So this happened to me. I believe it 100%, but it&#x27;s nowhere near as straightforward as you may believe after reading this.<p>The reason is that if you want to work hard for a startup, you need to ditch the role mentality. You have to be all in on the company, all day. You have to think like a CEO without being a CEO, and without access to all the information that comes with it. You also don&#x27;t get comped for it immediately.<p>My path:<p>- Joined a company just as they got seed funding. Wrote code for 1.5 years. Constantly fought to understand why we were building what we were and where I could cut corners while still being proud of my work.<p>- Company got acquired. Took as job as sales engineer. Gave 6 demos a day for 9 months.<p>- Asked to scale my role. Turns out that&#x27;s product marketing, so hired my replacement and moved to marketing. 2 months in, we fired my VP and I started reporting directly to CEO. Did this for another 7 months.<p>- More marketing churn, I ended up running marketing (team of 2). 1 left, hired 4 total more over 8 months.<p>- Decided I was leaving, told my CEO with 6 months notice. Ran the search for a new CMO (obviously the CEO had final say, but we didn&#x27;t have many significant disagreements).<p>At every one of these steps, I freaked out about my ability to perform. I&#x27;d be up in the middle of the night, or stressing about not understanding anything. I wasn&#x27;t leveraging my skills -- I was stepping into gaps the company needed filled and backfilling the roles I was leaving.<p>If you can find a company that will let you do this, you come out with an AMAZING skillset. I&#x27;m 30, and I haven&#x27;t tested my ability to get a VP-at-Google job, but I&#x27;m not finding anything in starting my own company that&#x27;s a total surprise. The breadth and exposure I got from trying different roles at a startup every 6-12 months has been frighteningly valuable.<p>You can&#x27;t stay heads-down and think writing code is all the your startup needs. You need to think like a founder for 5 years, without any of the upside, and you&#x27;ll get a huge amount of intangible value from the experience.