附近上门

By 听

It鈥檚 a common refrain for coffee-breaking engineers at , , , or : 鈥淵ou know, we really should start our own company.鈥�

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But before you make the leap to launching your startup, let鈥檚 unpack what a background at a FAANG or similar web-scale company buys you.

FAANG founder advantages

Living in the future

Big engineering teams, hyperaggressive development paces, and millions of users translate into complicated engineering cycles for FAANG companies. From this vantage point, they often see advanced challenges before the rest of the market.

, a -backed company, is a perfect example1.

After Google acquired its previous startup, Nobl9鈥檚 founding team got firsthand experience with how Google models the reliability of its cloud services around a concept called service level objectives. Everybody knows about –Google鈥檚 once secret-sauce for managing servers in the cloud. Now companies like Nobl9 are bringing to market other essential cloud-scale reliability approaches born out of FAANG.

The itch to leave the 鈥渕othership鈥�

Founders coming out of web-scale companies tend to have an extra gear. They want, no need, to build something special they truly own that reflects their unique vision for the problem domain they are addressing.

鈥淲orking at companies like and was an incredible experience. No doubt about it,鈥� said , co-founder at CRV portfolio company , which provides a total compensation platform for modern HR teams. 鈥淚t鈥檚 easy to get comfortable in a cushy full-time gig surrounded by extremely talented people, but we had a desire to build something new from the ground up.鈥�

A fantastic network

It鈥檚 tough to work at one of these companies without getting exposure to a large talent pool of people you can tap into later. (the ex-Google employee network) has risen to the level of influence that it鈥檚 got its own venture arm and event ecosystem.

鈥淚n highly successful modern companies, a lot of times you are exposed to technology challenges that the rest of the market has not yet experienced or is aware of,鈥� said , co-founder and CEO at , another CRV portfolio company. 鈥淲ith resources and support, you can build a game-changing solution and deliver the solution at massive scale. That’s how Apache Pinot was born. Working with my co-founder at to solve real-time customer-facing analytics challenges, we recognized a large and growing market need (fintech, retail and more) for such a solution and decided to build StarTree鈥攁 cloud-ready analytics platform powered by Apache Pinot.鈥�

Challenges for FAANG founders

On the flip side, there are some recurrent stumbling blocks that we鈥檝e seen for founders with FAANG backgrounds:

Taking infrastructure for granted

It鈥檚 not just the obvious perks you鈥檙e leaving behind鈥攖he free meals, the health plan鈥攊t鈥檚 the entire support infrastructure.

Even the most brilliant engineer is hamstrung when that incredible build infrastructure, automation environment, test environment, monitoring, communications, etc., get taken away. It鈥檚 easy to underestimate how time-consuming those first stages can be in restoring all the infrastructure you鈥檇 gotten used to.

Wearing multiple hats is a real thing (not just a startup clich茅)

In FAANG organizations, there is so much specialization. People tend to have very narrowly defined scopes and expect to hand the rest off to others.

At startups, if you don鈥檛 do it, no one will. Make sure that before you make the leap into your first startup, you鈥檙e willing to roll up your sleeves and that you get as much exposure as you can. Learn what other people do in different roles, be a sponge and absorb what you can about performing those roles. You鈥檒l need whatever adjacent skills you can soak up.

There鈥檚 nothing 鈥渆asy鈥� about marketing and sales

It鈥檚 easy to presume that marketing and sales success is a foregone conclusion with a superior product. You hear naive statements like 鈥渁ll we have to do is market it鈥� or 鈥渁 solution like this will sell itself.鈥� If only.

Make sure your founding team isn鈥檛 all on the engineering side. FAANG engineers may not be aware of the systematic go-to-market that their previous employers have spent many years perfecting, with lots of applied experience and expertise. Give marketing and sales the respect they deserve as very nuanced and challenging domains that will have a lot of bearing on your startup鈥檚 ultimate success.

Name-dropping only gets you so far

Working for a FAANG company used to be a novelty, and some considered it a reliable litmus test for technical competence or business success. Now, hundreds of thousands have walked through those halls. Investors are less starstruck today by FAANG founders and more cognizant of their advantages and challenges, so you should be too, before you leave to start your own company.

is a general partner at CRV, a venture capital firm that invests in early-stage enterprise and consumer startups. Since 1970, the firm has invested in more than 400 companies at their most crucial stages, including , , , and .

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