Ask HN: Should my small company take a big (but sweet) space in San Francisco

In the startup world, I often hear very anti-office-space sentiment (either "don't get it" or "learn to rough it / cheaper is better"). I think this may be the after effects of the bubble, but that's an entirely different topic. Instead, I'll provide a slightly different perspective.

When deciding whether or not to buy office space (and how much to spend), I converted rent dollars to productive hours. For the sake of simplicity, let's assume that you are a one-person startup (as I was), and that you could easily get contracting gigs for $100/hr. Heck, let's be more conservative and consider $75/hr. Again, for the sake of simplicity, let's assume that your time spent on the startup is equally valuable as your time would be spent consulting.

In Michigan, a nice office costs around $400/mo. So, in order for this office to pay itself off, it must help me produce an extra ~5.5hr/mo of billable work (i.e. productivity). This amounts to around 11 extra minutes of productivity per day. This doesn't take into account other things like mental outlook, well-being, company attitude, etc.

So, in my scenario, I decided 2 years ago that yes, an office would add 11 extra minutes of productivity to my day. This is a decision each person must consider, as it's not one-solution-fits-all. And for a startup team, you must take into account everyone's individual productivity in addition to group productivity.

In my experience, I love having an awesome office and it's helped me through the day many times. However, I'm also constantly (and at time, painfully) aware of the cost of this luxury. For example, I still do more consulting than I'd probably prefer.

Pass on this one. $6500 * 12 /3000 is $26 per square foot/year, which is a bit pricey even by SF standards. There's about 90m square feet of commercial space in SF, and this is set to increase by 5% within the next 2 years; that's one reason the city bent over backwards to give Twitter a favorable deal. For this kind of money you could get a rather fancy retail/restaurant space in a good location, or a full-service suite with less space but an impressive financial district address and all the trappings of success. If you sublet you need to budget for the cost of accounting services and what-all else as well; if you're going to go down that route then go big so that you have your eggs spead across several baskets at $15/sfyr. Try loopnet.com, but also look into the city's tax exemptions.

With 4 people there is absolutely no reason to get 3000 sqft especially for $6500 per month. I would suggest either staying put or finding something much cheaper you can all live in and work in.

You are tiny and you have to act as if the money is yours (perhaps it is actually your own investment). Even if it is VC money you do not want to blow through that on BS stuff like renting space in a "nice" "cool" location. In the end it will make you run out of VC and need more, diluting you further and losing you money in the long run. No matter how you look at it, this is your money so spend it wisely! Ramen profitability is the goal! (PG plug)

Don't - places are good because of the people, not the decor. Any space of sufficient size with cool people will be cool. I would spend the money on a place that either saves your time in commuting or in maintenance.

my two cents.

Don't go there unless you have a very, very solid reason to get that much space. I very much doubt you each need nearly 1000 sqft to work in!

Nope. Don't move into a bigger space until you HAVE too (no more room in old space).

Don't. Why ingest such a massive amount of overhead? Co-work until no longer feasible :)

>"its[sic] a distraction"

This didn't need collective wisdom.

If you don't NEED that big/expensive of a space, don't get it.

Thanks all for your help!