Wake Your Entrepreneurial Spirit at a Startup

I believe everyone, at the very least, has thought about building an awesome product and making a ton of cash by selling it to the masses. It's this ambitious dream that drives us to come up with great ideas and take huge risks trying to share them with the world. This is the entrepreneurial spirit, and everyone has it!

So, why isn't every single person going out and solving tough problems or improving existing solutions? Why aren't we all trying to disrupt industries or compete with huge monopolistic corporations?

There are many reasons people refuse to take action. I've heard and used many excuses to avoid launching my own startup. It's the overwhelming fear of failure that deters most of us from risking it all and evolving our ideas into top-notch products. Instead, we put our entrepreneurial spirit to rest and let our great ideas sit and mold.

Surround Yourself with Inspiration

I've recently found that one of the best ways to (re)awaken your entrepreneurial spirit is to get out and join a startup. There are many benefits to working at a startup over a big company, but the biggest advantage for me so far is the ability to feed my entrepreneurial spirit each and every day. The founder at my company is very accessible, actively involved, and deeply passionate about the product she has created. Our team is small and our day-to-day operations are very transparent. Of course, I spend most of my time in code land, but I've been exposed to several parts of the business and learned much about what it takes to run a company (even if it's tiny).

So, why not work closely with the type of people you aspire to become? After all, they were just as scared as you were at one point! Sure, it's riskier and probably pays less than the Amazons and Googles, but if you have even the slightest interest in starting your own company, a startup is the best environment to build confidence and bring you miles closer to launching your own company.

Guidelines for doing Work at Coffee Shops

Imagine this: you walk into a coffee (or tea) shop and purchase your favorite beverage. Maybe you're a little hungry, so you pick up a small sandwich or salad. Now, you look around for a place to sit. Maybe it's the comfortable leather chair or the rustic table by the window. Either way, you are ready to enjoy the products you've just purchased.

Instead, you find that all the seats are taken up by plaid-wearing hipsters with huge Sennheiser headphones on, Apple MacBooks propped open, and belongings scattered all over the table. Whether it be students studying or startup developers developing, they have completely prevented you from sitting and enjoying your beverage.

The Coffee Shop is NOT your Office

People who don't understand this are annoying. The baristas aren't there to serve as your butler for the day while you work on pushing out the latest feature for CraptasticStartupProductNobodyUses.com. If you're a student, just because you have five classes that each require 5-inch thick, overpriced textbooks doesn't mean you are entitled to take up an entire table to lay each one out to review the crap you're going to forget next week anyway. The coffee shop is primarily there to sell coffee and provide a comfortable environment to enjoy that coffee.

Coffee Shop Commandments

As someone who has the freedom to work from anywhere, I will sometimes take up space at my favorite tea joint and write some code for an extended period of time. Before I do, I try to remember these simple guidelines:

1. Thou shall not occupy more than a single space.
2. Thou shall not complain about anything subjective in the environment. If thou does not like the environment provided, thou can get the fuck out.
3. Thou shall not occupy space unless thou purchases something every 30-40 minutes. Thou is and always will be nothing but a customer to the venue and its employees.

Yes, I've broken these guidelines myself in the past and I understand there may be exceptions to them in different situations. But, most of the time, adhering to them will prevent you from being a complete douchebag.