An Architect’s Guide to Anything but Architecture

Had you asked me a year ago if I was considering leaving practice, I’d likely have laughed at you. I had finished spending nearly a decade in professional development and am proud of three years of being able to call myself a registered architect. Not only that, but I was also working for an amazing firm who had trusted me to be their business leader in their Denver office. For what it’s worth, I was happy and my work was fulfilling, and making the decision to leave was no easy choice.

Despite that difficulty, I remembered one of the commitments I made to myself upon entering the field of Architecture. I promised myself that with any opportunity, I would commit to learning and growing as a professional. While it’s a common joke that architects are terrible at business, I began to wonder what I might learn by exploring different business models and how it could help me grow as a professional.

As I round out my first year working for a tech company, I’ve learned many things I don’t think I’d have seen working for firms. For starters, the DNA of a company funded by a VC is inherently different from the garage band, bootstrapped stories I hear about in the architecture world. Successful startups are great at leveraging capital and operations to grow and scale effectively. We work on sprints, testing new ideas, learning from mistakes, and pivoting on almost a weekly basis. It’s refreshing to be working with professionals from a wide background of expertise and experience the design problem of running a business from new perspectives.