How 3 Colorado startups celebrate Fridays in style

by Jess Ryan
March 31, 2017

Fridays are just the best, aren’t they? They give us time to reflect on the past week, get excited about the weekend and prepare for what’s coming next.

Nearly every company has its own Friday ritual, from enjoying a beer or treats the last hour of the day to giving presentations during an all-hands meeting.

We asked a few Colorado startups to share their Friday rituals — and we’d love to hear about yours, too.

 

DigitalGlobe spends their Fridays celebrating a key team within their company.

“Collaboration is one of the most important aspects of DigitalGlobe’s business,” said talent acquisition operations manager Katie Levine on behalf of the DigitalGlobe team. “Enter ‘Platform Fridays.’ This is the opportunity for the Platform team — the team responsible for creating algorithms that take our satellite images to the next level and keeps us ahead of the competition — to share the hottest ideas and celebrate the successes with their peers and leadership. Oh, and did we mention it is buffet-style with foods from all over the world? Many of the products that are out there today — and have yet to come — are a result of Platform Fridays.”

 

At RevGuard, Fridays are an opportunity to acknowledge the hard work that goes into a sprint.

“As is the case with most software companies, we use the Agile method for development and do two week burn downs on sprints,” said RevGuard’s CEO and founder, Blair McNea. “And, like most companies, the burn downs tend to look the same each time; behind and lagging in week one and then a catch up in the burn down in week two. This causes a fair amount of consternation and conflict within the engineering team and product development.

"So, we started a new tradition. We call it ‘Burn Down Burritos,’ and we do it on the Friday that is the in-between Friday during sprint burn downs. If the engineers are all caught up on their roles for the burn down, they get the burrito of their choice. If the whole engineering team is up to schedule on the burn down, then the whole company gets burritos (or pizza, Chinese or Indian food) delivered. And the engineering team gets a lot of thanks for another free meal.

“We're in this together, let's at least have fun along the way!”

 

Junto Digital’s team wraps up each week with a little introspection.

“Our Friday rituals aren't glamorous,” said Pat Ahern, Junto Digital’s director of traffic generation. “We don't all go to the spa; we don't spend the entire day working on something that interests us. On Friday, we get to the office, sit down at our desks, and dedicate the entire day to improving internal systems.

“Having worked at a combined seven agencies with my co-founder, we've realized that the only thing that is consistent in the marketing industry is rapid evolution, and failing to rapidly adapt can turn a great agency into a mediocre one. To prevent this from happening to us, we set aside Friday to ensure that we are ahead of the game, and to ensure that any mistakes that we recently made are ironed out in updated process documents.”

 

Photos via featured companies.

How does your team do Fridays? Let us know on Twitter — tag us @builtincolorado and use #techlovesCO.

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