Founder Firsts: Moving Into New Office Space
Tags: Tech, Startup, Office Culture, Venture Capital, Bay Area

Danielle (and froyo) in our new office at 101 Montgomery.

Founders go through lots of “firsts” and we’re starting a new series based on those learnings — this one is about office space. Our founders had a lot to say and we’ve distilled their write ups into some key areas.

What is your top one or two tips on picking/setting up an office space?

Don’t Overlook Layout

An office is more than just a place to meet and do some work. How your offices is set up influences who meets whom in the company, how people spend their time, and what visitors think.

Scott at Deepgram points out that you may want to put sales and engineering in different parts of the office, but if you do, they may never interact:

Consider growth (as much as 3x, after that, don’t plan for this office, find a _new_ one). Consider sales calls needing sound separation. If your office is long and skinny, you can put sales on one end and eng on the other, but then will they ever interact? Figure out if people want to have fun in the space/feel cozy or just line up as many desks as possible.

Gaetano at Cabin echoes this:

The seating chart is vital… but don’t over-optimize for people who naturally HAVE to work together being seated together. Those folks will find a way. Sometimes the people who SHOULD be talking and are not should be seated together. Sitting you head of eng next to your head of sales rather than each one in their respective kingdoms could lead to some fruitful trust building.

Who is visiting your office? You’ll want space set up so that different types of visitors can feel welcome without having to interrupt work (Scott at Deepgram, again):

Figure out if you would want investors to hang out at your office, they are _different_. Figure out if you want customers to hang out at your office, they are _different_ in other ways. Once you are over 3–4 people, you need a meeting room.

Alexander at Fluity suggests making it easy to change your office setup, especially if you have to run mock presentations or make room for plenty of people to meet in one place:

Mental and physical flexibility is key to a conductive office environment. We frequently rearrange our space to make room for staging trade-show setups, adapt to changes in space requirements for new R/D equipment, and most often just to get a change of scenery. To pull this off, we install heavy-duty (locking) castors on EVERYTHING in our office. It makes it a breeze to rearrange our thoughts and furniture.

Get Set Up Quickly

Once you’re in an office, it’s easy to trick yourself into easing into the space and setting up over the course of a few weeks. Don’t do this. Try to get as set up as you can when you have the energy.

Camille at Hamama:

My advice is to buy and assemble furniture right away while you still have adrenaline from the move. Otherwise you might sit on the floor for 6 weeks and your back will kill you!

Gaetano at Cabin agrees:

Get the furniture in and organize over the weekend before first day of work or else you’ll wake up 6 months later with a meeting room full of boxes. Have a zero moving box rule for staff by day 0 and a one week rule for employees for personal stuff.

Or hire somebody, as Shastri at Union Crate recommends:

Hire someone to set everything up. Your time is more valuable.

Parking Matters

A pretty common theme throughout all of our founders’ answers was that convenience around parking really matters and is easy to overlook.

Scott at Deepgram:

Our first office was in South Beach SF, right near the Giants baseball stadium. Seems pretty good. Not too far from BART, really close to CalTrain, but did you know parking on a gameday can be as high as $90 and traffic is really bad and you can’t eat at any local restaurants without there being a line those days? You know baseball goes on for 9 months right? Choose wisely. Consider parking (maybe pay for a single spot or a couple? maybe reimburse for those days you just need someone to drive in?).

James at Amina agrees:

Factor in parking when you price out different places, this can add up as you grow your team.

If your team doesn’t have to commute in with a car, make sure you know where the closest parking is nearby for any visitors who may drive in. You can usually find a parking garage in the neighborhood and your building may even have discounted parking for visitors if it has its own parking garage.

Take Your Comfort Seriously

It’s easy to get focused on cost or location and overlook details like how you feel in the space, aesthetics, and comfort. But you’re going to spend most of your time in your office — and visitors will get an impression of your company based on the space. Don’t skimp on comfort.

Make sure to think about what you’ll need in different seasons and with different weather. Just because your office feels cool and comfortable in the spring doesn’t mean it will feel comfortable in the middle of the summer.

Scott at Deepgram led with this point:

Consider all seasons when choosing an office. Weather (especially in SF) can be tricky. SF has great weather right? Well, yeah, but if you are on the top floor of a century-old building, you probably don’t have AC/heat. So the weeks where it is off the charts in one direction, the whole office feels it. Nothing crushes souls quite like inescapable heat, or annoys quite like never shake-able cold.

Gaetano at Cabin emphasized that you’ll want your office to actually be comfortable when you move in and not after renovations finish or a project concludes:

Don’t move in until any additions or renovations are complete and make sure the internet, printers bathroom, key cards, etc. are working properly before any employees arrive. There is nothing more demoralizing than not being able to work during you first day in a new office. All the excitement quickly evaporates.

Liam at Nelumbo, Peter at Spira, Cameron at Storii, Shayanne at LEFT, and Arjun at Woofy all emphasized the importance of natural light and plants to lift the mood and to reduce psychological clutter in the office.

What have you found helpful when moving into a new office? Tweet at us @1517fund on Twitter or leave a reply here and let us know.