m sharing the three biggest differences I've noticed working at a startup. ## **1) CAREER DEVELOPMENT** At an established company, you join in a specific role, as part of a specific team. This has its perks: you have a clear understanding of your place within the team, and a ready-mapped career path. For example, you could join a company as a Junior Designer, progress to Designer, then perhaps Head of Design, or similar. However, it also has its drawbacks: the longer you stay in that specific role, the more difficult it is to move around within the company and learn new skills. In contrast, at a startup, your career path is much less clear – because the company can change so much (and so quickly) from one month to the next. If you move from an established company to a startup, this shift of mindset can take some getting used to. For example, within a couple of months of joining, [we had rebranded (to Cobloom)](https://www.cobloom.com/blog/why-iconsive-became-cobloom), changed direction and my job role had changed. But the upside of all this transition is that you have a fantastic opportunity to learn and experiment. Instead of a pre-paved career path, at a startup you get opportunity: to work on lots of different things, learn where your strengths and passion lies, and shape your role to those strengths. Particularly if you’re an early employee at a startup, you can almost create your own path – if you want to. ## **2) PACE OF CHANGE** At an established company, change takes time. It seems like as companies grow, the complexity of the decision-making process grows with it. As well as it taking a long time to make a decision (due to the ever-growing number of stakeholders who need to be involved), there are also several layers of administrative approvals that you need to go through, before you get buy-in on your proposed change, and can take action. So it came as a shock when I joined Cobloom, and we made decisions quickly, efficiently and democratically: we could make a decision on a project one day, and put it into action the next. This change of pace particularly hit home when, within a month of me joining, we were choosing a new name for the company, mocking-up logo designs and rebranding entirely with a new focus and direction. ## **3) TEAM RELATIONSHIPS** The biggest difference (and perhaps the one I least anticipated) between working at an established company compared with joining a small startup team was the team dynamic. While every company is different, as a general rule you’ll find that startup teams are much more closely-knit – much more than same-size teams in more established companies. In a small startup team, culture fit becomes just as important as your ability to do your job. Because in a small team, disagreements or differences of character and opinion are felt much more acutely, and can be the difference between success and failure. ## **KEY TAKEAWAYS** Working at a startup like Cobloom is very different to working at an established company. While a lot of the practical skills are the same, it requires a complete change of  mindset. In addition to job-related skills and proficiencies, you’ll find that ‘soft skills’ become much more important, and more highly valued, due to the importance of maintaining a positive team dynamic. Some of your most valuable attributes will be: - Flexibility – to adapt to the fast-changing environment - Desire to learn – to try new things and new ideas - Culture fit – to fit in with the existing team, yet help it to grow and develop. If you want to work at a startup, it’s important that you consider whether it’s *really *a good fit for your mindset and way of working, or whether a more traditional, established company would be a better fit for you. **Subscribe to the Cobloom Insider blog for startup-specific career advice, as well as information about new roles at Cobloom as soon as they become available.** [![Subscibe to the Cobloom Insider](https://no-cache.hubspot.com/cta/default/312370/882f3f93-3ec2-4746-bd4d-3e1e464f2771.png)](https://cta-redirect.hubspot.com/cta/redirect/312370/882f3f93-3ec2-4746-bd4d-3e1e464f2771) ![](https://static.hubspot.com/final/img/content/email-template-images/placeholder_200x200.png) ![greyscale](https://www.cobloom.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Images/logo/greyscale.png?width=163&name=greyscale.png "greyscale") © 2023 Cobloom Limited, All Rights Reserved. Cobloom Limited, a company Registered in England & Wales: 08272586.  Cobloom.com is reader supported. 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