Starting from a cafe (Moscow time)

(contains a useful Google map)

In this post I will try to highlight a topic that is quite relevant for a startup at the beginning of the journey - “where to work”, based on the sensations of my own skin.

Prologue

In the middle of June, I sent the “office” position away and together with my friend, the technologist, sat down at the long overdue idea of ​​a startup (we will soon boast of the results in a separate post).
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Knowing that a smart startup should spend money only on strategic assets, we immediately abandoned the idea of ​​the office. Working from home is also far from the most interesting option, you need to allocate working space and calm down the household, otherwise productivity will be so-so.

Therefore, we pretended to be students in Silicon Valley and decided to break the code and interfaces from the cafes. That's what happened.


Progress is an amazing thing. Once the computer was the size of an office. Now the office is inside it. Our whole company is just two people and two Macbooks. But this doesn’t prevent us from making a web project for the English-speaking market. With the exception of a small detail - without a chair and outlet, it turns out badly. :)

Places

The Internet project, especially at the start, requires working with immersion for several hours in a row, therefore only self-service coffee shops (where waiters will not look at you) were considered as suitable places. In Moscow, three networks operating on this principle:

• Coffee bean
• Costa Coffee
• Starbucks

In sum, they provide a fairly large number of options, but after cutting off points on the periphery of the city, in business centers, etc. there are not many places left. We have accumulated 10, which can be viewed as a Google card .

In general, all three networks are very similar in quality of staff recruitment, quality of the coffee itself and price level. But Starbucks is a little ahead in terms of a variety of snacking opportunities. But since we strive to go there not for food, but for work, we will move on to one of the most burning issues - about

Wi-Fi

It is safe to say that in Moscow there is no shortage of free Wi-Fi points in the cafe. But if you, like us, want to work for several hours without interrupting the waiters (it’s worth remembering about the dangers of interruptions ), wait for disappointments. So, in order.

• The entire network of Costa Coffee boasts the presence of points Beeline_WiFi_FREE, but despite the presence of the word "free", the points are paid. Apparently, the policy was played here by the managing network of the Rosinter company, which at best provides wifi access via scratch cards (at Il Patio), and more often than not - at all.
• Starbucks also decided to be principled in a tough form and do not give the country Wi-Fi anywhere and never even for money. At the same time, only with them I met a hint that they were not against working visitors .
• But Coffee Bean is great (for nothing that the Russian network), with the Internet is not greedy. True, access is not everywhere (on our map it is Pokrovka and Sretenka). Then I immediately warned - the presence of Wi-Fi contributes to the daily influx of people with laptops and competition for the territory (more details below).

In order not to lose flexibility in choosing places, we eventually switched from the native wifi to Yota. I was pleasantly surprised by the simplicity of her sharing on Wi-Fi on Macs - in 3 clicks. In addition, Yota was a good way to get acquainted with girls: “There is no free Internet here, but I can share my own.” :)

Top list

Concluding the review of places, one can distinguish a certain top-3 by the sum of factors (proximity to the center, metro, occupancy, etc.)

1. Starbucks in Kamergerskie
The very center of the city, visitors are always quite small.

2. Costa Coffee on Cannon
On the second tier there is a very comfortable sofa, which is rarely busy.

3. Coffee Bean on Pyatnitskaya
Few visitors, comfortable tables.

What are the difficulties

Sometimes no luck with neighbors. Some people just do not know how to talk quietly. We fight using noise-canceling headphones .

A crisis. The people around earns as they can, and once we missed one of the iPhones.

Rosette war Especially rampant in Coffee Bins on Pokrovka and Sretenka, due to the high density of laptops per square meter of space. Best of all in this regard in Starbucks - there are a lot of outlets.

Dead connection. In the same Coffee Binah local points often can not cope with the flow of volunteers. In some places Yota catches badly.

Snack can fly into a lot of money. Intellectual work without regularly raising the level of blood sugar leads to depression very quickly. Therefore, it is necessary to facilitate the wallet relatively often.

What are the advantages

Productivity is much higher than at home, at least due to a change in context (while you are wearing slippers, the brain is simply not able to build neurons into “work” chains).

Communication. Face to face is easier to understand and agree on. This is especially valuable at the start of the project. The main thing is not to abuse it.

Team spirit. The view of laying out a person next to motivates less to engage in nonsense. At home you are alone with yourself and all productivity rests only on the character.

Dive into the world. Sometimes chance meetings, observations, overheard conversations help to find new questions, approaches and solutions. Within the walls of an office or an apartment, you are strongly cut off from reality (which partly leads to attempts to solve non-existent problems).

Results

It is possible to work productively from a cafe, we have proved it, having advanced greatly this month from a single frame to ready-made layouts and alpha code. (It’s too early to show, we will enter private beta in about 5-6 weeks.)

In the same spirit, we will continue until there is confidence in the imminent profitability of the project - then we will expand to co-working.

If you were interested, you should follow us on Twitter . Well, or at least on the blog .

Questions? :)