Recently, thinking about what Steve Jobs said “It’s more fun to be a pirate than to join the navy”, it occurred to me that it’s a great metaphor to explain the difference between an existing company and a startup.

An existing company is like the navy, executing – not necessarily people – but business plans, following established processes and procedures, using well described (road) maps, taking well-calculated and minimal risks – punishing anyone who doesn’t follow the rules.

A startup is like a small band of pirates searching for the treasure of a repeatable and scalable business model drawing their own maps as they sail on, building measuring and learning, taking a lot of risk – rewarding those who break and disregard the rules to get the gold.

So you want to know more about the differences between startups and existing companies? Check this out!