“What’s something you guys have to do that someone who works for a big corporate company wouldn’t have to worry about?”
“…Like…Actually paying payroll…” – Taylor
That #StartupLife sounds awesome, you say…
Much like our warehouse, it is awesome… most of the time. The startup life offers us the opportunity to work with so many cool people and build such a cool company from the ground up that the good outweighs the bad 100% of the time. We get to connect on a personal level with so many different companies and individuals both through social media and just in our community, but we feel the need now to bring light to some of the misconceptions that people may have about what it’s like being a startup company and what it means to be a startup, really.
Also it’s fun. Let’s go!
What it Means to be a Startup
A lot of effing chores
Someone’s gotta be the office mom and make sure our warehouse doesn’t become a giant trash pile. As a not huge corporate company, we don’t hire cleaners to come in and pick up after us, that’s our job. That means you’ll find one of our employees in their stylish workwear, crouching on the floor, sweeping up piles of dust and dog hair. Because also…
Dogs
Are you even a startup if you don’t have a dog in the office at least a few times a month? What’s the point of even choosing to work for a startup if doggos aren’t allowed?
Heavily budgeting
Like Taylor said, you gotta make payroll somehow.
Investing in our employee’s growth both professionally and personally
We don’t just hire someone who knows everything already, train them on our systems for three days, and let ’em go. We hire partially based on skill set and partially based on personality and whether they mesh with our team. It’s part of how we build our culture and it’s important to us, but not so much to big corporate companies.
Wearing multiple hats
Our co-founders are their own assistants. Our PPC guy does web design. You think you just have one job? NOPE.
Controlling alcohol intake in the middle of the day
“Also there’s a lot of swearing. We’re basically just an Irish pub… with Macs.” – Kevin
But we have to get work done… which we do.
Apple everything and Google everything
Big corps use Microsoft everything and something lame… like Dell or some shit. Booo. This isn’t the 90s. Although the 90s were great for other reasons.
Open layout
But we’ve already discussed that in this post.
This is just the beginning
We use Doordash, our employees actually like each other so we do Packtivities and hang out at work, we have multiple nerf guns throughout the office, we pay for Ubers so Kev can get drunk at work and make us funny videos.
We could seriously go on and on about what it’s like being a startup and, really, what it means to be a startup. This stuff just scratches the surface. A lot of it is really fun, and a lot of it takes time management and being committed to the job when no one else is pushing you.
Being a startup isn’t for everyone… but it’s awesome
A lot of people come to us thinking they understand what it means to be a startup and want to be a part of what we’re doing. That’s awesome. But the truth is, this life isn’t for everyone. We cover this in the open workspace blog as well, but being a part of a startup takes a certain type of person. You have to understand humility because you’re gonna get pushed more than you normally would at a big company where you’re just a name and number. You have to be self motivated because there are a lot of distractions and you have a LOT to get done (again, because you’re wearing 17 hats).