Being a receptionist at a tech startup company involves a lot of free perks, such as kombucha or random ping pong breaks. Sure, yeah, there are perks: stacked snack bars, occasional happy hours, and a great health plan. But the reality is a little different when you’re operating the front desk all alone.
I’m no engineer; I don’t know how to write code, and I don’t pitch to VCS. But I’m the one who faces every investor, customer, job candidate, and the delivery guys. Making sure that when they walk past the glass door, they reach the right person they are looking for. You’d be surprised how much you can learn about startup culture from this seat.
Some mornings, I’ll buzz in a founder from a hot YC company, complete with a hoodie, backpack, and all, coming for a partnership meeting. Ten minutes later, it’s an anxious college grad in a suit who’s sweating bullets for their first-ever job interview. By noon, it’s three separate DoorDash drivers dropping off lunch orders because no one can seem to agree on what they want to eat.
Engineers here shuffle in late, hurried steps, wearing noise-cancelling headphones, forgetting to say hello to anyone. The sales team breezes in with more energy, confidence, and is fully caffeinated. The marketing team makes an appearance, usually debating the following social media post or new campaigns. And then there’s the founder, rarely in the office, but when he arrives, it’s a whirlwind of investor calls, abrupt meetings, and last-minute calendar changes I scramble to accommodate.
Some days, it’s quiet enough for me to catch up on reading between check-ins. On other days, there’s a product launch or an all-hands meeting, and suddenly, I’m coordinating visitors, restocking the kitchen, printing name tags, fixing broken badges, and ensuring the AV setup works.
And yes, the kombucha flows. But the real currency here is energy: the constant buzz of ambition, late nights, Slack pings, and big dreams of changing the world or, at the very least, securing that next funding round.
I’m not really building in this office, but I’m a big part of this place. It’s a small world where 22-year-olds become millionaires overnight, and where my front desk is a constant sea of chaos.
Some days, that’s exhausting. Most days, it’s fascinating.