Stepping Up in a Startup

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Startups in their early days can be quite small. Just a handful of people wearing multiple hats, trying to reach a goal. That was the case in one startup I worked for very early in my career in business and technology. I had been hired to be customer service, but quickly found myself in the role of web producer. I was preparing and uploading content for the users, which was more complex that it sounds given the various formats that were delivered to me, and I was reporting bugs. Oddly enough, something we didn't have even post launch were "offline temporarily" and 404 pages, but no one on the team had time to create them. To be clear, as customer service, this shouldn't have been my responsibility. 

The CEO noticed this gap, with the missing error pages, and pointed out that visitors hitting missing pages would encounter a confusing dead end. The urgency was clear, that these pages needed to be addressed immediately to maintain credibility and ensure a smooth experience for anyone visiting the site. Surprisingly, the CEO turned to me of all people, and asked if I could create the missing page files. I immediately agreed, since I had taught myself html around that time. I focused on keeping the pages simple, informative, and consistent with the site's branding. After designing them, I tested the pages locally to ensure they displayed correctly, obtained CEO signoff (remember, it was a small organization), and then passed them along to be uploaded to the server. 

The result was, of course, that people would no longer find themselves in dead ends on our site with no orientation, and when the site was offline for an update there would be something to reassure the end user that we were coming back. What I learned from this was the power of stepping up and answering the call. Though I had taught myself html, as I mentioned above, I was still fairly new to it and certainly had never created something for "prime time" with it. Also reinforced for me was the attitude of willingness to step outside strict role boundaries. In a startup it's hard to say that "it's not in my job description," when everyone is being called on to give their very best and stretch where necessary. This is a mindset I have tried to maintain over the years, even as my career became more specialized and I worked in larger organizations.

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