How to Fit in at a Tech Startup
Published in
2 min readOct 24, 2016
- Always talk about churn and how you’re going to prevent churn. (I’m not quite sure what this means, but I’m 100% sure it has nothing to do with butter)
- Wear flannel and flip flops everyday, except on days when investors or clients come to visit. On those days, wear CLEAN converse, dark jeans and a button up chambray shirt.
- On Fridays, drink beer during lunch. If you want, you can drink another beer at 4PM. You can, potentially, drink another beer at 5PM, but under no circumstances should you drink a fourth beer while still at the office. Go downstairs to the local bar, half of the office is there anyway.
- Bring in your old N64 console and games, preferably Super Smash Bros. Spend a total of 2 hours daily (cumulatively, not consecutively) challenging co-workers to your favorite childhood game. Curse loudly when you lose. Always play as the same character.
- Wear big noise-cancelling headphones while “working” on your computer. Make sure to keep the volume low so you can still hear co-workers’ conversations, you don’t want to miss a chance to talk about how you binge watched the latest Netflix original.
- Drink all the Red Bulls and Monsters. Brag about it.
- Midday, do some sort of obvious workout in a shared, common space like push-ups or handstands. If you really want to looks impressive, do handstand push-ups. Position yourself in such a way that most people can see you.
- Openly talk about a life-changing moment you had while on psychedelics, bonus points if said moment happened during an ayahuasca retreat in Peru. Strongly consider microdosing at work.
- Organize a company outing that involves some type of physical activity. Bonus points if it’s some sort of mud run.
- Be on a first name basis with the CEO.
- Hold impromptu meetings over a game of ping pong.
- Don’t know the answer to a customer question? It’s probably a bug. Log it in JIRA and forget about it until said customer inquires again in two weeks.
- Use ‘SEO’ and ‘API’ in a sentence without fully knowing what each term means. Quickly backtrack when said sentence is met by a series of quizzical looks.
- Constantly carry around a physical copy of ‘The Lean Startup’, ‘Zero to One’, or ‘The $100 Startup’ if your a guy, carry around ‘Lean In’ if you’re a girl*.
- Holy shit! Another girl at a tech startup!? Please leave a comment so we can meet up!
