The best of both worlds?
On a traditional career path, Monica Nester started out as a small fish in a big pond, spending seven years at Hewlett-Packard, then two at Symantec, and two at Quantum.
But her positions at these corporate giants had one thing in common: entrepreneurial experience. Nester found herself drawn to small start-up organizations within these established companies.
However, the desire to be part of a true start-up caught up with her, and Nester eventually found herself setting out for start-up life, beginning with Intrinsa, a software simulation development tools company in Mountain View, Calif.
"Although I had been [involved] in little start-up opportunities throughout my career, one reason to do a complete start-up is the ability to be there from day one and be a part of the history of a company," Nester says.
Although she made the switch to the start-up track, Nester doesn't think that working for a large company locks a person into a slow or uneventful career path.
"Being in less visible places in a big company provided more opportunity to grow, and I was always in little start-up organizations," Nester says.
Nester is now senior vice president of marketing at another start-up, Annuncio Software, in Los Altos, Calif., which she joined about two years ago. She says she enjoys her hard-working but friendly and diverse co-workers as well as the constant challenges.
"It is so exciting for me; I'm over 40 years old, and I am at the forefront of a new industry," Nester says. "It's really exciting to say that I don't know what our world is going to be like five years from now."
