Startup Secret Santa: Wacky Gift Ideas For Your (Future) Work Mates Posted on Friday 16 December 2011 at 13:28PM by trrpaipai

Yes, it’s that time of the year again. Whether you work in a startup already or are planning to in the future you will need to show off your creativity by any possible means. Enternships will give you a hand with this and spill the beans about this year’s Christmas gift ideas that will make the guys at work nominate you for the most original Secret Santa ever.

And because working in a startup actually allows you to get to know everyone in the team, make sure you don’t just go for the generic funny office present. Not saying they don’t make cool gifts, but at least try and make it a bit more personal.

You spend about 8 hours a day with them, you must surely have noticed some of their quirks. What does that person like? What are their day-to-day habits or topics they like to brag about? What are their near-future plans? Where do they like to go in their lunch break? What are they always getting when you go for drinks after work?

With just a couple of twists you can easily find something that will put a smile on your colleagues’ faces. Here are a few suggestions which you can conveniently customize to fit each person in part and because the work they’re doing says a lot about their personality we broke everything down to roles:

The Founder. She started a business from scratch therefore she must be very driven, innovative and passionate about what she does. These rare specimens will be very busy people and need something that can help them organise their schedule but everything has moved online now so they must surely have an app for that. Well, it’s also winter and when travelling they will probably want to keep their hands warm but be able to quickly handle the phone when needed too.

In this case why not get them a pair of gloves that lets them use any touchscreen device as if using their fingers. We found a pair over here and they’re under a tenner too!

The developer. I know what you think: ‘This is easy! Just get them a geeky computer thing or a video game and that’s that!’ Think about it, this is what everyone else is expecting you to do, right? Why not surprise them buy getting something a bit less digital that will still reflect their artificial intelligence interests.

How about this Earth-friendly robot made with sustainably harvested cherry wood inspired by the Japanese Shinto Kumi-ki puzzles. A far cry from the normal plastic and battery-powered robot army, the Cubebot will be there for him whenever his coding stress levels threaten to hit the red spot.

The Social Media Guru. Forget what I said earlier, in this case you are allowed to be predictable. These guys are the all-talkers, all-knowers and most probably the all-likers too. We thought it would be a cool idea to enable them to ‘like’ stuff in the real world too and keep the Zuckerberg signature at the same time. This set of Like and Dislike stamps should prove quite in handy for that – just cross your fingers he’ll use the right stamp on your Xmas postcard!

The COO. They are the hands-on people: speak typography and colour alignment and they’ll think you’re bluffing. Lists, planning and managing are more likely to spring up in their vocabulary so make sure you keep that in mind. These guys are like the engine that keeps everything up and running, the control tower that overlooks all operations on ground and above.

Wouldn’t it be super useful if they had a universal device to let them run the entire show with the click of a button? I bet COOs are not the only ones interested in something like that but in the meantime you can make them their very own universal remote control keychain that will at least allow them to turn off that annoying track playing on the pub’s radio.

The Interns. These guys are here to learn. Admit, you’ve one been in their shoes and it wasn’t very pleasant to always feel watched and analysed and wondering whether the work you’re doing is right. Give them a confidence boost with these magic illusions cards that will make them feel like they’re the ones who hold the secret wisdom for once.