It's a Friday. July 3. The official holiday is tomorrow. Kendall square is practically empty; just a few straggler tourists looking for the Duck boats, MIT PHD/SDM students wolfing down lunch, and probably about 10-20% of the normal Kendall SQ.- located workforce is around. The Cambridge Innovation Center, where the Buzzient offices are located, has locked doors and relatively empty halls. My cofounder and I can actually get an elevator within a minute of hitting the button.
The first thing that popped into my mind was "THIS is the difference between Silicon Valley and Boston". Like it or not, but in a bunch of places in the Valley, this would seem like a normal workday, not as if the neutron bomb hit. I've been in offices on a major holiday where half the management team has shown up, to "get caught up on email, paperwork, whatever low-value stuff I can do on a holiday so I can optimize high-value stuff during the workweek".
When I lived in South of Market and launched Eba Systems from my basement, I would often wander out in the streets on holidays not even knowing what day it was, let alone think of taking it off. We're in the supposed "epicenter" of Boston innovation and it's pretty vacant. Oh, wait, the CEO of LiquidBits is here. Hell, he's ALWAYS here; nights, weekends, you name it. Old school entrepreneurship at its best.
I'm all for work/life balance; heck I rowed an extra few miles today and came in late. However, I still came in. Seems like in trying to catch up to the Valley, a lot of local folks want to make sure they don't impinge on their Nantucket beach house time.
I'd love to be at the beach myself; in fact there are numerous striped bass and bluefish that are missing a shot at one of my elegantly (I wish) lofted flies, and my unique line-stripping style that's far too influenced by having watched so many bass fishing shows as a child (are you supposed to say "Booyah! as a fly fisherman?) . Alas, not to be. Innovation (smirk) calls...
So, my cofounder and I pound away at all the "other stuff" that needs to get done in a startup; accounting, company blog posts, etc. Wish we weren't so lonely here in the epicenter...
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