I think one of the main reasons I've failed to innovate inside a large company, while succeeding at building new things at startups, is because I find it so hard to maintain a positive attitude inside a corporate environment. However, at a startup, when I'm starving, I find optimism in everything and build nonstop.

So far this is a bit of a horrifying conundrum where I am a technical startup failure, but in good spirits or a corporate success and in bad mood all the time.

I've found when I'm at a startup there is enormous willingness to believe that my crazy ideas might create an opportunity -- likely because C-suite has nothing to lose and everything to gain. While I'm in a corp environment at the top of the market, VP's have everything to lose and very little they can imagine that can get better (other than competitive catchup scenarios).

This leads to a really deadly cycle, where large companies shun real innovation because of the perceived risk being 100,000,000x higher than at a startup since one has 0 to lose, and the other has billions.

The net-net result here is that big corps never end up being first movers, since they need to see opportunity illustrated by a competitor before they move on it. This sets up the corp team for failure though, as they are assigned to catch up to a competitor already established and building a product on a good foundation and likely years ahead in thinking.