Small Businesses Rock
20 Feb 2011
I have had two distinct experiences with large companies.
It all started when I did a short stint at IBM back in 2000. I was in my senior year at UNC Chapel Hill and working for IBM looked good on the resume not to mention that it paid almost $40 an hour!
In 2005, when I moved back to India my wife and I started a web design and development agency. Initially, most of our clients were small businesses but the thrill of banking a large company was a high. Late 2005 we pitched and successfully started designing and managing websites for big businesses in India. They certainly helped us get more business.
Though, looking back at the last 10 years I can honestly say that even though the money was good working for large companies (as an employee as well as an entrepreneur) I much enjoy working with small businesses. You get to work closely with their founders as opposed to highly paid job-hopping managers who sometimes really don’t value what you are trying to say. Decisions are made faster than you think compared to the long-drawn approval process within large businesses. In addition, it is fun to help small businesses grow and compete with the larger boys. There is just so much energy and enthusiasm to adapt to new ideas and creative inputs. There are less or no meetings and the relationship is largely informal.
Today, even at DeskAway, we are a small business serving other small businesses from all around the world. That is how I would want it to be even if it meant losing large clients who would demand our time for training, presentations, negotiations and a lot of sucking up…and certainly don’t see ourselves selling enterprise software with 6 month sales cycles — how boring!
Small businesses rock!