Life at a Start-up
This post written by Stephanie Fader, Marketing & PR Manager
I’ve been at MyPunchbowl for almost five months and I’m happy to say that I finally ordered my business cards–yesterday. You might be wondering what took so long…
It goes back to my first or second day when I asked Matt about my phone. Until only recently the company had just one phone with one line. Unfathomable, right? But with only a handful of employees, most of whom had no need for a phone, there wasn’t really much need for more than one line. And as an internet company, shouldn’t we do most of our business online anyway? Matt thought about my question, looked at me and said, “Now you know what it’s like to work at a start-up.”
While I’ve been able to manage without my own line, it was clear that we needed to resolve the issue of the phones. But who would do it? We don’t have a dedicated office manager to take care of these things. Should the CEO spend his time on this issue? Or the engineers whose time is precious. Somehow I ended up with the undesirable task of figuring out the company’s phone system.
After considering landlines, cell phones, and other services, we ended up choosing VoIP with Packet8. So far so good. We’re still working out the kinks regarding the number of lines we actually need, conference call needs, etc. But it is nice to finally have a phone at my desk!
And I’m still learning what it means to work at a start-up but having this experience early on prepared me for what to expect.
