Could working in another company help me run mine?

I decided, I've done this sort of a thing from taking a company, a product from zero to profit-making, but I have never really had the opportunity to say, "I want to witness a high growth company from taking venture money, and then see how they operate." So I've done the first bit, but I never really witnessed the second bit. That's when I started looking. That's probably about, actually four years ago. I joined a company called TransferWise and then that's where I think that opened a different door to me as to witnessing a company that at the time was less than a thousand people. And then getting a lot of traction as a direct to consumer company, but then they still have a very small London base. And then when I joined the London office, which is the headquarters, there's 120 people, 130 people in London, even as a headquarters. And then there's only 150 engineers in the company.

So when I left three years after I joined, it's more of a pre-IPO because they IPOed July last year. And it's about 350 engineers and then more than 2000 people. So within that three year period while I was there, there's a lot of learning through that stage. But I guess if there's one thing I'm very proud of, it's to take my initiative, to pick the company at that stage to join. If I say I knew exactly what I'm doing at the time, that's clearly not true, but looking back, that was probably the best decision I have ever made, is to get myself from a bootstrap funder mindset into working for a company, which is not a decision lot of people would make at the time, but just bend down, take your knee and then go look at how that company works and then learn along the way.

I did learn, and a lot. And a lot of those are directly transferable to my current company because I realised that if I've only done the funding company kind of stuff, from zero to a certain size, I would never know what's waiting for me down the line, which would affect a lot of my decisions at the time because if I knew this is what we are going to anticipate three, five years down the line, before we IPO, a lot of decisions I made at the time would be very, very different.