Business Continuity for Startups

Last year, I helped a friend build the web site, back office, and other bits of his startup. This year, I'm helping him run it so we can learn about the customers and business so we can get fix anything that needs it.

Part of operations is customer support, and that means email processing, Skype chat and calls, and account management in the intranet we built. However, my ISP, CenturyLink, wigged out today across all of Washington state.

So, what to do when your bootstrapped startup needs interweb juice to make with the zoom-zoom, but the juice tap just went dead? How does the business continue to run?

Our business continuity plan called for the company to be operable from a laptop and a headset, so I packed both of those into my Badtz Maru messenger bag and hit the road.

I have a bunch of hotspots available to me, but since I needed to make some phone calls I needed someplace that's got some room to squirrel away and make those calls without bothering (or being bothered by) other customers.

So, for the price of a couple coffees and a bran muffin, I was able to get hooked up and "git 'er done."

Here are some things I consider indispensible for a 21st century startup:

A distributed workforce a la Jet Blue - Skype is such a high quality product now that it can serve your instant messaging, voice chat, and telephone needs.
Back office tooling available via VPN connection -- everything you need to get done should be get done-able from a coffee shop, a diner, or the beach (if you have something like an AirCard).
Beer.

Can your startup operate from anywhere? If not, is there a compelling reason it can't?