What do you do when the vibe in your office is stifling? What do you do when you’re writing that grant proposal, term paper or business plan and can’t focus for the life of you?
Most of us will go for a walk, scroll Instagram, or pour a new cup of coffee from our office cafeteria or get a cappuccino from a nearby cafe. I mean, why not, more often than not the coffee machines at our office hardly live up to our expectations! Replacing the coffee machine with a better alternative that could provide us with better quality beverages (like the professionals who provide office coffee services Denver in terms of equipment and products) could work! But we do prefer that stroll down to the nearest cafe, just to get some fresh air, don’t we?
But that was before a Richmond-based creative team poured productivity into a website. Coffitivity is a new website built for moments of low productivity. It was born from the need to escape a less-than-inspired workplace and now serves as a destination for getting stuff done. Coffitivity is a simple website that streams a 20-minute loop of ambient coffee shop sounds.
That’s right, it plays the sounds of a busy coffee shop and you stream it from your desktop. As simple and perhaps odd as this may seem, you would be unwise to disregard the impact of the concept. The folks behind Coffitivity are smart. The idea for the popular site is based on a number of well-researched studies. Yes, dear reader: science! The conception of the project began as many great ideas do: while battling the desire to escape the office. Employers can do so many things to improve the productivity in their office from getting high-speed internet from things like spectrum internet plans, in order to reduce high-stress levels from slow internet to putting a coffee bar in the office.
Justin Kauszler, a 20-something Richmond creative, felt stifled sitting at his desk and daringly asked his supervisor if he could leave the office and work from a nearby coffee shop. “Of course the answer was no,” he remembers. But instead of accepting defeat, Kauszler began brainstorming how he could bring the coffee shop to his desk. “I thought it was a really bad idea; I didn’t think it could work,” says cofounder Ace Callwood, when Kauszler brought the idea up to Callwood it was met with a scoff. However, Kauszler was undeterred. He continued to push the idea, determined to make it happen. Eventually, Callwood agreed to pursue the idea and see it come to life. “That’s the kind of friends we are. When one of us says we’re going to do something we support it, even if we don’t think it’s going to work.”
As many startup stories go, the idea was there, but the skill wasn’t. Kauszler and Call- wood had neither coding skills nor design talent. So they did what good entrepreneurs do, they developed their skills and created a team. Over the course of weeks Kauszler honed his skills in coding and meanwhile they brought on Nicole Horton, a talented interior designer. “We figured design is design right? If you can design a room you can design a website,” laughs Callwood. Despite the clear difference between interior and graphic design, Horton sketched some concepts and with multiple rounds of iteration they were able to conceive of a site that met their standards. Before long the site was up and people were using it. “Fighting about the design was the key to making it what it is, it was a re- ally collaborative process,” remembers Horton. “Since then it’s been amazing to see the impact it’s had,” says Callwood.
The founders can now dish out countless stories of happy us- ers, such as teachers using the site to motivate students to collaborate in the classroom. The ambient noise serving as an effective, albeit false, indication that others are working in the room, inciting students to engage. They recall feedback from students and other creative peo- ple writing to say they were able to overcome creative hurdles with the help of the site. The stories number in the dozens. “And that’s what it’s all about now, enabling people to be produc- tive and knowing the science behind it makes it that much more valid,” reflects Kauszler. The science to which Kauszler refers is found in such publications as the Journal of Consumer Research, which details a growing number of experiments that celebrate the positive effects of ambient noise to bolster creativity. While the number of decibels are important-the studies find that around 70 dB is the creative sweet spot.
The fact that the Coffitivity team can enable others to capture their productivity is the greatest effect they could have asked for. Coffivity represents yet another entrepreneurial triumph within the River City. Working out of the 80amps space, a collaborative incubation
space funded by the Martin Agency, the team excitedly continues to develop the site and engage with its users. Key to that engagement is the fourth member of the team Tommy Nicholas. With his help the team was able to raise the bar on their coding prowess and create quick ways users can share what they’re working on. For Nicholas the agile iteration and ability to quickly ship updated features of the site keeps the team engaged and inspired. “Ideas aren’t worth anything until they are validated [by the public] and now the Coffitivity idea is worth a lot, but it wasn’t worth anything until we shipped it. So we keep shipping and the idea keeps gaining value.”
As the Coffitivity team continues to grow its audience and inspire creativity they are gaining a lot of attention. Recently featured in Time and on Mashable, Coffitivity is committed to contributing to the creative and entrepreneurial energy of Greater Richmond.