Last year, a friend of mine working on environmentally aware chocolate, Sweetriot, invited me to visit them at their offices. She says, “Come on over to the Starbucks on 1st and 54th where we have our offices.”
“Offices? Starbucks?” I thought, “this is peculiar!”
I got up there to find that their whole complement of 4 employees (1 CEO/founder, 3 interns) had been staking out a corner at this Starbucks for months now.

How funny to see them conducting marketing surveys with people in one corner, while others were checking email and planning at another table, and all of them had DHL envelopes propped up against their laptops because one of them had called DHL to pickup a package at this Starbucks. I’m sure the DHL guy probably did a doubletake when he showed up!
Office Away From Home
Also last year, I met up with some guys over at Blinkx and they recounted to me on how, in their travels around the U.S., that Starbucks has become their office away from home of choice. They just open up their laptops, grab a latte, set their mobile phones on the table and start working. All their calls are routed to their mobile phones so nobody even knows they aren’t in the building. Messenger is up and running as well as emails – their virtual office is complete and great coffee and eats are just a step away.
As I work on David Shen Ventures, LLC thing, I find that cafes have become my virtual office. I joke that I am in some coffee shops so much that I should post office hours on the door, ie. Dave Shen at Coupa Cafe between 1pm and 4pm – sign up for time here.
It’s actually pretty nice. There is WIFI, good ambiance, and a never ending stream of people. The best coffee shops don’t have a lot of ambient noise and just have a low level of music playing in the background. Most annoying is the shriek of the espresso machine milk frother as they heat up milk for the drinks.
But I find that being not in the same place, like an office, sparks a lot of creativity and I get a lot done by not being in the same place all the time.
It’s also a helluva lot cheaper than having a real office. Someday perhaps (sigh)….
Privacy is sometimes a bother. Trying to have a conference call or meeting about confidential stuff is tough, whether VC financing terms or new top secret product plans.
Passing the Social Test
Occasionally I bump into people I know especially in places such as Palo Alto. Socially, it’s been great – when working as a one-man show, you don’t have a big company campus to go to and interact with people. After seeing one person that I’m working for now, he remarked to me that I had passed the Guy Kawasaki’s Stanford Mall test:
How to determine whether or not you should work with a given VC – If you see your VC across the plaza in the Stanford Shopping Mall, you have three choices.
1. Go over and say hello.
2. Say hello if he or she notices you.
3. Avoid him or her at all costs.
Kawasaki recommends to only work with a VC that you would choose option 1 for.
It’s nice to know that this applies to cafes as well…! Well, I’m not really a VC either….
Postscript
Hanging out in cafes means you probably are drinking way too much coffee. I started getting into 4-5 cups a day. Way too much and ruins my pearly white smile. Next drink of choice: Pelligrino or equivalent with lemon or lime, or Green Tea sweetened, either cold or hot.
By the way, free WIFI sucks unless the cafe is providing it. I bought a Verizon Broadband card in case the cafe doesn’t have WIFI and that works great.
Up and coming – launch Meetro and maybe you’ll meet someone new…!