Disruption: Hacking Startup Travel

I am currently in the midst of my once a quarter travelling-startup-CEO mega trip. This trip is by far the longest in a while and its got me thinking about the ways we've architected Upverter to reduce our aggregate disruption at the expense of massive disruption to my life.

Back Story

A really long time ago we decided the best place in the whole world for us to build Upverter was in Toronto. We relocated the company for the 3rd time, found a space, set roots, and hired a team. It was probably the single best decision we ever made.

But

• Toronto isn't the at the center of the startup universe.
• Toronto isn't at the center of our customer's universe.
• And Toronto isn't at the center of our personal networks.

So why pick Toronto then? Because we aren't a flashy consumer web social coupon startup, we aren't yet well positioned to fight a talent war, and we are building a giant and extremely technical product that needs a ton of R&D spend. Toronto has a surplus of amazing talent, magical employee retention, and the government helps pay about 60% of our R&D spend.

Long story short Toronto is amazing at satisfying the needs that our startup has, with the painful limitation that our financing, market, and support network are all somewhere else.

So I travel.

Lean

We have worked very hard to stay lean over the past two years at Upverter - and this leanness extends whole-scale to my approach towards business travel. I try almost religiously to avoid hotels, couch surf, share meals, eat at Safeway, beg, borrow and steal. There are a lot of side-perks of these hacks, but primarily they simply cut down on spending.

And in an almost circular way it all goes back to disruption - the lower the cost of my trips, the less disruptive they are to the rest of the company.

I'm not sure if I'd feel any differently about the disruption if I travelled in "style", but it doesn't really matter. It would be the wrong optimization at our company's stage unless it mitigated the effects almost entirely.

Math

I firmly believe in the following formulae:

Travel = Disruption

▲Disruption ≈ ▼Productivity

Grit > Disruption (for sufficiently small disruptions)

Disruption ≈ Fatigue (for sufficiently large or frequent disruptions)

Hacks

So what does it all mean? These are my hacks - and the things we've done at Upverter to try and build the absolute least disrupted company we can - despite the limitations of our geography.

First, avoid travel if at all possible. Skype works great. It's impossible to reduce travel to zero - but any travel you can avoid translates almost directly into increased productivity.

Second, when travel/disruption is unavoidable disrupt the grittiest person. Someone should be the traveller. They should be the least susceptible to the disruption travel causes. It would also be great if they were the CEO or face of the company.

Third, disrupt a single person. There is a big difference between everyone travelling a little bit and suffering a little bit of disruption, and one person being thrown fully under the bus, so that everyone else can operate at peak productivity.

Fourth, when the disruption is going to be large scale, or the travel extended, expect massive fatigue. Build a schedule that gets gentler as the trip goes on. Book the nicest couch late in the trip, when you're going to need it, not on the first night.

Lastly, friends and family seem to help reduce the effects of the fatigue. If you don't have any friends in the city you're travelling to - make some. Go out for dinner with real people. Use GrubTonight or any other service to find a dinner with real people. Don't hide in your airbnb room alone. If you do it right it won't even cost any more money.

Edit: See here for some great hacks and details I glossed over.

Good Luck

If you have end up living the life of the travelling CEO, running a startup that puts you on a plane, or regularly disrupted in a similar way, you have my respects. And if you've got any hacks I've missed please add them in the comments.