← Quora archive  ·  2010 Dec 19, 2010 07:36 AM PST

Question

Does Trailmeme feel like a startup?

Answer

Only to the extent that we've consciously tried to adopt a startup culture. So maybe 50-70%.

Blind adoption/championing of startup ideas is a recipe for being (justifiably) ignored and sidelined as an ideologue in a large organization. So you have to think about the reasons behind various startup practices, see if they make sense in a larger organization, and do some selective adoption. For us the main ones have been iteration speed/frequency (we obviously are, and need to be, far faster than the product lifecycle clockspeed of a product like a commercial printer) and marketing autonomy (since we are trying to find a new market rather than relying solely on our existing ones).

Though it might shock some startup types, big companies are actually better at certain things than startups are, and you get increased speed and productivity if you know about those things and how to take advantage of them.

My priority has always been for us to build the best product we can rather than following either the startup or enterprise innovation formulas with doctrinal levels of purity. Startup and enterprise types often fail in each other's domains because they believe there's only one way to do things.