It’s been an exciting four months for me and the next four are shaping up to be just as crazy.

There’s something about working for a startup that is deeply addicting. It could be the masochism of long hours. It could also be the deep sense of loyalty, commitment, and teamwork that is needed to get a company off the ground (and flying).

Ask me what I’ve learned most so far and I’ll tell you:

Tape.

coffee kind tape

This is 375 feet of water-activated packaging tape. The icons are actually supposed to be black. Feel free to let me know what I can do with this much tape.

Without going into excruciating detail, we spent weeks on the topic of tape. More specifically, packaging tape. I have never, ever, in my life, thought I would become so intimately familiar with the world of packaging tape. Not only are there no clear custom tape examples to find on Google images, but the design itself went through nearly 40 iterations, from black icons on white tape to brown icons on brown tape. Don’t even get me started on our debate of box colors. We placed an order for tape only to put it on hold, because we discovered that we had ordered “water-activated tape,” (for greater seal!) and didn’t realize it. Eventually, we did order the water-activated tape, along with the special water-activating tape dispenser. No joke.

Our first delivery of tape included an extra box, which totaled us to seven boxes of incorrectly colored tape, equaling us to 21K feet of tape… nearly 4 miles of tape. Too bad the icons were the wrong color. So we got another shipment, this time of the right color. Grand total of tape: 39K feet = 7.4 miles of tape.

I describe this tape adventure, because it illustrates my fascination with startups. You get into the grittiness, there’s no advertising department to lean on and no person you can throw the mess of tape issues at. You fly by the seat of your pants, cross a lot of fingers, and hope everything works itself out in the end. I don’t think there’s another place where I

And now, I present to you, what I’ve been working on for the last four months: CoffeeKind.com.

coffeekind

My current position is Marketing Director and involves managing the social networks, writing, photographing, talking to roasters, checking on customer orders, updating site products, and much more.

Some side notes: I didn’t design the icons on the tape, only the arrangement of them. I wrote and photographed a very minor portion of the site. I also did not design the website.