The “Office Dog” in the Era of Zoom

A startup totem in this new age

We think and write about a considerable variety of serious subjects at Prime Movers Lab — Nuclear Fusion, Batteries, the Future of Energy and a lot of mental and emotional state mastery topics.

But it is Friday before a holiday weekend… (I know, I had to look that up too! What are days of the week anymore?!)… And I have been reflecting on the future of the Office Dog in this era of zoom. At StartX, Stanford University’s vibrant entrepreneur community, I spent five years surrounded not only by elite startup founders but also by a glorious multitude of office pets.

The office dog (and occasional extroverted cat) is an important totem in the world of startups and beyond. For those of us in the entrepreneurial and investing world our headspace can often be preoccupied with the Future; but the Office Dog brings us back to the Now.

In this era of increased digital interaction, seeing a cat tail float across the bottom of someone’s meeting screen or dog nuzzle her human for more scratches is a welcome reminder of our shared humanity and of why the Office Dog is such a unifier.

This collective working from home experiment brought on by covid will no doubt change many of our work habits more permanently. It has accelerated the acceptance of digital meetings and virtual events. But in-person or via zoom I strongly believe our shared love of the Office Dog will persist (albeit in new formats)!

My real message here is: there are a lot of things that unite people. The Office Dog is just one reminder of that.

Enjoy your Memorial Day Weekend!

Prime Movers Lab invests in breakthrough scientific startups founded by Prime Movers, the inventors who transform billions of lives. We invest in seed-stage companies reinventing energy, transportation, infrastructure, manufacturing, human augmentation and computing

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