Under the Hood With Shane Pearlman
In Interviews by Skellie
This week, Shane Pearlman (entrepreneur, blogger, half of Shane and Peter, Inc. and co-founder of small business social media site Sproutwire) gives us a behind-the-scenes tour of his digital office.
“I have a 17 inch Macbook Pro, an iPhone, and a backup hard drive that lives at home. My office is always with me. Some days I work at coffee shops, sometimes at a park, and other days I sit with my feet up on a bench on Pacific Avenue in downtown Santa Cruz. I haven’t worked in an office since 2000. After all, if you live where I do, wifi is free.
“From this nomadic lifestyle I play as the main sales person and project manager (and errant coder/ UI designer) of our firm, Shane & Peter Inc., and in little pockets of time work on Sproutwire.com, our new project bringing the web’s best content to small business owners (you are invited to come visit the beta, invite code AW-WB. Please send an email and tell us what you think when you do).
“Now I am the first admit that when I was solo this virtual office gig was a challenge but ultimately straight forward. Running a team this way is a completely different story. We are constantly asking ourselves how to create culture and foster communication in a virtual team (wish the guys at automatic or 37 signals would answer my email and chat with me about it) and how to best execute with online solutions.”
My Personal Setup:
My Saviors
Parallels
Vibe Duo Headset
Pen and paper
Surfboard
Communication
Mac mail & calendar
Project Management
Text Edit (my personal running notes list)
Copper Project — moving to Redmine
Finance
Quickbooks
Sales
Upcoming
Campaign Monitor
Education
Oh, and a bunch of programming platforms and design tools.
If you’d like to be featured in an Under the Hood post send your pitch to Anywired at gmail dot com.
March 9th, 2008
Hi Shane - I would have to say, without a doubt, that your surfboard is definitely the most important piece of equipment in that arsenal
All the best with sproutwire.com
March 10th, 2008
Pen and paper!
Although, I have to agree with Mark that the surfboard is the one that makes your equipment arsenal stand out from the crowd. I still haven’t tried surfing so I don’t know how it helps you in your job… Maybe through productivity improvements.
March 10th, 2008
At the heart of every startup is the required “board meeting”. We just have ours in the water.
And yes - pen and paper is at the heart of how I think.
March 11th, 2008
I had to come back and clarify my earlier comment a bit. Right now it seems as if I would be shocked to hear that you use pen and paper. That would of course be an interesting reaction, but it’s not what I meant
What I mean was that pen and paper are my favorite tools out of your list - the only really mobile productivity tools (if you don’t count the surf board, that is).