Starting a company is both exciting and challenging. The perceived freedom, the feeling of "creating" something, of bringing something to life, the daydreams about future recognition are some of the most exciting feelings you will ever get in your professional life.
On the other hand the uncertainties, the perceived lack of progress, the sense of confusion, of being busy without being productive, the struggle to bring projects to completion, the fees (rent, power, water, legal, tools, ...) are some of the big challenges that can weigh you down physically and emotionally.
Amidst these big issues it's easy to lose sight of little things. But these little things can be equally as consequential as their bigger cousins.
Today I want to enumerate some of the little challenges that matter but are easy to overlook when planning for the future.
- Office Design
So we got an office space. And we renovated it. That's fine but we had no intention of working in a "box". We wanted an office whose very design inspired the highest levels of creativity. We got in touch with some friends of ours. Some architects. Some furniture makers. What was really amazing was the length of time spent on the office design. You see, it was a small space, and we really wanted to do something cool with it. We wanted to split the main working area into two unequal parts, and we wanted to split it with an S-shaped divider, with an opaque bottom half and a transparent (or translucent) top half. We also wanted to design the office furniture so that they wouldn't look like your regular office chairs and tables. After all the deliberations and designs (we even made computer-aided designs of how the office should look), we simply went with a straightforward design, for both the office and the furniture.
- Working Hours
9-5? It's easy to impose working hours when you pay your employees. But as a start-up with very limited resources, we couldn't afford a paid work force. Everybody was working in their volunteer mode. After some unsuccessful attempts to fix work hours we simply gave up on that. You came when (and if) you wanted. You left when you wanted. The only condition: complete your task. If you were given a task to do, it wasn't too important if you showed up at all, as long as you met your deadline. Funny enough, this flexible working hours philosophy has become part of our corporate culture (which is not strange in tech start-ups). Certain people, however, must show up early to keep the office in good shape ahead of a busy day. - Religion
A good number of the founding members of Karabow where YWAP members and Christians, so, naturally, there was (and still is) a very strong Christian culture at Karabow. In those early days we had prayers in the morning, before work officially started. But there was an elephant in the room: Not all members of Karabow were Christians. This wasn't an issue that was spoken out loud, but it was, nevertheless, an issue. Karabow may be founded by Christians, but it was a secular technology company, and we had to own up to that fact. We had to realise that there was a time (and place) for everything, and you wanted to make all employees equally welcomed. Today, nobody stops you from praying in the office, but it is no longer a "company activity". - Personal or Company Computers
Computers are some of the most important assets at Karabow. it was important that employees had a system to work on. And most people did. Most. Not all. For various reasons, we had to buy computers for certain people. The issue was: did the company own the computers, or did the company give it over to the employees to own? The thinking was: if the computers belonged to the company (which was taken as quite self-evident), then they should reside at the office. The problem: developers don't work only at the office, they work even more at home. The solution: The computers belonged to the company, the desktops resided at the office, while the laptops were taken home by those that needed to work at home. Quite frankly, with this arrangement, we have to constantly remind ourselves that such systems are the company's properties. But it gets the job done letting people take them home. - Product and Project Names
So you have the idea clarified. You have the implementation figured out. The team is chosen. The timetable is drawn. Complete with expected milestones and deadlines. All that is left is to put everything down in a formal document. And then you realize you can't type a single word. Not because you don't understand the idea. but rather because you don't have a name for it. It is amazing how many meetings we had, and how long these meetings lasted, just to come up with names for products and projects. And we could never agree on a naming scheme. Should we pick our names from landmarks, planets, animals, colours, local languages? You would think this should be by far the easiest part. - Waste Disposal
Yeah, that is one of the smallest issues that deserves attention. When your office is located in a building with no centralized waste disposal system, and with no plans or intentions to discuss the issue, this small issue can become a big one. Lucky for us the office to far away from a central waste dump site that was regularly kept in check by government workers. - Toilet
I think everyone would agree this is of great importance. It may not be at the top of the list of necessities when looking for a place for your start-up, but you ignore it at your own peril. Once again, we were fortunate to have our own office toilet, complete with the lock and key.
All in all, 2015 was a lovely year. Full of memories and experiences. But 2016 is already shaping up to beat it by far.
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