Startups and Autonomy

I used to equate startups with autonomy. As someone who generally craves self-direction and creativity, I built my career around working with early-stage companies — either as a first or early hire, or as a startup founder myself.

While these jobs afforded me more room to self-govern in a traditional sense, I've come to learn that startup work comes with its own rules, hierarchies, and constraints that limit autonomy.

Consider pressures at startups from

Customers → product features, pricing
VCs and investors → pushing for growth, product direction, etc
Co-founders and other team members → Internal conflicts
Market forces → Playing to competitors
Financial runway → Being limited by time and money

Ultimately, startups are bound by their need to generate revenue — just like larger companies. The constraints you avoid at a big company are simply replaced by different ones.

I still love startups, and have learned to appreciate how these constraints shape my work. But startups are undoubtedly not the place for boundless autonomy, creativity and self-expression.

Today, I love to balance startup work with side projects. By fronting my time with startup work, my side projects are free to be developed without special consideration for financials, users, markets, or anything else. Projects I develop this way feel more artful, and truer to my own tastes. It remains to be seen if the things I make in this way resonant with others, but in some ways it doesn't matter. The act of creating like this is often its own reward.