

Things startups do and don't need - neilc
http://cdixon.tumblr.com/post/311546950/things-startups-do-and-dont-need

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cfinke
I respectfully would swap "Need: Beer on Fridays" with "Don't Need: Aeron
chairs." If my back is killing me because of crappy chairs, no amount of beer
is going to stop me from finding a new job.

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mkramlich
agreed. if company provides an office, providing great chairs goes a long way
to increasing health and morale, and it's a company asset that can be reused
by various employees, etc. beer is relatively cheap, a consumable, not an
asset, and adults expect to buy beer on their own dime and time, if at all.
chairs are a business tool, beer is not. do you need Aerons at launch? no. but
that's a more substantive benefit for your employees that beer.

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johnl
If I like the people I am working around then most of that stuff is nice but
not necessary, except maybe for the back and the chair thing. I would add a
quick commute in the first list and a work at home option.

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avk
From my reply on my blog (<http://bit.ly/4RCZYi>):

Things startups do need that are missing from the original list:

* Revenue Because you’re a business first and everything else second. And once you have that, profit.

* Technical talent If ideas are worth less than execution, then you need the best people you can get to execute.

* Passion Nothing is better than working on something you believe in. It just doesn’t feel like work.

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tptacek
You need Microsoft products if your company sells to medium/large businesses.

You need business cards if you do direct sales or consulting.

You need air conditioning, perhaps more than heat, pretty much everywhere in
the US.

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docmach
Why do you think that Microsoft products are necessary to sell to large
businesses? There might not be any large businesses that don't have any
Microsoft products, but I've seen several successful sales to very large
business by small companies without Microsoft products.

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byrneseyeview
I thought so, too; I work at a web design / marketing company, where I assumed
we could use whatever we wanted as long as the site worked in IE and FF. But
our clients send site copy revisions in Word, and screenshots of bugs in
Powerpoint, and they want hour estimates in Excel.

I tried using OpenOffice for about a week, but having 99% of MS Office left me
1% short.

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aaronblohowiak
>"Democratically controlled music system"

Please, no. How about headphones?

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eugenejen
One of my old startups in 2003, we made one of music system from spare parts
and one guy wrote an web base controlling daemon for it. Then we contributed
our collection of CDs. We can use web interface to control the system and
up/down or veto the music. And we also have an anthem around 4pm. (The whole
Coffin for Head of State by Fela Kuti). It becomes like a ritual.

It creates a bond among people because we know what music that each of us
likes. We did not play pop charts or technos, but more like Jazz, Punk, Art
Rock and any fun but not mainstream popular songs.

We have almost 128 GBs of mp3 after 3 years. That was one heck of good memory
than listening through headphone.

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pbhjpbhj
You need a license for workplace music in the UK, also copying a CD for any
reason is illegal over here, we don't have a [fair use] backup facility in our
legislation.

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mkramlich
i roughly agreed except certain items like the beer and music sound juvenile
and clearly are not needed for a startup. i would add something like oh say,
call me crazy, but I dunno a _business_ model, and understanding how long your
runway is. and while you don't need a formal vacation policy, i'd say that you
need some understanding of who contributes what, roughly how much, and when.
That's way more important than "sunny offices", windows that open, etc.

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wooster
I hope nobody takes this blog post at face value.

You may, depending upon jurisdiction, be legally obligated to provide the
following:

* Vacation policy

* Phone system

You may need to have the following documented, to comply with labor laws:

* Set time you need to arrive in morning

I, for one, have never worked anywhere that had:

* Windows that open

* Democratically controlled music system

* EVDO cards

* Gmail and Google docs

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neilc
What legal jurisdiction _requires_ phone service for all employees? And which
labor laws require that there be a set time of arrival in the morning? (I can
understand laws requiring a documented number of hours worked per week, of
course.)

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wooster
Mountain View requires phone systems to pass fire inspection in office
buildings. Employees generally need a system by which to contact emergency
services.

Labor laws in some jurisdictions cover employee expectations by the employer.
If the employer is shown to have arbitrary expectations of their employees
(like "soft hours" or flexible work schedules), those expectations need to be
somewhere in writing or you can get in big trouble. I've heard of engineering
firms being totally screwed (into bankruptcy) by overzealous labor law
enforcement when it was discovered that they, for example, had policies like
"work whenever and however you want, as long as you get your job done."

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mynameishere
You certainly don't need google docs, and you certainly do need IE, if only
for testing.

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Semiapies
They need heating, but not air conditioning? We can guess the type of climate
this person lives in...

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idlewords
I think all of the items on the first list can safely be moved to the second.

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cruise02
You do need "Mac laptops" but you don't need "Microsoft products"? I call
fanboy bullshit. Strike "Mac" from the first list and I might be persuaded.

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Semiapies
Wait, I missed this. Health care plans, but no dental?

