Pekka in San Francisco: I’m starving among these tea-drinking non-eating hippies!

Usually I’m both starving and lacking caffeine by the lunch time, which is around one o’clock. They’re all nice people, though. I’m just a little worried about their nutrition. The lack of food was the reason I stopped being hippie in the first place and decided to try this startup thing for a change. Other than that, the first month has gone fast and I’m really excited about the work. I work as a Designer at Ditto, we are currently a four-member team, located in the Hayes Valley neighborhood. I help the team to design new features to our social web products. We share the same office space with another startup, 2bkco

Three things:

• The work process is different from consulting work. It is faster and more iterative – there’s no point coming up with a product that no one uses. Client work consists of deadlines and checklists, in a startup the team can decide what to design and when.
• Coders are good in SF and they’re not nerds. It means new things can be tested in a very short period of time and the startups don’t usually have a conclave of non-tech founders.
• There’s a lot more experience of “what happens next”. Cooperation and scaling get much more notice than in Finland. It means better engineering and communication right from the start.

Here are some feel-good pics from the city, enjoy!

–Pekka

Me elsewhere: http://www.pekkahartikainen.fi | http://www.twitter.com/pastorator

Alamo Square in Hayes Valley near our office.

Lower Haight. One can lead very different lifestyles here – different neighborhoods are closely located to each other.

Stanford seemed to be a peaceful and study-oriented environment. You could sense the competition under the surface, though.

Ilkka, Hung, Anne, Raimo, Otto H. (Flowdock Founder) and Jussi in a park after the weekly Sunday brunch. 

In a flow at Ditto office. Our team consists of two founders and two interns at the moment.

Surfing gear check in Santa Cruz. The car belongs to my friend Rämänen.

I have feet. Somehow one’s thoughts become more sentimental when you feel the lawn.

MC Hammer

Bonus video: MC Hammer himself speaking at a Sopa protest near Civic Center. I had to bite my lip not to shout “U CAN*T TOUCH THIS SOPA”. Fortunately I succeeded.