•  You can prepare for the startup life at a big corporation. •  Leverage the company's size and variety of businesses. •  Join your personal brand to the large company's brand strength.

You know exactly what you want. You've targeted yourself at a C-level job in a startup like a guided missile. No big company for you. You're focused on that single-digit badge number and CxO title. Fine. Just don't get so focused on what you want that you miss what you need. And what you need may be easiest to find at a large company.

Joe Forgione has done both. He's started up companies, and he's worked at some big corporations. Most recently he moved from one of the biggest, IBM/Lotus, to grow a small one, Eprise Corporation, a maker of Web site management software. As President and CEO of Eprise for three years he's grown the company from 22 employees to 160 and guided it through an IPO.

It's a classic entrepreneurial story. Where did he learn how to do it? He started out with big companies -- Motorola, and later Data General, where he was director of product marketing. Then he went small and helped start up a company. Then big again when he moved to Lotus. "I've moved back and forth, and it has its advantages," he says. "Even if you consider yourself an entrepreneur and not a big company person, there are things you can learn from big companies."

He ranks building a management team, branding the company and positioning it in the marketplace as his most important accomplishments at Eprise. "They are the most important things a CEO of a young company can do," he says. And he credits his experience at large companies for some of his success with both.

"I've done team-building at big companies, and I've seen the spectrum of worst and best. I've been able to pick the best aspects of leadership and avoid pitfalls. I've learned from experience. And when it comes to brand building, Lotus was all about brand. What Jim Manzi did in the early days of that company, getting that brand out there, was brilliant."

Getting the most out of a big company experience requires action on your part, says Forgione:

• Pick your company for what it can teach. If you're focused on entrepreneurism, you can find companies with an entrepreneurial culture: You can tell if a company has one by looking at the people who have left the organization to run companies of their own.
• Learn what the company has to offer. Don't spend your time and energy rebelling against big company processes. You can learn a lot about process in a big company that can be applied to a small company as it grows -- financial controls, decision making.
• Take advantage of the variety of opportunities in a big company to move around from function to function. At a small company you might be hired as the sales guy. At large company you'll get more opportunity to do cross-functional work, to get a variety of experience.
• Use your position to keep in touch with the marketplace. Big companies are a great vantage point to see what's out there. You'll spend time with customers, trade groups and business partners. Use it to build your community.

Large companies are also a great place to be seen, says Forgione, and thus they are good places to build your personal brand. "You're very visible to the search firms and venture firms. At Lotus I got calls all the time from recruiters and VCs. I'd listen to them, then tell them I was very happy where I was. But I listened. That's all you have to do. You need to stay in tune with the market. You don't need to write a resume, just listen."

And sooner or later, like Joe Forgione, you'll like what you hear.