We work hard. With no revenue currently coming in, only money flowing out as we pay the rent on our office, appartment / mortages, invoices from designers, lawyers, accountants, etc., we all know that we have to put in the long hours until we launch and get to financial sustainability. And long hours means long hours. Almost seven days a week type of long hours.
But somehow it’s actually not that bad. Actually, mostly we feel really guilty, like startup life should be more of a hardship. With Montreal in the thralls of the first day of spring, here’s a few things that make us happy.
1) Our office is in the Plateau – one of the best places in Canada (and by extension, the rest of the world). We found ourselves a great office with twelve-foot ceilings and ten-foot windows on the first floor of a wonderful building with seperate rooms for coding and bizdev. It’s within a 10 minute walking for Yannick, Daniel and Nicolas, and it’s a three-metro stop ride, 25-min walk, and nine-minute bike ride for me.
2) We eat great lunches. I’m in charge of making some kind of salad most days and we get amazing bread from Mr. Pinchot. French cheeses, spicy grilled eggplants, lebanese cured meats, flaky australian pies (made by my friend Don), you get the picture. And we almost always eat together.
3) Yannick brews amazing beer. Now we’re not allowed to drink it at the office, because that would be illegal (because homebrewed beers are technically only permitted to be consumed at home). But he tells us about it in great detail and it is as if we were actually tasting these divine concoctions with our lunches – APAs, chocolate stouts, spruce beers, IPAs, belgian wheats, etc. Soon he’s going to tell us all about a blood-orange hefeweizen he’s making.
But mostly, the reason’s we’re so happy these days is that we’re getting to work the way we want to work, on the stuff that we want to work on. We’re working for ourselves and everyone is able to contribute in the way that suits them best (we put together a really great team). For me that means a big part of my job is to hang out with people in non-profits and to understand what their problems are. Amazing.
[...] grabbing breads, cheeses and varied fares from around the neighbourhood and Mike will often prepare a salad for everyone. Nothing spectacularly innovative but a great way to build morale and take a break in the day. The [...]