No Office, No Problem (Except It's Actually a Problem)
My mom will finally be proud of me once I’m not working out of a Panera Bread
Food, Water, Air, and Shelter. That’s what humans need to survive.
But what about a company? What does a company need to survive—or better yet, to grow?
If you’re new here, I’m Rajveer, author of The SLAM Digest. I write about our company, SLAM Ventures. If you like what you read, maybe you’d be a good fit for our team (we’re hiring, by the way)..
SLAM is growing. What started as a team of three is now a team of eight. Three people can stroll down the main street, find a coffee shop with a table, and plop down for several hours to complete their work. And if every table in town is occupied, our founders can just work from home—because they live together.
But when your team grows, even a little, that system falls apart.
Case in point: five of us were attempting to schedule some group work time and we spent more than half our time aimlessly wandering around in search of a coffee shop that could accommodate us. After being let down a handful of times we drove deep into the suburbs to work at a local library. Even then, we couldn’t sit together. We split into three separate areas, surrounded by young adult novels, whispering like we were in the back of a lecture hall.
It became painfully clear: we need an office.
And honestly? We’re excited about it. Needing an office feels like a milestone in a startup’s life—a marker of legitimacy and the start of a new chapter. Plus, there’s something warm and fuzzy about realizing that even the biggest companies once faced the same humble dilemma.
Google’s first office was in Susan Wojcicki’s garage. She couldn’t afford her mortgage so she let Larry Page and Sergey Brin rent out a portion of her house.
As Google grew they moved into a more traditional office space.
But it’s not just Google. Every company’s retro office photos are such a vibe. You can see the raw enthusiasm and sheer thrill leaking out of the pixels.
The search is quite early and we still have several months until we expect to find a place. But speaking with Commercial Real Estate brokers and touring cool offices has us feeling giddy.
Honestly, it feels a lot like visiting colleges back in high school. You walk around with a tour guide pointing at buildings while you daydream about your future life there—volleyball in the quad, meals with friends, late-night study sessions in the library.
We have no idea where our first office will be, or when we’ll actually get it. But in the spirit of pure optimism, I asked our co-founders what they’d want in an office if money and practicality were thrown out the window.
Here is what they said:
Derrick: Basketball court, espresso machine.
Declan: Basketball court, high ceilings.
Phillip: Squat Rack, fireman pole, dedicated poker table.
Honestly, I really don’t care about any of those things, I’ll vote for the office that’s closest to my house. And until we find that, we’ll all just have to make do with what we have now.
-Rajveer