Have you ever met Mr. Murphy (murphy's law)? During all the years when I worked for big companies I always appreciated the support desk, I really did. However, my appreciation even increased since my work in our startup.
Looking back (and we have just started)…
• During the first two weeks my printer died. It was only possible to print out one page at the time. Printout a 10-page document would mean 10 times one page. (I asked myself if this is on purpose by the supplier and some kind of “printer driver feature” to sell you a new printer. The older IT-generation of you may remember the time when you had to put back the counter in the driver software and the printer worked again. However, time is money and as startup you don’t have money and no time). A new printer was needed…
• New printer installed… but the printout was in bad quality and somehow I was not able to print out using customized borders in documents. I nearly got mad. I searched the internet and I found a post where somebody described the same behavior and said it was solved after he did some software upgrade on the printer. It sounded strange to me, but this person was right. All fixed and quality is great!
• After two weeks the new, great printer stopped working. No single light… this time it was the extension cable (first time in my life I experienced that an extension cable can stop working… and you need to realize that it is the cable and not the new printer). And by the way… finally having a working printer don’t forget to have paper in the store.
I could share several other stories like… did you know that opening the same document using one-drive and SharePoint could create issues in regards autosave-function? I can recommend several websites where you can read about it (and thankfully also how to fix it via manual configuration)…
All of that happened in that very short time we started with our startup. When I worked in those big companies I just had to pick my phone and to call the support desk. Beside them fixing my “problems”, there was this nice and friendly voice – with a lot of empathy and telling me that I am the poorest person on earth…
Time has changed:
• I need to fix it. There is nobody else.
• I need to find the problem, get the knowledge and solve it.
• …and forget about “That’s murphy… life is unfair…”.
As a startup you are your own support center. Don't underestimate this function!
In case you are not yet familiar with “victim/author mode”, that’s probably the perfect moment. In a startup you cannot blame others. You just don’t have that luxury. You need to solve things – together – fast – and keep smiling!
