The Snepo Blahg

Why start a business, or why work at a start up? The pay isn’t so good, the offices can be bit cramped (unless you work at Snepo), the prestige isn’t exactly going to get you an interview on The Daily Show. So without motivators like money, fame, and prestige what makes us go?

Accomplishment

This is the king. The beautiful conceit that fuels the fire of so many start ups, that we can create something to change the world. Even if there’s not a noticeable change in the planet, at least there’s the singular feeling of exhilaration that comes from creating something with quality.

The founders, the first employees, the partners—None of us would be anywhere near the fire if it weren’t for the chance to say that we did something. We made something. That’s hot shit. It’s what keeps smart people awake at night, spinning ideas around in their head and hangin’ for the whole sleep thing to be over with so they can get up in the morning and make stuff happen. Those Captain-Of-Industry-Motherfuckers can’t get away from the fact that they’re just junkies for that rush that comes from accomplishing something.

That drive is fantastic but it burns out after a bit. It takes a long time to notice it’s happening, too. It’s all too easy to charge and charge even when the wheels start to spin. Here’s an experiment for you: Take a whole room full of ambitious, motivated people and work ‘em until their wheels start spinning and they aren’t getting anything done. Now wait for the knife fights. We tend to sow the seeds of our own destruction, that’s poetic and all but it’s hardly any way to run a business.

So what to do? We’re motivated by accomplishment but what else? If we are going to stave off the knife fights we have to find some way to catch traction.

Fucking Off

Call it whatever you want, “Team Building”, “Morale Boosting”, “Getting Drunk at The Pub”—It all comes down to understanding and accepting that as human beings our sense of well-being comes from more than one place. At Snepo we make it a point to have at least one Fuck Off day per month. Over the last few months we’ve done things like:

• Ten Pin Bowling (a much bigger novelty here in Australia than it is in the States)
• Hit the pubs at 7:00AM for Arse’s birthday. We made it most of the day and then had a party back at the office.
• Go-Karting. Arse’s father is a gear-head and we rented the track for a day with some super charged go-karts o’ death.

I consider all of those to be official Snepo Business. None of us got involved in this thing to be running on a treadmill until we burn out. A good solid day of tearing things up and screwing around is absolutely essential to keeping that accomplishment drive greased up and ready.

A bit of competition is good for diffusing the knife-fighting urge we talked about earlier as well. I’d much rather race my buddy around a track, lose control, and slam into a tire barricade at 60/kph than argue over the colour of a gradient or what sort of test framework to use. It’s just a bit more humane.

Leisure is Necessary

There’s been a lot made of the 40 hour week maxim. If you work any more than eight hours in a day then you’re probably just adding bugs. Our experience at Snepo has found this to be painfully true. It’s a hard one to stick by but it’s paid off in spades. We’ve decided to take things further though. We have a policy that roughly a quarter of our “work” time should be spent doing what we want.

Seriously. Writing a book, painting, building robots, hacking a new programming language. Something, anything to tap into that hot juicy Accomplishment Vibe and give it a little bit of variety.

What about money? Holy shit! You’ll never be able to pull it off, you couldn’t possibly get anything done that way!

Just watch us. We’ve been in business for about 10 months now and we’re steadily growing. We’ve got one employee, and enough consulting work to keep us busy. We’re watching the sales of our first product grow and it’s delightful. Moreover, we’re wicked productive because we don’t succumb to the Ambition Treadmill and burn ourselves out just for the sake of it.