Before working at UK fintech scaleups Starling Bank, Oak North and Paysend, I spent a decade inside the American Big Tech beast solving problems for Amazon and eBay. I learned that in Big Tech, speed and scale are prioritized over perfection, and decisions are made with data, not gut. However, leading a startup requires unlearning that mindset: you must move fast with limited resources, embrace ambiguity, and make calls without perfect information.
In startups, culture is built through daily actions, not top-down mandates, and leadership means being deeply involved in product, customers, and team dynamics. I had to unlearn the reliance on large teams and complex processes, and instead focus on ruthless prioritization and direct ownership. The biggest shift was realizing that in a startup, your role isn’t to manage systems — it’s to build them from scratch, often with your own hands.
Success comes not from following playbooks, but from adapting quickly, learning from failure, and staying close to the reality of your users and market.
Source: Sifted · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing