If I had my own company…

I guess almost everyone who works for a startup has already had this thought.

I mean, I *have* my own company, but this is just a one-man-show as an Interim Manager and Consultant.

Why do we have thoughts like this? First, because it’s quite easy to stand outside and watch other people doing something. It’s easy to know better as long as you’re not involved.

And second, my guess is that 90% of the people working in startups are more or less entrepreneurs – at least with their heart.

So I continued this mind play this evening and wrote it down. Since I’m kind of a drama queen sometimes, I couldn’t leave it with a simple text. No, I had to create a Manifesto.

Here it is:

> Little Geek Manifesto

Products deserve Love!

If we put all our love, passion and energy into our product, people outside will love our product as well. We want to be energized while creating a product and we want to energize others.

Donʻt confuse Customers with Handbags

You can do whatever you want with your handbag: Smashing it on the floor, filling incredible amounts of useless stuff into it, taking anything you want out, not talking to it. Your handbag wonʻt appreciate this – but will still accompany you anywhere. Customers wonʻt! So we hear our customers. We work closely together and talk with them before we put something in or try to get something out. And, no, we wonʻt smash them on the floor. Promised.

Company == People

People who work for us are part of our company. Success is not imaginable without them. So they are part of our success. In order to make this real, we share 10% of our company with our employees. If we will get some money out of the company, they will as well.

Mind creates Environment – Environment creates Mind

We want to be playful, creative and rich of energy. So our environment reflects this attitude in every single aspect – even with restricted resources we can create a wonderful atmosphere where people love to spend time.

We follow Agile Manifesto Value #1

Indeed, we value individuals and interactions over processes and tools. People have hearts and brilliant minds. So theyʻre nicer to talk to than to a process (doesnʻt mean you are forbidden to use a tool, though :-))

No Copycats.

Yes, we did it. But we want to create and build our own stuff. Of course, we are also inspired by already existing ideas. But we donʻt wanna stupidly just copy things. We believe in creativity and evolution, so we always either start with our own ideas and then compare and evolve them influenced by others, or we find something interesting somewhere else, but then we work hard on doing it differently.

Transparency rocks!

No secrets about numbers, processes and products. We neither keep it secret from our employees, nor from the market. We love being transparent, because then we can spend our energy on creating great stuff instead of spending it with hiding information our competitors already know anyway.

Sharing is Happiness, not evil

We use open source technology every day. Our business is based on that. We are inspired by talking to other people and are inspired by other ideas. So we want to give something back to the community by sharing our ideas, experiences and products.

Life is too short to write Quick&Dirty Code

We are playful – but we take the tech business seriously. We did „quick&dirty“ too often in our past lives, and we are sick of it! We are conviced that doing things right will pay off in future. We want to support rock.solid.technology and encourage people to do that.

There is Life after IE6

Yes, we are aware of the fact that there are people outside still surfing the web with IE6. And no, we donʻt support it. We deeply believe in technologies which drive us forward and make our lives better. IE6 is not part of that, sorry. www.getfirefox.com :-)

< Amen!