How Moving To A Startup Can Be Rocket Fuel For Your Career | Jensen Harris

Lean Startup

We recently hosted a conversation between Jensen and Elliot focused on taking the leap from a big company to launching a start-up and the differences between those two company cultures. In 2014, Jensen Harris had a conversation with Kieran Snyder about their mutual dissatisfaction with writing software. “Here we are, 40 years into the post typewriter era, and still, all the software [we have] to write [does] the same thing a typewriter did,” he says. So, sixteen years into his career at Microsoft, Jensen Harris decided it was time to set out and try something new: launch his own startup. “Although I loved much of what I was doing...I felt like it was time to make a change,” he says. So Jensen and Kieran decided to go for it. They quit their big corporate jobs and set out to raise seed money for Textio - augmented writing software that uncovers meaningful patterns in language to help you know how your words are going to work and guides you to stronger communication in your writing. “It’s the biggest advance in writing since the computer,” Jensen says. Now three and a half years into their venture, Textio co-founder and CTO Jensen Harris spoke with Lean Startup Co. faculty member Elliot Susel in a recent webcast about the differences between working for big companies and startups and taking chances to further your career. Email us: [e-mail] Follow Lean Startup Co. @leanstartup https://leanstartup.co/education