Guest Article: Mahesh Neelakantan

A few tips for those who wish to work at a start-up could use before taking the plunge.

I joined Advocacy Asia a little under a year ago, moving from Ogilvy & Mather - where I spent 17 years across countries including India, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Taiwan and Malaysia - to join an 'Agency Start-up' in Malaysia.

Advocacy is a word-of-mouth agency that specialises in triggering authentic advocacy for brands. Our start-up team has collective experience of CRM, digital, social media, community management, activation, shopper marketing & advertising, thereby making it a SWAT team of sorts. And when we all sit down on a brief, we are able to funnel our collective experience and specialisation to help develop campaigns, which trigger WOM (word of mouth) and advocacy by design - and not by default.

We've all heard about how difficult, fun and challenging it can be to work at any startup. It can be even more challenging if you are trying to Setup-the-Start-up. From learning how to register the company in Malaysia, finding office-space, designing it, choosing the office furniture, recruiting the team, internet, telephone - you name it. It's a lot of hard work you are probably doing a lot of it for the first time.

The truth is that joining a startup kind of feels like joining a crazed gang. You aren't entirely sure what's going to happen next and how you're going to pull off the job you just pitched, but gosh, there is so much excitement.

But startup life is not for everyone, and that's ok. It can be completely ridiculous, risky, and often not what you expected. But if you're willing to work hard and go the extra mile to get noticed, it can be extremely rewarding and fulfilling - even financially.

I have learned some important lessons over the last few months - a few things that I think people should know about before leaving their comfortable jobs to live the startup life, and a few things that might encourage others to take the leap. I am hoping it's more of the latter.

Collaboration is Survival

The one thing you quickly learn to realise about working in a start-up team is that everyone is in it together. Start-ups don't have the luxury of big teams and access to network resources. You make do with what you have. And what you can't do - you ask for help and collaborate with complementary teams. Asking for help is NOT a sign of weakness: It's the smarter way to do business.

In fact quite early on - in our first 100 days - we landed this plum assignment, which required a lot of creative work and quick turnaround. We didn't have any full-time creative resources back then. We took the assignment and worked along with another creative boutique agency, which had creative resources to spare. Together we delivered the project on time. Which goes to say that collaboration for us is not a nice-to-have skill set, but a way of working and, at times, survival.

Fail Faster

In a large, 4A agency, everybody has clearly-defined roles and responsibilities. And everybody is tasked to do what is asked of them. If you don't, you fail. Typically in large matrix organisations, your mistakes, not your successes, tend to alter your career. And as a result you are tuned and wired not to fail. The net result: you end up only doing things that you're comfortable with and you don't end up pushing yourself hard enough.

But in a start-up things are very different. To start with, you are most probably out of your depth and overstepping your comfort zone every single day. It's quite human to make mistakes when you do something new. Failure only means that you've tried, not that you're bad at what you're doing. Failing the first time will give you that much more strength for the next round. I'd much rather have a team that's trying, learning, failing and improving faster every day than have a team that's complacent with 'fear of failing' written all over them.

Pull your weight in the boat

In a start-up agency, quite often, the resources barely meet the requirements and everybody in the boat has to pull their weight. There are no 'floating resources' or regional teams to access in times of need. As a result there is heavy dependence on each other and everybody has to play their part. If they don't, the entire boat comes to a halt.

The biggest benefit of this is the fantastic teamwork and seamless collaboration that happens between team members. They quite naturally rely on each other for help and support and the teams are always supporting each other - sometimes without being told to do so. Which is exactly the culture and the spirit, which makes start-up businesses, thrive and survive.

Avoid 'Sit-down' meetings

Meetings. It is one the thing that I probably filled the most in my time-sheets in my earlier role. There was meeting for everything. And most meetings tend to top and tail with discussions, which are sometimes irrelevant to the agenda at hand and everybody after a while seems comfortable just sitting around - waiting for the meeting to start, sipping their coffees and snacking.

While I am not against meetings, at Advocacy we have adopted a 'Stand Only' version, in case we need to have one. The 'Standing' forces the meeting to be short - provides focus, prevents people from settling in and becoming comfortable and the longest we have ever had our daily-stand-off was about 14 minutes.

Never-ending learning

Being in a large agency often leads to your roles and responsibilities being boxed in and strictly defined. However, in a start-up agency, the most exciting aspect of the adventure is the Learning.

Whether it's about new skills, yourself, your limits, meeting and collaborating with new people, you never stop learning in a start-up. And it's across the board. Just as this startup adventure is new for me, it's also new for the team. Everyday someone in my team is probably doing something new. Yes, you need to be prepared for a bumpy ride as the processes and structure take time to fall into place, but usually on the second or third attempt, it starts becoming smoother.

So for all my friends in the non-start-up world, ask yourself this question: 'When was the last time you learned something or did something for the first time?'

And if you are probably thinking and struggling for an answer, it means that you have stopped learning and are stagnating in your learning curve.

As I look back at the past year or so, I seem to be working a lot more than I used to, meeting a lot more clients, working on more briefs. Yet, surprisingly, I get to spend more time with my family. If there ever was one regret, I wish I had done this earlier.

(The author is the chief operating officer of Advocacy Malaysia, part of Advocacy Asia, a word of mouth agency)