5 reasons to work at a big company before starting one yourself:

1. Experts at your fingertips

Big companies have divisions. You're one Slack message away from an expert in any field.

Ping the growth expert. Then sales. Then strategy.

Or, big data. Then cloud. Then security.

Befriend them. Learn from them. They will become your network.

2. Finding the pain points

A big company makes money. But pain points exist.

Inefficiencies in their business model are billion dollar opportunities.

A big company is too slow to fix every problem. A fast-moving startup is best suited to address it.

That's your opportunity.

3. Rockstars before they're rockstars

Startups don't offer entry level positions.

The employees with the greatest slopes start at big companies.

You can identify that talent early. Reward it early.

They'll be your hungriest team members when you start your company.

4. Building your presence

Big companies spend MILLIONS promoting their blog, newsletter, and webinars.

The marketing team always needs new content. Propose new topics. Offer to do as many as possible.

This bootstraps *your* brand and following.

5. The billion dollar competency

A big company is a big company for a reason. They do one thing better than anyone else.

Understand what that thing is at your company. Master it.

Now *you* carry that billion dollar competency with you wherever you go.

When done right, a big company is a university.

Taking advantage of everything it offers will uniquely prepare you to be a better founder.

Follow me @arvanaghi as I share the story of going from a big company, to a smaller one, to a tiny one, to starting @JoinMeow.