How The Early Days Define You

The non-work habits can have the power to define your company and its journey.

Some days ago I met with a friend of mine who is currently in the early stages of their startup. I asked him about the last couple of months. Their team had spent it in Europe because he and his co-founder were going through the immigration process. During this time the product was still in its early stages and making good incremental progress and I wondered how they achieved it as a fairly new team.

Their team is small so when the co-founders had to go back to Europe they invited their developer (and only other team member) to come with them. The next couple of months he told me they worked hard on the product, traveled Europe, but most importantly got to know each other. Not the way you know what music someone likes. The way you know exactly how someone takes their coffee, that they have a scar on their eyebrow from am embarrassing fall, and that when in a tough situation they are who you want by your side. The progress they made during this time was good. It was focused, timely, and efficient.

As we kept talking their company’s growth came up. They were looking to make a few hires. I cautioned him about growth and to be careful while hiring. This went on for a while and then he said, “We’re thinking of going to Europe for some time every year to bond. We’ll have to make sure we can keep that up while growing.” I couldn’t stop thinking about this. Their decision to maintain this early habit will take a great part in defining their company. Every time they’re hiring the can ask themselves the question “Is this somebody we want to take to Europe?”