What's the real lowdown in a startup, what do we do to procrastinate, what do we argue about, what causes us to give hi 5's?
Procrastination is a terrible beast, and yes it happens in a startup the same it does anywhere else in life. Procrastination is like masturbation. It's great whilst you're doing it, but in the end, you're just f*^#ing yourself. For us procrastination isn't so much about playing Halo (most often Rockband), but it's a lack of focus. We've got an ideas bucket that is growing faster than we can implement, and that's what causes the real distraction. What do we do today, and what can we put off till tomorrow. We love ideas, comments, feedback, and please feel free to continue dropping them at either sayhi@blank-label.com or in the 'provide feedback' button on our homepage.
We've definitely had a couple of interesting debates internally this week. An interesting one was about our foxy ladies on our 'online men's dress shirt design store', my favorite one is the first one on the initial load. We've had female friends, users and customers comment, most often negatively about them. We were concerned, because although we're perfectly okay with offending people who we disagree with, we didn't want to be over-the-top chauvinistic a-holes. We finally decided to leave them, because although women have bought custom men's dress shirts for their boyfriends and husbands, we know ultimately we're serving guys, and not that all guys are sex crazed or somewhat turned on by sketches of lewd women, it just feels right to have provocative looks pulling at you.
So what gets us excited enough to generate mountain-shattering hi-5's? We're still early stage enough to get really excited about individual sales. I love speaking to customers. People say you never forget your first time. I'm sure I won't forget our first hundred. People who believe in startups are freaking crazy, and at the same time, their our heroes. It's scary to think that we're getting better at what we do everyday, so practically, we'll never be this bad if we always continue getting better, yet on a daily basis, people are still ordering from us. These people are our true innovators, they know what it's like to be different, to be individual, and for that, we love them for it.
Thanks for the support.
-Fan Bi | Blank Label | Co-Creation Blog