Took a suggestion from a commenter to blog about the other side of working at a startup, that is, the positives of it; I wrote this late, late, late last night…fueled by Diet Cokes and Japanese strawberry gummy candies. I don’t really know the seedy underside of working for someone else in a startup, but I was able to round up some friends (and friends of friends) who do. I mean, we all know that working at a startup is exciting with a capital E!!! You know what I mean by excitement, right? “You get to work in a dynamic, fun and fast-paced environment!” Sweaty palms, ever-changing circumstances, not knowing if your next paycheck will be your last, doing things outside of your hired role, oh yes, this is VERY exciting. Hoping to glean some info on how to manage employees if ever I had enough money to do so; I gathered some interesting comments by plying these folks with some candy and my undivided attention. Quoted for truth:
“Yea, the founder thinks he knows everything. Even how to do my job.”
“My boss is really flexible; he changes his mind every few minutes.”
“I’m so happy I’m helping another person make their dreams come true. At $30,000 a year.”
“I’m the number 3 employee of the company. But I think I’m going to need health insurance soon.”
“We have office space. It just happens to be in the basement of my boss’s house.”
Ok, ok, sounds pretty bad, doesn’t it? But, the people I interviewed were smart and full of potential. Knowing that, the people who hired them - the CEOs most likely, are smart people too. And working with smart people is never a bad thing. On that note, let’s discuss the pros of working at a startup. You want to know how a business works? You want to see ideas come to life before your very eyes? Did you ever wonder what “business development” meant? Want to be a contributor instead of a cog? Well, working at a startup gives you that opportunity. That is, if you want it. The phrase “baptized by fire” comes to mind. It takes a very courageous and flexible person to weather the ups and downs of a startup. Maybe the company doesn’t go anywhere. Maybe the 0.25% equity stake you own means 0.25% of zero dollars next week. But imagine your next job interviews. Imagine not lying about how much you contributed and learned working at a startup.
Every company needs resourceful and tenacious employees. And startup employees have that times 10. You’re middle name is probably “Versatile”. Companies now want multi-talented employees who have some business sense and financial know-how. And you have that knowledge, because you probably had 50 different responsibilities. That, or you shared the same desk as the CFO. Do you know how to put the company first? Probably, because almost everyday in a startup is about survivability. So maybe the company went out of business - what did you take away from that? You were directly hired by the CEO (likely). In a way, you’ve already been vetted. Whether you were the technical lead or receptionist/payroll/cheerleader - hiring managers know that startups put tremendous energy into finding their first employees. They want very, very good people (for very, very low pay). But think of all the money you saved working from home because there’s no office space yet.
Conclusion: I definitely have to advise most job seekers who have some flexibility with their finances AND nerves of steel to give working at a startup a shot. Especially if you’ve always had a bit of the entrepreneurial bug - you’ll learn things they don’t teach you in business school, guaranteed. The best question to ask might simply be, “What is a typical day like?” Oh, and you might want to hang around for a day to see how things actually work before you jump in. But it will probably be worth it.

It’s 80 degrees regularly now. Wii Fit is sold out everywhere. Maybe one has something to do with the other, heh. Microsoft and Yahoo are still two separate entities. We still don’t know have a Democratic nominee (although that might change tonight).
Me, I’m just working on a Blood Elf rogue on Cho’gall at the moment. But shouldn’t you be building the website?! Why are you keeping us waiting? you may ask. Well friends, it’s not just me here at mmochi.
Here is the rest of the team, who’s going to create the awesomest gaming social network you ever did see.

I’m Tony and have been a gamer for over 20 years, mostly on the console side. (My PC gaming experience is mostly C64, Oregon Trail and older stuff like Doom, Duke Nukem, and Starcraft).

It’s tough building something like this from the ground up but we knew there was an unfulfilled need in the community. Here are some of the things I think about during the day:

Information gathering because knowing is half the battle
Blogs are quickly becoming the fastest and easiest way to keep up with news.
Thanks to Google reader, we can easily RSS the relevant info out there on the blogosphere. Some favorites include: Mashable, TechCrunch, Signals vs Noise and of course, all of my videogame feeds.
A great book we read when getting started is, The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki. I highly recommend it to anyone looking to create a startup and pursue their dreams.

Content and Design
This is by far the toughest aspect of starting a web site. How do we get started? Should we start with designs and build features from there or vice versa? What technology should be used? Should we tighten up the graphics on level 3? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJ-QSJmEgHU” lol but seriously, we have gone through more redesigns (and dunkin donuts coffee) than you can imagine. We figure some of our pages may have been redone 4-5 times by now. Feature creep also comes into play when designing a site of such scale and we’ve had to axe many features or save them for later revisions. We may scan a few early designs later so we can see the evolution. A great resource we found for designing for the web is Getting Real by 37 Signals. A quick read that’s sure to get you started on the right track.

Well, i’m off but will post some random updates from time to time.

-Tony

And this is Adam, our graphic designer, who hails from Maryland. And although his academic background is in something that rhymes with Memistry, you’d never know it by his wicked designs.

Hey guys,
My name is Adam and I¹m the designer here at mmochi. I am primarily responsible for the little happy faces smiling back at you from the front-page and the general look and feel of the site. Although always a gamer, I never thought that this would be a marketable skill until I saw a craigslist posting with the phrase “must be able to make graphics consistent with video game aesthetics.” This certainly peaked my interest, I applied with all the assurances of my geekyness I could provide and I¹ve been working with Tilo and Tony ever since! The cute little guys of course are meant to be animated mochis which are those awesome Japanese rice treats that often come filled with ice cream or red bean paste (or salt, if you have an abusive older sister.) It was just too good a name to pass up.
So that¹s it for now, anyone have a favorite mmochi?

-Adam

PS - I will also be posting pics of these guys on our mmochi flickr pic roll! (lower left hand corner). Don’t forget to RSS the blog posts so you don’t miss anything!

I remember talking to my friends about mmochi (seems like a lifetime ago), and they would say…”Yea, sounds like you wanna build a startup”. Startup? Did you just take 2 verbs and make it into a noun? What is that, another word for “business”? No, I quickly learned (but not quickly enough…never quickly enough!), that building a startup, which evidently enough, IS another word for a business, condensed under 5 words is kind of like: having a baby. Minus the fluids. But omg, that process is for another post.

ps - Run on sentences ftw.

So one of the first steps to building that startup? Find a partner. How? What can I offer? How do I explain how not fun it’s going to be and at the same time, get really motivated and smart people to join me in this struggle? Then I ran across this article all full of truths AND roflcopters and had to share. I couldn’t get permalinks and trackbacks to work so here’s the entire article (where you can read the comments too), QFT.

“Welcome to the first day of your new startup job! We’re so excited that you’ve decided to be part of our venture. You’re going to find that compared to your old job at a big, stodgy corporation, a startup is a totally different world.

To get you acclimated to the change, let me walk you through the perks and benefits of your new job while you settle in.

We have a Premium Coffee Service

Oh, you want to know where the coffee is?

We have an amazing service that offers premium coffees and a full assortment of cakes and snacks. It’s called Starbucks, and it’s conveniently located two blocks down the street. They aren’t around as early or late as we are, but if you can use the service, I would highly recommend it.

Your New Computer is Already Configured

No need to worry about setting up your new computer – you already own it. It’s the laptop you brought from home. The great news is that you won’t need to waste any time configuring your email client or figuring out your new bookmarks.

What’s even better is you are free to take it home with you and work throughout the entire weekend like the rest of us are going to.

Your Phone Number is Easy to Remember

In addition to your computer, your direct phone line is already set up. As it happens, you already know the number because it’s the same as your cell phone number. Why bother adding additional lines with money we don’t have when you have a perfectly good phone on you at all times?

You Now have Three Assistants

Maybe your last company thought you only needed one full-time assistant to handle your inbound calls, your calendar and your entire travel schedule. At our startup, we’ve got three. Their names are Outlook, iPhone, and Expedia.

Between the three of them they will handle all of the work that you thought only one full-time person could handle before. They will always be available to you and will never complain. Feel free to use them as much as you see fit.

You Set Your Own Travel Budget

No need to fill out any requisitions for travel or any expense reports. We’re too innovative to worry about all that paperwork. In fact, you can pretty much tell us what your travel budget is going to be. After all, it’s dictated by how much cash you have in your wallet and how much gas you have in your car. Assuming those two are full, you can go as far as they will take you.

Take as much Vacation as You Want

Not only do we not worry about travel budgets, we don’t even budget for vacation. Sure, your last company made you count the number of sick days you had available and kept you from taking as much time as you really needed. We’re the exact opposite – you can take off as much time as you need and never worry about it.

While you’re planning that vacation, remember that we’re working Monday through Sunday from sunrise to sundown. None of us have taken time off in the last three years, but we’d be thrilled to see you take a two-week siesta to relax after you’ve been hard at work for three months in a row.

Our Hours are Super Flexible

Aside from not tracking vacation, we don’t even track when you come or go. Maybe your last boss was looking at his watch when you showed up fifteen minutes late. Not us! We don’t care what time you show up or what time you leave. So long as you’re working every waking moment of every day of the week, the hours are totally up to you.

We don’t care if you come in on Sunday at 8:00 AM or 1:00 PM. We’re just so focused on getting this startup off the ground we can’t worry about things like normal business hours. Some of us haven’t slept in the last day and a half so we’ve lost track of time altogether.

You Call the Shots

We’re not about telling you what to do. That’s why we hired you, because we knew you were tired of having your boss lead you around like a puppy. At our new startup, you get to make your own schedule and call all of the shots. We hired you because we knew you wanted this type of responsibility, and now you’ve got it!

I’m sure by now you’re thinking this is simply nirvana. Not only do you get to run your own show, set your own schedule and enjoy all of the perks of a startup, you also get the opportunity to strike it rich with your new stock options.

Just don’t forget that you really aren’t going to get paid in cash this week. Or next week. Or next month. Isn’t a startup great?”

“Yea, but what do you do all day?”, I get asked all the time.

When what you’re doing consists of working on the web, and you’re not actually coding anything…I can understand how ‘web working’ sounds like not working at all. Or maybe it just sounds like it’s all fun. But really, it’s a humongous exercise in self-management. And I have terrible impulse control. AND the web is chock full of enticing distracters. Examples: the siren’s call of celebrity “news” blogs gets particularly tantalizing around 6PM. Friend sends funny Youtube link or LOLcatz image. You do your part digging it or passing it along. Spam from shopping site tells you that they have new items for the season. Hmm…wouldn’t help to look. It’s Wednesday, time to stream new subbed anime episodes! Limiting playing time on WoW or Audition? Near impossible. “But it’s research!” the id cries, as you’re queuing for the 30^th Arena battle of the day.

So when do you start, and when do you stop? Should all your time on the web be devoted to ‘work’? Should you feel terrible for browsing Perez Hilton when you can be taking a walk outside? Is that really considered taking a ‘break’? How much guilt is motivational and how much guilt is paralyzing?

Anyway, no matter how you look at it, I spend too much time sitting in front of the PC and not much time doing anything else…My challenge is finding ways to amuse myself, de-stress, and keep (or get) healthy while staying true to my calling as Internet Wizard. Willing to take any suggestions seriously, just don’t tell me to start doing desk exercises! (I think people will look at me funny.)

I realized that I didn’t answer the question, but I’m hoping you didn’t notice. Besides, shouldn’t you go out and do something?

Just kidding! Go play some games.

We are going through the super rigorous process of trademarking right now. If anyone has thought of a cool slogan or name and wanted to trademark it, a cursory search on Google makes it seem like it can be done by in 5 minutes. This is not so.

But anyway, when coming up with our tagline, we wanted something that sounded cool (of course), made sense (semantically), and conveyed mmochi’s mission, or reason for existence. What we came up with is: Know Who You’re Playing With.

I know that when I used to PVP grind, there were certain people from certain guilds that I would run into again and again. Some were awesome players, and they kicked my @$$ handily many times. I always wondered who they were – where they were from, how they looked like, what kind of gaming setup they had, stuff like that. There were also extremely terrible players that I got to know (and avoided), and I wondered what was up with them too, lol. And I just hated how all of the guilds had their own websites, but they were all scattered, and a bit messy, and you had to register with the site to participate in the forums. There were also sites that had pictures of WoW players, but you couldn’t chat with each other! Like, if you recognized a screen name of someone you played with, you couldn’t email and say, “Hey, good run at (insert instance name) last night, let’s make a static (insert instance name) group!” So mostly, I made this site for myself, and for people like me, the MMO enthusiast who is passionate about games but doesn’t have as much time to troll the net for people who also play the same games! Hopefully, this will become the site where gamers come to meet each other!

This is the start of a day at mmochi, with a double shot of caffeine and a healthy dose of can-do attitude. You try reading over 50 blogs a day! Thank you, Google Reader, your feed aggregator has made me twice as productive and at least 100x smarter. Reading is fundamental and Google Reader is fundamental to my reading.

Right now, we are working on deadlines. The programmers are supposed to tell us very shortly how soon mmochi will be able to beta. And almost surely, we will not be happy with their time line so I’m prepping for a cyber fight with them! More soon…

Hi and welcome to mmochi! You must be wondering what the name means, and maybe even how to say it? It’s “mo-chee” and traditionally, it’s a yummy, ice cream dessert. But in this case, it’s my internet dream and I’ll tell you the start of it all.

I used to PVP grind for about 40 hours a week. Give or take 15 hours, if you included raiding. Work/life/game balance was just a pipe dream. Sometimes I’d play with my guild, sometimes alone, and I got to know many, many people on my server really well, and many people who played the game in general – I mean, how can you not, considering how many hours I was logged on? And yes, I knew them; I knew how their character had the awesomest gear, whether they were alchemists or fire mages, and how they were gathering materials for a new sword. And during breaks in the game (occasionally, there were some), we’d get to know more about the team members. Like, who needed to afk midway during the raid to cook for the family, who had to take off for a month to prep for finals, who was between jobs, etc.

And when we weren’t playing the game, we were chatting on the forums. And of course, the posts with the most threads were usually the posts regarding “Real Life” info. Like, real life photos, real life meet ups, real life advice for real life problems,etc. And I definitely partook in those conversations. I wanted to get to know my in-game friends. But our guild and clan websites were always kind of lame, they didn’t allow us to host as many pictures, FRAPS videos, and the private messaging kind of sucked. And worse, only guild members ever went to our site! If we wanted to talk to other people from the game, we would have to go to their guild website (and sometimes you couldn’t even find it on google) or convene on a more well-known public forum.

So a light went off in my head and mmochi was born.

The first three letters of mmochi stand for “massive multiplayer online”, in case you didn’t get it by now. I thought that if I could create a cool and interesting website, that gamers would come, create a profile, and stay awhile. We’d all hang out and get to know each other – in a Mr. Rogers’ neighborhood kind of way. “If you build it, they will come.” So whenever you have comments or feedback, please let me know here.

We can be the best gaming community on the web.