There’s a well-worn narrative about why people leave corporate life. They’re fed up with the politics. Frustrated by the hierarchy. Tired of watching good ideas die in committee. So they escape — to a startup, where things move fast, everyone has a voice, and the culture feels human again.
It’s a compelling story. And for many people, including me, there’s truth in it.
We’ve put startup culture on something of a pedestal. And we’re not alone — some of the world’s biggest corporations have spent years trying to bottle that same energy. Amazon’s Day One philosophy is perhaps the most famous example: the idea that a company should always behave like a hungry startup, never resting on its size or success. It’s a mindset that has shaped one of the most valuable businesses on the planet.
But for every founder who left corporate life frustrated by too much structure, there’s a startup quietly struggling because it has too little. And having spent over a decade inside some of the world’s largest financial institutions before making that leap myself, I’ve seen both sides clearly.
When I joined Rutland Square Spirits, I quickly discovered how much invisible infrastructure I had always taken for granted. HR, compliance, IT, even basic reporting — in corporate life, these things simply exist. In a startup, you build them yourself, usually while simultaneously trying to grow the business. And without them, even the most talented teams start to wobble.
The truth is that structure and culture are not opposing forces. Culture is how people interact and work together. Structure is how work gets done. You need both — and the startups that thrive are the ones that understand this early.
What big businesses get right, and what most startups underestimate, is that operations don’t just happen. They’re designed. Behind every smooth-running organisation is a deliberate framework: clearly defined roles and responsibilities, repeatable processes, and alignment across teams. That’s what keeps everyone moving in the same direction — even when things are moving fast.
The mistake many startups make is copying instead of designing. It’s tempting to look at how Apple or Amazon operates and try to replicate it. But structure needs to be built around your stage, your team, and your specific challenges — not borrowed from someone else’s playbook.
Start with what you need, not what you think you’ll need. Build structure to solve today’s problems, then evolve it over time. Introduce a regular operating rhythm. Make ownership visible so everyone understands not just their job title, but their role.
At Rutland Square, some of the changes that made the biggest difference were also the simplest. We standardised our product terminology so that everyone — across sales, operations and marketing — was speaking the same language.
We mapped out our route-to-market and onboarding processes so the sales team had a clear framework to work within. And we introduced weekly operational reviews to keep focus on priorities and make sure resource was going to the right place. None of these took months to implement. All of them created clarity almost immediately.
We also made a conscious decision to protect communication. Every fortnight the whole company comes together to share updates, so even team members working remotely know what everyone else is working on. And I make a point of catching up individually with every person in the business at least once a month — not just to review performance, but to check in on them as people. That’s not a corporate habit.
That’s culture. And it sits perfectly comfortably alongside the structure we’ve built around it.
I left banking for a bigger challenge. What I didn’t expect was how much of what I’d learned would come with me. Speed is a startup’s greatest advantage early on. But without structure beneath it, that speed doesn’t scale.
This article is by Selena Lin, She is Operations Director at Rutland Square Spirits, a fast-growth Scottish drinks brand valued at £30m, with sales increasing by over 500% last year and named International Business of the Year at the Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce Awards. Before joining the startup world, Selena spent over a decade in global financial institutions including HSBC, BNP Paribas and Bank of New York.