In my 10 plus years in the web industry, I have had the pleasure (or pain depending on how you look at it) of working for both big companies and startups. There are benefits to working at both, but when it comes to product development, the advantage seems to tip towards one more so than the other. It clearly seems to tip towards the little guys (I mean startups), but why, why do they seem to have the advantage?

I think there are several reasons as to why small startup companies have a distinct advantage over their Big Company counterparts. For starters (no pun intended), they are typically small concentrated teams, anywhere from 2 -30 people. By being a small team, you can stay extremely focused on the task at hand, building a great product. By being this small, it affords you the benefit of being very nimble and quick to react to changes. The company generally is focused on building one product, and the livelihood and future of the company is generally riding on the success of that product. It is amazing at what a little motivation can do for a team (I mean, if you do not launch a good product and it is wildly successful, chances are you will be out of a job and back to eating Ramen noodles again). All this: small, nimble, narrowly focused, sink or swim is what gives the small companies the upper hand when it comes to launching a successful product quickly (this is assuming that the product is received well in the industry, otherwise they crash and burn much more quickly than a big company).

So then, what is it about big company that keeps them from launching a product quickly. This is not to say that big companies launch great products (just take a look at Google’s portfolio of products), but they tend to on average take a much longer time than the small guys. There are multiple reasons that cause a big company to take longer to launch a product, and I am sure some reasons are specific to the company in question. However, there are several factors that are common throughout big companies. Some of the roadblocks in the way of launching quickly at a large company are: too many cooks in the kitchen, in other words, there are too many people offering their opinions on what the product should or shouldn’t do, and that distracts from the focus of the product. Other problems that arise are riffs between teams, or people having their own personal agendas and not having the best interest of the product in mind. Big companies tend to have layers upon layers of sign offs required throughout the product development life cycle which can slow things down (in their defense, there are definite advantages to all of these sign offs). Lastly, in most cases, the company is not going to fold if the product is not wildly successful (however someone might loose their job, but that is another story for another time).

All in all, there are great products that are produced by the little guys and the big guys, but I have to say that the little guys have the advantage when it comes to time to market.