A day in the life of a start up

The setting: a small, but spacious enough, modern co-space in Rivonia, close enough to the boss’s house that he doesn’t know what traffic is anymore.

The people: three men, one woman. A colourful foursome comprised of vastly different personalities who spend most of their spare time roasting one another. Steven, the CEO, self-proclaimed legendary road and trail runner and world’s most horrific joke-teller. Also, the powerhouse behind Quick Consols, who breathes, eats and sleeps all that is Quick Consols. Bright, salesperson extraordinaire, the big thinker, our idea generator. Aran, brainchild and developer who has single-handedly built the Quick Consols product and successfully turned down 99.9% of Steven and Bright’s insanely impossible (read: strange) development requests (“guys, let’s have a unique jingle that plays whenever anyone logs into the system”). Calli, the glue of the team who runs with the marketing and ensures that everyone is eating properly and goes home when they are sick. This is Quick Consols.

A typical day at Quick Consols does not exist. That is the chaotic truth about a start-up, especially in the tech space. Each day is uniquely different, dependent on bugs in the product, meetings, requests from customers, and, quite frankly, the mood in the office.

A start-up environment is not for everyone. If you crave the consistency, security and stability of a large corporate organisation, then it’s safe to say that you are probably not going to love working at a start-up.

Prepare yourself to wear every hat. To work until the work is finished, and then some more, even if that means having dinner at your laptop at the boss’s solar-powered house during load shedding. To be constantly thrown into the deep end. To be pushed to your limits every single day to the point that you start to question your sanity. But, prepare yourself, too, for personal growth beyond anything you imagined, a sense of accomplishment when you don’t sink in the deep end but rather to take to the water like a pro. Prepare yourself for the celebration of every single new customer, no matter how big or small. For the camaraderie between yourself and your three colleagues as you become more like a family. For the pride of knowing that you are contributing to something great, that you are selling a solution that works as promised and delivering a service that is above and beyond anything that your customers have experienced.

THAT is the beauty of a start-up.