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We Pay Our Rent By Buying Coffee
Wired is running a story on Delicious Monster, a startup Mac software company whose main office is a Seattle coffee shop. Hope they're drinking decaf.
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> it generated $250,000 worth of sales in its first month
Wow, I must have contributed to some of that.
Delicious Library is cool, if a little bit slow. But it's still new, so that's not surprising. The attention to detail is really amazing. When you add artwork to a catalog item, the application adds a screen to the item image to make it look like it's in a DVD case, or the cover of a book. If you say it's a hard cover or soft cover book, the size of the book changes, too. I wrote a nearly pointless review of it for Gadget Madness.
Scanning in your books, DVDs, games, or whatever into the system is actually a kind of fun. It's one of those Mac OS X applications that when you show someone who doesn't have a Mac, they get that comically jealous look on their face.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
Why-ever not? A start up has to start up somewhere, and if the company does not require a fixed premises as such, these guys are free to meet in the park, in the high street, in coffee shops. It's really just an extreme example of how decentralised business is becoming these days.
Quoth the server, "404."
While I like this product (I especially think the barcode thing is spiffy), I don't really like some of their ideas for the next version. They state that you will be able to see other peoples profile with the same taste... Well I think marketeers are going to have a field trip with this... a fully free accessible database of online contacts already sorted by the profile you make... all that for only 40 bucks. Don't get me wrong, I like the idea in principle, but it's just too easy to be taken advantage of.
The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.
Especially in the financial centres of big cities it seems that Starbucks et al are not really a "coffee company", but are in fact selling very on-demand temporary office space ("Regus Lite") with free coffee as an incentive and informal time-billing system.
Anyone who's worked for a large investment bank and has tried to book an office for a quick meeting will know this is true (especially if the meeting rooms operate as a "profit centre" and so you have be recharged the costs). It's amazing how much you can find out about the state of the IT dept of a large company just by hanging out in the nearest coffee shop - are they hiring or firing, are the staff excited or bitching, what new projects are they working on.... industrial espionage was rarely so cheap.
Similarly, airports are now in the business of selling multi-day car parking and short term entertainment for an hour or two.
I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered. - George Best
http://jayceecorder.blogspot.com
In my town, I am Starbucks direct competitor (as in the majority of the Sunday business they do is in the time period from when they open to fifteen minutes before I do), and while other parts of the country may have coffee priced excessively high (especially in light of low prices on the C market for the past couple years), from my perspective Starbucks is charging an awful lot for a product that is nowhere near as good as it could be (my average cost of green coffee is about three times what Starbucks says they pay, though in many cases they have more lossage from over-roasting). For a concrete example, a small chai at Starbucks costs more than a large chai at my establishment. Unadulterated coffee is likewise more expensive. Starbucks competitors charging Starbucks prices (or higher) are probably doing so only because they can.
If you don't like Starbucks, you could also try... a library. Or my personal favorite, the lobby of a hotel that has free wireless. Thank you, Courtyard by Marriot! When I was finishing a major project in 2003, I hung out daily in the Courtyard a few minutes from my office. No one who worked there cared (or seemed to notice), the Internet access was fast, and if someone needed me I could be at the office in five minutes, but I wasn't constant getting interupted. I paid them back by making sure we always put up contractors there vs. other hotels in the area.
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
I'm a Starbucks geek. (Yes, I think there is such a beast.) I go there almost daily. I bring people in to try new products. I have a card. I even read Howard Schultz's book. So, I was pretty excited when my wife and I visited Seattle about three years ago. We saw the original site, of course. We even visited the huge headquarters building. (Does anyone else find that Starbucks figurehead peering over the building just a little creepy?)
;-)
For those of you who haven't read Schultz's book, Starbucks and Peet's are linked in their history. Many folks say that it was really Alfred Peet who introduced Schultz to the darker, Full City roast that Starbucks finally used for their coffees.
Well, having read the book about the history, I wanted to see Peet's, too. There weren't any in New Orleans, where I lived at the time.
I visited one near the city center and I was immediately struck by the similarity in decor and layout between Peets and Starbucks. I mentioned this to the attendant.
It's true! Icy glares do send a chill down your spine.
I came to understand later the local rivalry between the companies that harkens all the way back to when Peet left Starbucks. Somehow Schultz didn't mention this. I can't believe it!
If Nalgene water bottles are outlawed, only outlaws will have Nalgene water bottles.
The Apple developer site has an interesting article on how Delicious Library's use of the Cocoa bindings framework.
If you really think about it.. there's quite a few software developers without an office.
The Mac community has some great shareware developers. Some work out of their own homes. No office, no staff. Just their own place.
Some collaborate online. Look at all the open source products now. Not all have their own office (like the Mozilla Foundation). Quite a few projects are 100% virtual.
I think this model will have even more of an impact in the next 10-15 years. It's not really necessary for someone who programs all day to have an office to themselves... it's wasteful.
It's perfectly acceptable for such an employee to work from home, or any other environment, and perhaps spend 1 day, or perhaps 2 afternoons a week in the office. You can then used shared work space and cut down on costs.
With the availability of high speed connections, VPN's for secure network access, VoIP providers providing cheap phone access....
the only thing is human interaction. And even that. Think about how often your actually "need". A few meetings a week. Now how many of those can't be done over the phone?
Really, only a much smaller sum of work needs to be done at the office.
Provided good management skills are used, to keep employees on target, and on time... there's nothing wrong with a virtual company.
In fact... it's much more efficient.
Don't forget the time you save people. If you work 1 day in the office a week, that's only 2 commutes (one each way). With an average commute time of a little under an hour (being generious). That's several hours a week that an employee can then use to either conduct work, or extra family time (or time at the strip club).
Why not hire the guy who lives in Kansas when the office is in NYC? If he's good, it's great. You can teleconfrence him in, and fly him in for a day or two every several weeks. He can work from home, and code just like the guys in the office. You don't need office space (which in a city like NYC, just a few square feed for a cubicle is expensive). Just pay his office phone, DSL/Cable line, and send him some hardware.
Wiki's, Bugzilla-like systems, Intranet Portals, Email, VoIP, they all make it much easier to do.
Virtual Companies will be playing more and more of a role in the future. Especially true for IT jobs. Since they are very easy to do remotely.
It's funny, because most people's reaction to our software when they first see it is, "Wow, how useful! Here's my credit card," but for some it is, "Wow, how useless... here's my credit card."
I don't actually want to argue with your point, although it's worth mentioning, as other people have, that you can print out your list of stuff and tuck it in a safety deposit box, so if you lose your collection to fire or theft it'll all be replaced exactly. Or you can print your collection and take the list to the video/book store and make sure you don't duplicate items. Or you can track your loans and make sure you don't lose items.
Or you can use the smart recommendations and find items you never knew you'd like, and buy with more confidence that you aren't wasting money. Or you can sell items you're no longer using in just a couple clicks, and make some extra money AND tidy up your life.
All of these things potentially make and/or save you money.
But, you may not want to do any of that. What I'd like to point out is, our real goal in writing software is to make you smile.
Did we succeed at that? Because, for instance, "The Incredibles" probably didn't make you better, stronger, faster (etc), but I'm betting you don't regret the $9 you spent on it. And if every company's goal was to make products that made people smile, I don't think the world would be a bad place at all.
I back that statement completely. I used to freelance, where most of the work was done at home. The first 4 weeks was fun, I got to work in my underwear, and messy hair. The next 2 weeks were a bit depressing, and the weeks after that were just down right misserable. The next freelance job I took required me to be in the client's office like other employees, in a suit. The first 4 weeks were GREAT! I got up, took a shower, dressed up, and was out the door. Things wound down a bit, naturally, but it was still much better than working all day at home. When you work EVERY DAY at home, I find it almost impossible to wind down after work, and even harder to make a distinction between work/private time.
I no longer freelance, but if I ever do it again, I'll rent an office. Maybe not a REAL office, perhaps just a studio apartment setup as an office. Either way, I MUST get out of the house, and into a work environment. Period.
I highly esteem those that have the strong will power to be able to be productive AND have fun working at home.
Eight hours at the coffee shop, on average. I'm usually there every day. I also work from home, and from restaurants; my laptop goes with me everywhere. I'm the life of the party, yes sir. Mike and I pretty much are always working on our company -- even when we're watching movies, we'll be thinking of ways to solve the problems we're hitting. Part of the idea here is that you don't have to lock your company in a building and turn a key and say goodnight to it every night. We've incorporated it into almost all of our normal lives. That, for me, is the core point of the 'coffee shop as office' meme.
Can anybody give a brief compare and contrast between Delicious Library and Readerware? They sound very similar, perhaps DL is pretty much the same with a much better UI?
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
Our whole company is predicated on doing things differently, so when we're meeting with clients it's sort of our badge of courage to tell them to meet us at the Zoka.
I don't think it's ruffled anyone's feathers. We've done press interviews and met insurance guys and interviewed employees. Everyone seems to feel very at home. I guess it's not much different from meeting a client when you're on the road.
[The hilarious part is that our Zoka happens to be RIGHT next door to The Omni Group. I mean, literally the next building over. So, for people I've done business with before, it's like, "Uh, remember where I used to be? Well..."]
I didn't already own a computer because (a) my previous employer provided me with one which I was kind of obliged to return when I handed in my resignation, and (b) I'm not some kind of fetishist geek who likes to fill his home with hardware so he can get home from work and jack off whilst downloading the latest AC kernel patches.
Even now, I'm writing this on a 5-year old Gateway P-500 laptop with 128MB RAM, running Windows '98. Ya know why? Because all I use it for is the odd email/surfing session and I have another HD loaded with Red Hat for when I want to do something that Windows can't do.
If you were ever lucky enough to encounter someone who was stupid enough to involve you in a start-up, you'd realise that at the beginning of a start-up, you have nothing except the founders, the money and the idea. You have to find an office, you have to source office IT equipment, furniture, a phone system, etc. Unless, that is, you're stupid and extravagant enough to go to some serviced offices rip-off joint and blow your investors' cash on some plush joint which you equip with the latest and most up-to-date PCs which you then use for nothing more than email and writing Word documents.
I used easyEverything for about a fortnight, until my colleagues had found us an office, by which time I had everything lined up and only had to press the "Submit" button to order the office PCs, network equipment and printer, call in the cabling guys, get the lines installed and order an Ascom small-office PBX system.
Get back in your fuckin' box and don't dare express an opinion in my presence again. And just as a fuckin' coup de grace:
I'm not Case, you fuckwit. I was hired by a company, not a computer.How the fuck do people like you manage to earn enough money to afford an Internet connection? I guess you're either on welfare or work into the telco infustry.
Jack