This green RAV4 was the best meeting room I ever had.
When we started Tanda, us four founders all lived together. We had just finished university, and it was a great, cheap deal to all live in the same place. That cheap-just-for-now arrangement ended up lasting 5 years.
By living together, we could all drive to and from the office together. During the drives, as we all crammed into the RAV4, we’d share success stories, laugh about funny things that happened in the day, and talk through issues that were hard to resolve - issues within the business, or issues between the four of us.
While we tried very hard to present a united front to the rest of our team, and tried to disagree and commit, it was rare that we all totally agreed on something of any importance. When you have a young company, making decisions quickly is paramount. A good way to force yourselves to make decisions is to have lots of 1 on 1 time. Eventually it gets too awkward not to talk about the difficult, uncertain, complex thing that nobody agrees on. The tension is healthy, but it’s human nature to try to avoid it.
For us, these conversations would start in the car, 4 afternoons a week (Friday nights were for drinking). Often they would continue from the car to the garage, and into the house. Eventually they would end either because we reached a resolution or because the girlfriends got annoyed. But they’d always start in the car.
Arguing in-person matters
At KEEN Strategies we talk about investing in “mates first, business partners second”. The underlying trust that comes from being friends for a long time will make your arguments more heated, but it will also carry you through the difficult times. Having in-person arguments will strengthen this trust, and lead you to better decisions than anything you can decide over a call or chat.
I see plenty of young companies today started by founders that have never met in real life, that want to work from home in different parts of the country, and that see hanging out in person as a cute annual ritual.
I think every young company should have an office. It means you all work from the same place, so you can talk through difficult issues quickly. And that place of work isn’t also your home, which is good for your mental state. Not everyone wants to do this, but what are you willing to sacrifice to make your company succeed? You can succeed without an office, but if you do it’s despite this headwind, not because of it.