Strong Opinions @marksbirch

There are times when you need to leave childish things behind.  While it may be cool to think you are still running a quirky little start-up, the fact is that you got all grown up and now are just another soulless corporate entity.

You have matured.  You have real revenues, real customers and real profitability.  You have an HR department, finance and accounting team, an IT group and maybe a lawyer or two hanging around.  There are global offices staffed with executives and middle managers and minions.  You get job candidates at job fairs and college career days.  You even have a mission statement and set of core values that not a single employee has ever read.

Stop pretending you are a start-up.  It is embarrassing.  Google is not a start-up and neither is Facebook.  Those are only the most obvious and egregious examples.  When you are buying companies, have actively traded shares on SecondMarket, and have whole economies built around making money off of your company, you are the 800-lb gorilla.

Do not fret, this is called success.  You were the one out of every ten start-ups to make it.  Your stock/options probably have actual value and will be a nice bonus down the road.  The tech press loves you (until you get too big like Yahoo and AOL), your employees seem well fed, and you do not get the sinking feeling twice a month wondering if the paychecks are going to clear.

If you are a genuine, ramen-eating, paranoid, sleep deprived start-up at this moment, this is what you may become.  This is what you are striving for.  This is what everyone tells you a successful business looks like.  You even have the official HR employee handbook to prove it.

But is this success, at least the type of success that you envisioned when you first started?  Can there be a path that leads from start-up that does not end in either failure or stifling corporate dullness?  There are options, but it is nothing inspired or observed from today’s corporate America.  For better options, we have to look elsewhere which is something I will expand upon in another post.