Ellie Mirman's Startup Marketing Blog

It's finally time to tell my oh-so-loyal blog readership what I've been up to the past couple months. I'm excited to finally share that I'm helping out with the best new program for Boston entrepreneurs: Founder Mentors.

I was listening to this recent HBR podcast on The Persuasive Power of Uncertainty. In the podcast, Zakary Tormala, associate professor of marketing at Stanford's Graduate School of Business, talks about the finding that being uncertain is surprisingly effective. It made me realize how important it is for a CEO in particular to show uncertainty with his employees.

Over the last three years, I've learned that I'm a startup girl. I love the chaotic, exciting, difficult life of a startup. Honestly, it surprised me. I'm not sure why - I've always loved working in small, hard-working groups. My university had 18,000 undergrads and yet I ended up in a program where I knew almost everyone in my 60-person (hey that was a decently small size!) classes.

While reading a recent article by our CEO Brian Halligan on HubSpot's startup culture, it struck me how important transparency is to the success of an organization. Frequently transparency is touted as a key component to a great company culture. But perhaps just as importantly, transparency is a great means of professional development.

In the Boardroom

Think you're living in a Dilbert comic strip? Think the whole business world is a Dilbert comic strip? It's not true!

I love this article recently written by HubSpot co-founder Dharmesh Shah: Why Startups Have Fewer Dilbertian, Pointy-Haired Bosses. While the article focuses on the management teams in startups vs. big, established companies, I think it definitely speaks to the great atmosphere (in general) of a (good) startup. Much less Dilbertian, you might say.

A few of the comments suggested that we (Dharmesh and some of the other startup-loving readers of his blog - I include myself in this bunch) are romanticizing startups somewhat (I think this is hard not to do when you work at a great startup...). And in reality there are awesome big companies and there are sucky startups - they're all out there (I still think there is a higher proportion of great people in startups vs. big companies because they are a more entrepreneurial and more committed group).

What I think it comes down to is the right fit of the person to the company. A comment posted by Brian (who also works with us) also speaks to this. He suggests that big company culture is very different from startup culture and people usually fit well into one or the other, but not both. So which one do you fit into?

Taking into account some of the things mentioned in the article and comments, and upon looking back at my own work history (though limited it is), here's what I think makes people fit better in a big company or a startup: