Life @Startups: An insider view

Wondering what a typical day in the life of an early-stage startup sounds like? Well, I might not be able to justify that with a direct answer as there is no such thing as a typical day at most of the early-stage startups. Every single day turns out to be as unique as the previous one (Oxymoron Alert!!).

But, I can surely try and flirt with what constitutes these unique typical days – they are relentlessly creative, adventurously exciting and involve lots and lots of hard work. You get to meet a lot of differently-learned and excitingly-cool people, from investors to marketing heads of different companies. Besides this, you also get a chance to indulge in innovatively ideating, designing, developing and testing your ideas and concepts.

Unless you are rigid and don't like being doubtful, meetings and calls will be juggled and decisions would need to be made on the fly. Therefore, you would not know beforehand about whom you would be meeting on a given day or what your day is going to turn out like. Each day will be like a gift waiting to be opened – but you can be certain of one thing – it is not going to be like any other gift you would have received in your life before.

Throughout the day you are engaged in diverse domains which ranges from financing decisions to marketing campaigns, meeting interested investors, conducting interviews for new hires, testing changes in technology, proposing enhancements and features for the next update, tweaking interfaces, preparing and giving presentations and most important of all – making a dent in the World with your Vision for a better and easier future.

Startup culture is representative of free-thinking clans that do not like being bound by rules that restrict or slow them down. Thus, you would find that there are no fixed working hours at many startups – but a workday might start around 10:00 am and end at 2:00 am. Just like user interfaces, office furniture might be minimalistic but there would be no dearth of recliners, bean bags and loungers. The workplace seizes to be just another office and transitions into a home where you live, work, enjoy and learn.

If each week were to be a pizza that is consumed in 7 slices, then life@startups can be said to have different toppings on all slices, with each slice (day) bringing with it a unique taste.

However, the question remains that would you still be interested in eating a pizza with the same topping on all slices?
P.S. We had a pizza for lunch today.

(Image: i.ytimg.com)

(About the Author: Pulkit Ahuja is the author of ‘Googled by God’ and has co-founded 3 companies-Cabsguru, Unlockar and SchoolCampus Technologies.)