Startups are weird.
There’s no way around it. Startup culture is by far the strangest culture out there.
We’re in the process of hiring another programmer. The other day, my boss and I were talking about general logistics, because in addition to managing our marketing and HR, I’m also our office administrator. Kind of. But I asked him if we should order another desk, since we only have enough for our current employee count. He said we should wait until we actually hire someone, because even though we have a vacant office, there’s a very real possibility we’ll move offices or get bought out before we hire on any more employees, and it’d be too much of a pain to move yet another desk. But I should check the price and sellers of our current desk model and bookmark the page, just in case.
If you’ve never heard the word “startup” before, that’s it. That’s all you have to know. Everything is always iffy, and you always need to be prepared for every possible outcome. For a new social media app in Silicon Valley, that means a TON of trial and error. We need to stay on top of social media trends so we don’t get swallowed up by the big companies, but we also need to stand out enough so we don’t fade into the “I don’t need another…” abyss. But we can’t stand out too much, or people will avoid us because we’re too new and unfamiliar. It’s complicated.
Our founder and CEO, Balaji Krishnan, always says we need to fail fast. We need to brainstorm new ideas, pick one or two that are actually viable, and test them immediately. If they work, great! If people hate the new feature, we delete the code and start over. At least then we know what not to do, and we’re a step closer to heading in the right direction. “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” -Thomas Edison
Everyone in Silicon Valley has a startup, works for a startup, has worked for a startup in the past, knows someone who works for a startup, has had an idea for a startup, works for a startup that analyzes other startups… The list is endless. And within each degree of startup knowledge, there’s a separate scale to measure just how involved you are. Not to mention, everyone always asks you if you’re a co-founder, and it’s expected that you’re living off of pennies for the first few years. In the case of a pre-release “We just had the idea yesterday!” stage startup, there’s a good chance you’re putting your life savings into your fetus of a company, without cutting a paycheck.
Everyone is curious about where your funding is coming from, how many employees you have, and if you’re still “working from home” or if you’ve moved into an office space. And even though you might operate under an official job title, you never have just one job. There’s a general understanding that anyone involved in a startup wears multiple hats. You have your main title, pertaining to 50–75% of your day. But you also have a handful of sub-titles along for the ride, because hiring a different person to do each job is just ridiculous.
The way I see it, there are three different job positions available. There’s the founder/CEO (as well as any co-founders), the specialty skill employees (such as our programmers and UI/UX designers), and the miscellaneous (marketing, brand ambassadors, etc.) that pick up the slack. For example, if we hired a separate HR rep, they’d have about an hour’s worth of work to do each day, if that. So as needed, I, the marketing rep, will review resumés and conduct phone interviews. In addition, we needed some whiteboards hung today, but none of us had the time to do it ourselves. So I, the marketing and HR rep, called the handyman who’s currently in my office, drilling holes in the wall behind me. Even the specialty skill employees have miscellaneous bits along for the ride. My dad is a mechanical engineer for a solar startup, but spends half of his time in the lab working on their tool.
Startups are just baby companies, in an all-too-literal sense. It’s like you’re trying to shove different shapes through their corresponding holes faster and more successfully than the guy next to you, and all you can do is hope you’re not that one kid who keeps trying to force the triangle through the square hole, convinced that one of these days, it’ll work. But the least you can do is flail around to a good playlist, right? Studies show listening to music while working increases productivity. Coincidentally, DabKick’s featured playlist this week is our “Tune Into Work” playlist, now in editor’s picks. Happy flailing!
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