I was in Europe for most of June and working on a lot of things with people in the bay area. The nine hours of time zone difference was challenging. I was doing a lot of calls in the evenings with people who were just waking up.
There were many times when I woke up in Europe to a brief window where I could talk to people in the bay area who were still working and had not wrapped things up for the day before.
Our portfolio at USV spans ten hours (Estonia to San Francisco/Los Angeles).
Being based in NYC helps a bit as we have longer overlaps between Europe and the Bay Area than those two locations have with each other.
But I continue to find working across many time zones challenging.
Yesterday I had a conference call between people in five time zones. Getting everyone to agree to the correct time was almost laughable.
I’ve learned to use the time zone feature in Google Calendar to make sure I’ve got the time right. That helps me a lot.
As the world becomes more globalized, we find that we can do business more easily across time zones. And so we do more business across time zones.
That in turn leads to longer days.
When I am in LA, I often wake at 5am to an inbox that is full and active.
When I am in Europe, I am often on conference calls on the way to dinner.
I suspect there is someone working at a USV portfolio company at every hour of every day.
And new technologies is pushing this trend even farther.
Traditional capital markets open and close. The NYSE will open for trading today at 9:30amET after being closed all day yesterday for the July 4th holiday.
But crypto traders can trade on GDAX 24/7 and do.
So the tech and startup business is quickly becoming a 24/7 affair.
It wasn’t that way at all when I got into the business in my mid 20s.
But thirty years later the pace and rhythm is very different.
Keeping up with that pace and rhythm can be exhausting if you let it be.
