The outlook for Bay Area startup space in 2017

Post by mkj » Thu, Jan 12, 2017, 6:53 AM UTC

ENGNR wrote: post #20

jedberg wrote: post #15

I still don't understand why software startups get offices today. I don't see any value in pissing away half my capital enriching a landlord when there are perfectly good tools out there to collaborate without making everyone come to the same place every day. And it's even better for the environment if we don't make everyone commute. Can you imagine a world where all the software startups go fully remote and all that…

I know it's buzzwordy but after using it a bit I'm starting to think VR might really change this. Instead of losing all of the signals from in person communication, the accidental bump into's or a glance causing you to notice someone doing something relevant to you (or vice versa), you can just walk over to someone else's space and collaborate with them. If they need a period of focus, they can disconnect from the gr…

Latency/talking over each other always seems a problem for group voice conversations when you have any real latency. So if 50ms is your speed-of-light network limit, it's tricky.

Perhaps some very very clever voice reordering software could help, not sure. For now text chat works better.

Post by api » Thu, Jan 12, 2017, 6:32 PM UTC

ryandamm wrote: post #35

api wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? That blows my mind. We are small granted but for us office space is a little under 3% of our burn. Of course we're in SoCal and use an economical coworking space. Are there no such things in the Bay or do they cost way more?

You can get coworking spaces for ~$300-500+/month per desk, sometimes more for dedicated space. For a funded startup, I've heard that you should budget ~100+ square feet per employee, and rents in SF are in the $50 (very low) to $100 / square foot/year range. How much are you paying your engineers? 3% of burn sounds pretty low, but it's not completely out of the range of what I just penciled in here. (I was prepared…

We pay our engineers near or maybe a bit below the average for the Los Angeles metro area. Our coworking space is a bit cheaper than what you quoted, but not radically so. We pay about $800/month for three desks, storage space, and amenities.

Our #1 expense by a massive margin is employees and associated benefits. #2 is probably the combined cost of hosting and SaaS services we use (AWS/OVH/DO/Vultr, Gusto, Xero, Slack, Zendesk, etc.). #3 is probably a tie between travel and other incidentals like accounting and computer hardware, and our coworking space. The rest is change.

I guess some people just splurge on office space. I don't know what kind of office you'd have to be getting for it to even approach labor cost for a startup. Personally if I were an investor I'd do everything I could to veto that since it's insane and wasteful.

Does it help with recruitment? Maybe, but personally I'd rather work for a hip company in a garage than a boring company in a posh office. Maybe that's the problem.

Re: The outlook for Bay Area startup space in 2017

Re: The outlook for Bay Area startup space in 2017