If you’re thinking about your next career move, here are 6 reasons why you should consider a start-up agency right now.

Start-ups make you be your best person

In a start-up, literally every single person makes a massive, individual impact to agency culture, positivity, wellbeing and, yes of course, productivity.

Start-ups by their nature, are fuelled by giant ambitions, and those ambitions help you focus in a meaningful way. From having to get stuff done with agility and creativity to being empathetic with the people around you (and everything in between). Positive outcomes mean the world.

By practising all these things on a daily basis, you naturally become your best person.

And not just at work, but in every aspect of life.

Your skills grow faster

Most start-ups begin with a few people, which means you get to do lots of cool stuff you wouldn’t normally get to do – especially if you were in a defined job role within an established agency.

In a start-up, one minute you could be dreaming up a digital strategy, the next you might be writing a creative brief, presenting your design work, or building a media database for an imminent media blitz.

By doing lots of different and exciting stuff and working closely with people who have different skills, you get to learn and develop new skills. These new skills accelerate your personal development and your capabilities much, much faster.

You are a big fish in a small pond (not the other way round)

Because start-ups are small, you naturally become part of a small, dynamic team.

Start-ups don’t have big R&D, marketing, sales, product, finance or operations teams. They might have them in the future, but for now it’s all about working closely with a small team doing great work, and doing it collaboratively.

This means there are lots of opportunities for you to show what a positive impact you can make. And that’s why you quickly become a big, important fish in a small pond (and not an invisible minnow in a gigantic ocean).

Small agencies mean big benefits

Start-ups are ambitious. They have to be if they want to scale quickly.

But at Made By Giants, we recognise that to achieve our giant ambition, we need to look after and reward our Giants. That includes both your physical and mental wellbeing.

So we provide a monthly veg box from an organic farm, regular massages and beauty treatments, private medical care, plus subscriptions to Headspace, away days (our last one was in a Bedouin tent), and regular one-on-ones to touch base and check you are all ok and happy.

Rewards also mean financial rewards. We offer above market-rate salaries, enhanced benefits (some of them mentioned above), company and referral bonuses – all of which gives you the opportunity to benefit from a rapidly growing business.

Start-ups are purpose-driven, not financially-driven

The vast majority of start-ups are created out of a need to find a new way of doing stuff. By joining one at an early stage, you become instrumental in bringing their particular purpose to life.

At Made By Giants, we felt there weren’t any agencies combining branding and communications specifically aimed at tech-powered companies. So we started (in the 2020 pandemic) with a simple, compelling purpose: To be the agile growth partner for tech-powered brands. This, in turn, fuels our giant aspiration: To be the most creative tech agency in the universe. Is that ballsy enough for you?

Now ask yourself: do many of the larger, enterprise agencies have a clear, compelling purpose or aspiration that truly lights your fire?

You get to make a big difference

In a start-up, anyone can make a difference. And it’s a difference you can see, touch and feel instantly. It could be a massive difference like creating a brand campaign idea that breaks through a crowded market, or winning an important new client partner.

Or it could just be making a small difference, like suggesting the next venue for our fun away day (a submarine under the Thames anyone?).

Whatever the difference you make, the point is, it’s YOU that’s making the difference.

Oh, and by the way, Made By Giants is looking for an epic thinker with lots of enthusiasm and communications talent to lead our accounts and build something special for us and our client partners. If this sounds like you, let’s have a chat. Email us at onesmallstep@madebygiants.io and tell us why you are epic.

James Beveridge, Co-founder and Brand Growth Partner at Made By Giants