All the sudden, my life was completely different.
“In Summer of 2016, I was working at US headquarter of the largest Japanese bank in New York City —
Few months later, in Fall of 2016, I am working at a Silicon valley startup.”
There are so many blog posts and articles talk about how different working at Startups from Enterprises. Of course, I read them before joining a startup, thinking I understand how it’s gonna be like…
“I was wrong the differences are so fundamental that it changes the way you feel, think and act on.”
Through sharing some of my raw experiences, I hope to provide a realistic idea of working at an early stage startup in the Silicon valley.
July 2016, I was visiting Tokyo HQ office for my project at the bank.
July in Japan was so hot & humid, and I felt uncomfortable, yet obligated to wear suits and tie for presenting the project status to the bank’s senior managements.
During this trip, I met my brother, Ken who left Amazon AWS and started an Internet of Things (IoT) technology startup in Japan since 2015.
After work, I attended the event hosted by his startup, SORACOM.
“SORACOM had a great Vision, Technology, and Passion.
Most importantly the users loved their products.”
August 2016, I was finishing up a global weekly conference call at the bank when I receive an offer letter from SORACOM.
Since July trip, I have been talking with Ken about joining SORACOM and establishing offices outside of Japan and expanding the market to global.
The decision making was not easy.
My job at the bank was very stable, large scale, well paid, quite political, but I knew who to talk to.
I had pretty good grip on what was expected and what I was capable of —
“Simply put,
I was very comfortable for what I was doing at the bank.”
On the other hand, SORACOM had no presence outside of Japan at the time. No business license, no office, no employee, no client in the states.
However, they had well-designed products that can scale globally and a great engineering team to constantly expand and improve the capabilities of the products.
“Quitting a comfortable job that I built my career for the last 10 years, and joining a startup that I have very little experience with. — scared me.”
yet, after a lot of thinking, I simply could not refuse the excitement for the unknowns — “Startups”, and quite honestly, I thought I could always go back to my previous job if I needed to. So the decision was made.
September, 2016, I left New York City for good where I lived for more than 15 years and visited Japan to meet with SORACOM team.
SORACOM just opened up a new office in Akasaka, Tokyo and having an another exhibition this week and releasing multiple new services with it…
“At this point, I realized the speed which they operate was much much faster than I was used to.”
Internal communications were done through Slack, supported by summarized Google Docs/Sheets. Email was used only for the external communication. There was no office phone.
Everyone calls each other by nickname, this was somewhat very natural to me, like any American company. But this is very unusual for a Japanese company. No bureaucracy bullshit like an enterprise. I liked it.
“They removed anything that prevent them from scaling.”
After a week of stay in Japan, I went back to the states, not to JFK, New York, but to SFO International Airport, California.
The Silicon valley is where we plan to establish our first office in Americas.
I was the first employee here in the states, and a few days later,
Jake joined and we became a team.
Our lead investor was very kind to let us use the address, dedicated desks, furniture, conference rooms in their beautiful office in Palo Alto, CA.
After a few conversation with our part-time lawyers, SORACOM GLOBAL, INC. was incorporated at the heart of the Silicon Valley.
<Coffee Break — What is SORACOM?>
[Recommended side story]
How I spent first few months at: Airbnb: Living in Someone Else’s House (x25). It’s all part of Startup life :-)
When I was working at the bank, things were quite well-organized.
As a part of my job, I plan projects — requirements, budget, time and resources. Once the project is approved, I start the project, acquire necessary resources, monitor risks and keep the project on-time and on-budget.
The bank had well-defined processes in place.
Some of the processes were highly-complex with required compliance and regulations. However,
“Tasks were carefully assigned to well-qualified resources — someone who experienced/trained to do the particular tasks.”
In the large corporation, you will always be assigned for tasks that you are qualified to do. That is just a simple risk management for the organization.
In the startup, especially at the early stage, you don’t have enough qualified resource to assign tasks, so you end up doing many different things by yourself.
“Sometimes (actually many times) you are NOT trained to do that tasks, nor have never done it before,
so you learn how to do it on the fly — with a lot of googling.”
As a result, you will be most likely working more hours — like all the time.
The boundary of what you were actually hired for (Marketing or Biz dev etc.) become irreverent, you will end up performing whatever necessary tasks for the day. Then you will learn a comprehensive set of skills (※) to keep the day-to-day business running.
※ “a comprehensive set of skills”:
For example, you will learn to pay a bill, create invoices, open bank accounts, file federal and state taxes, get insurances and worker’s compensations, managing payrolls, setting up an office, fulfillment, shipping & handlings.
Also, learn about necessary laws and regulations for your particular business.
One thing I noticed, working at a startup, you will be much more — emotional.
It gets very personal. It is simply because you are much closer to the entire product life cycle, to the customer relationship, to the company core value.
You will be constantly challenged with new/unknown things.
You will lose all spare time (no more movie night).
You will constantly think about your products.
You even dream about it. Sometimes bad dreams.
All in all, it ‘s worth it, when you have trusted teammates overcoming the “Trough of Sorrow” together.
“When you work at startups, everything is multiplied.
Emotional roller coaster. Extreme Highs and Lows.
More work, more play, and much more excitements
on every moments!”
Now with all this. If you are up for the challenge —
“Just Do It. — Until you do, you won’t know what it’s like.”
