Ask HN: So, does my startup need an office?

[BenjaminDyer]

I am a man of two hats, my first hat revolves around a very established business. We have customers, battle scars and have been in the space for years. Its a great company to work for, although I am very senior, I am not the founder and I wasn't there at the beginning.

My second hat revolves around my startup Powered Now. We are a 5 person team spread over the globe. Our product is a business administration platform for the Field Services world, we are hoping to launch into private beta within a few weeks.

My established business is a bit of a hybrid. We have two offices in the UK and a distributed workforce of about 20 working at home. I really get to see both the advantages and disadvantages of office / home working. It works for us, but we have been doing this for a long time and I wonder if I am being blinded by the convenience factor.

With Powered Now I have a distributed team, half of us are in the UK the other half are based in Budapest, we try to meet up to work together once every 4 to 6 weeks. When we do its insanely productive, but I wonder if it would be better if we were under the same roof?

If you believe the guys at 37 signals home working is the way forward, and to some extent I believe them, its enabled us to go to the best people instead of hiring in a limited area. However I'd be interested in your stories, have you consolidated a team into an office, or did you do the reverse? Are our productive meetups that good because they are a relatively rare event or would it be like that every day? Also if you were founding a startup today, how would you do it?

I'd love to hear your stories and advice.

Thanks,

Ben

[georgespencer]

My startup began life working from home/remotely. We had a team spread between London and Brighton.

We moved into a shared office space in London which an early investor helped to hook us up with. It sucked. It was a crummy, distracting environment. A lot of people there were working on pretty weird/lame projects (including a Russian "get rich quick!" motivational speaker, who was apparently had eight-digit wealth but worked from a £100p/m office space).

Things which are poisonous to your productivity:

• "Networking" events of any kind • Talkative people who are working on projects which they don't believe in • Talkative people who are working on projects which they do believe in • People from other projects who want your advice on something • People from other projects who have heard you just did a raise and want to ask questions • People from other projects who want you to test something really quickly just this once • "Oh you must just meet this person they're so relevant to your project" • Anyone talking on the phone for any length of time (this is personal. I find it annoying to hear one-sided conversations).

We just moved in to shared office space with a YC company and another company. It has only been a week or so but already we're more productive and it feels more like "work" (in a good way). Fewer meeting rooms but fewer distractions. More focus.

Don't go to a shared workspace. You'll do poor quality work with a ton of distractions. Find another company who have some spare desks, and go there.

Working from home is not productive for most people (hence all the "HOW TO BE PRODUCTIVE WORKING FROM HOME" linkbait articles you see all over Lifehacker and occasionally on HN).

It's also a psychological help to have somewhere that you invite people: you invite investors to your office, you don't go to them. Even being able to say "we can do it at our place?" makes you seem like you have clout.

HTH.

[BenjaminDyer → georgespencer]

Thanks for the reply George,

Did you bring the whole team under the same roof including the guys from Brighton?

[georgespencer → BenjaminDyer]

So when we hired them (just after the start of the project) they worked remotely. They were a small agency who we essentially block-booked for large chunks of time. They would occasionally come to the shared office but not regularly enough to close all the gaps on the project. I estimate that to keep things running reasonably smoothly (and there were still major problems which led to me firing them and hiring brilliant software engineers), I probably spent north of £1k on travel to and from their location to manage them, which was painful both financially (I could be spending that money on almost anything else and it would be better-spent) and emotionally (it's a lot of energy).

Now everyone is in the same room and on the same page. I'm sure there are occasional productivity hits (conversations, phone calls, stand up meetings), but it's a quick "Hey I just deployed this" instead of Email > New Message > everyone@startup.com > I just deployed the XYZ feature we talked about > Send.

It's also more helpful for me to work this way because I am a hands on product manager. We can iterate things very quickly, I can break them and suggest improvements, and we can then iterate them again. Irrespective of whether my benevolent dictatorship is a good way of working, the fact is that I will always work like this and to do that over any kind of distance greater than 5 metres is inefficient and frustrating.

[chriskemm]

Having an office makes such a difference to work flow and production. Also good to have a hub, where people can always drop in.

We use a number of freelancers they like to work from home, but its great they can always drop in and work in the office for a few days.

[BenjaminDyer → chriskemm]

Thanks for the reply Chris,

How has the office impacted the way you hire freelance staff, do you look for people within reach of your office?

[Nick5a1]

A combination of co-working + working from home is low cost and provides space and collaboration when you want it.