One difference between working for a big company and at your own startup is the direction in which resources flow. Employees pinch from a big company but donate to a startup. In a corporate environment, you probably would not feel guilty printing a personal document in the office. At your startup, you might be bringing snacks from home to feed your team.
We might explain it away as a function of how much financial damage your actions create relative to the budget. I’d rather frame it as how much you feel you are spending your own money versus spending other people’s money.
But not all startups are cash-poor. Startups can generally be split into two camps: venture-backed (sells equity to receive funding from institutional investors) versus bootstrapped (keeps costs low and reinvests profits). The exaggerated stereotype is that startups with institutional funding (other people’s money) splurge on perks from designer furniture to extravagant pantries while the self-funding startups are perpetually on a “frugal mode."
The truth is more nuanced. Regardless of whose money you’re spending, someone has to justify those dollars draining into the Nespresso capsules. No one wants to be bankrolling the next tech-Titanic.
But no thanks to tech companies like Google and Facebook, who wield stories about their ridiculous pantries as recruiting weapons (how many different types of dairy-free milk does your pantry have?), tech startups are also under pressure to also stock up. There are even startups focused on managing pantries.
So is it Google-does-it-so-it-must-be-right?
When I had the chance to meet Royston Tay, the CEO of Zopim, one of the most successful tech startups to emerge from Singapore (and bootstrapped - to boot), I asked for his opinion on pantries. His reply included the brilliant line of “How much can each employee eat?”
I readily understand the benefits - the conversations around the ‘water cooler’, the productivity boosts from the caffeine fix, sugar rush and time saved from queuing at Starbucks, not to mention being motivated and happier and delivering more of those emotions to users. I guess I just never did the calculations of the costs. And I imagine you don’t need cold-pressed juices, chia-seed flecked kale chips and vegan chilli-chocolate chip cookies. 16 mini-bags of Want Want Senbei costs only $2.05 on RedMart.
Footnotes:
1) I met Royston in July 2014. I need to get my post out a little faster.
2) I assume Royston’s comment was not a discriminatory statement against people who are always hungry (that’s me).
3) Not all big companies spend on pantries. I worked at Singapore Airlines, where the luxury on board your flights does not translate to fancy offices. The company believes spending heartily on customers (rather than employees) helps it stay profitable. I have also visited startups dethroning Google.
Image by Adam Foster (paperpariah) on Flickr.