Formal Office Space For Startup

[w***@aol.com]

How important is it to have a formal office space for a small startup
with a handful of people, say less than 10?

My thoughts are that if all members of the team are mature
professionals, with a proportional interest and stake in the company,
and have telecommuting abilities, it shouldn't be that hard to work
independently and meet occasionally for coordinating the projects. If
that's the case, one can probably just use your own home or a secondary
home such as cottage as an informal meeting place.

Going to lengths to secure a formal office space even if it is in a
business incubator, would take a chunk of capital that you could have
spent on other things, besides costing the time for people to commute.
On the other hand, a formal office space might give a bit of a better
business image.

May be I am a little naive, but when the work that has to be done is on
the creative edge, I don't believe that the widely accepted image of a
worker spending X amount of hours in the office and producing Y amounts
of hard material like drawings, documents or lines of code are
realistically useful to measure the degree of contribution.

If possible, the best thing is to have the trust and dedication of the
people who work with you, and have them inherently motivated to
deliver. When you have a formal office, people might start to think
that you are watching them over their shoulders, and might take away a
degree of motivation.

Of course this is only for the startup phase where you know all team
members well.

Any thoughts?

Thank you in advance ...

[Mark T.B. Carroll]

Post by w***@aol.com
How important is it to have a formal office space for a small startup
with a handful of people, say less than 10?

We have around 10 on average - professional people doing creative work
as a team, and savvy enough to understand things like IRC, etc. as
real-time remote conversation enablers. Still, they seem to really think
that it's important for them to routinely be coming into the office
instead of telecommuting, because it helps them work closely together.

So, um, that's just one sample for you.

-- Mark

[m***@jach.hawaii.edu]

It depends ...

For a mailing address a PO box should be adequate.
For a meeting room, as long as you don't needs projectors
and stuff you could probably even meet in a public park
(I'm in Hawaii, you can do that year round here).
As long as you trust everybody (and I agree that work
doesn't necessarily result in anything visible) contributes their
part you don't have to work in the same location.

If you have physical contact with customers/clients this
gets different, but, again may depend on your line of
work - I know a beekeeper who sells more honey riding
around on his bike than in the 'formal' surroundings
of a farmer's market ...

It also depends on the number of people. Things
are easier as long as there are few enough people
to have a 'flat' structure (usually works for less than
10, but not for much more than that).

HTH,

Maren
Palms, Etc.: Tropical Plant Seeds - Hand-made Jewelry - Plants &
Lilikoi
http://www.jach.hawaii.edu/~maren/palms_etc/

Post by w***@aol.com
How important is it to have a formal office space for a small startup
with a handful of people, say less than 10?
My thoughts are that if all members of the team are mature
professionals, with a proportional interest and stake in the company,
and have telecommuting abilities, it shouldn't be that hard to work
independently and meet occasionally for coordinating the projects. If
that's the case, one can probably just use your own home or a secondary
home such as cottage as an informal meeting place.
Going to lengths to secure a formal office space even if it is in a
business incubator, would take a chunk of capital that you could have
spent on other things, besides costing the time for people to commute.
On the other hand, a formal office space might give a bit of a better
business image.
May be I am a little naive, but when the work that has to be done is on
the creative edge, I don't believe that the widely accepted image of a
worker spending X amount of hours in the office and producing Y amounts
of hard material like drawings, documents or lines of code are
realistically useful to measure the degree of contribution.
If possible, the best thing is to have the trust and dedication of the
people who work with you, and have them inherently motivated to
deliver. When you have a formal office, people might start to think
that you are watching them over their shoulders, and might take away a
degree of motivation.
Of course this is only for the startup phase where you know all team
members well.
Any thoughts?
Thank you in advance ...

[John A. Weeks III]

Post by w***@aol.com
How important is it to have a formal office space for a small startup
with a handful of people, say less than 10?

I know that:

1) I will not buy from anyone who works out of their house.
If they cannot have a business location, then they are not
serious about doing business with me.

2) I will not work for any company that is run out of
someone's house. I have had problems with that in the
past. Fighting spouses and nasty kids just add to it.

3) Working out of your house shows that business is not
your priority.

4) People who work from home are highly inefficient. You
have to get people away from the telephone, the TV, the
relatives, the spouse, the lawn, the front door, and
away from E-bay in order to get them to focus. Many people
that I know that telecommute treat the telecommute day
as a free half or 3/4 day off out of sight of the boss.

5) Team building, corporate identity, and problem management
are all but impossible if people don't work in the same
location. Collaboration between employees also goes down
to very near zero when people cannot interact on a regular
basis.

-john-

[m***@jach.hawaii.edu]

Post by John A. Weeks III

Post by w***@aol.com
How important is it to have a formal office space for a small startup
with a handful of people, say less than 10?

1) I will not buy from anyone who works out of their house.
If they cannot have a business location, then they are not
serious about doing business with me.

I run my business partly out of my workplace, partly out of my home,
partly from our land (20 miles from home, 17 miles from work),
partly from my stand at the farmers market and partly from
whereever I happen to be at the time. - My workplace usually
gets hold of me even in the wee hours or the morning when they
need to. -
If you don't want to buy from me then don't. I am sole supplier
of a few tropical plant seeds (out of cloves for this winter, last
order
pending, reliable customer), but I can't afford to either quit my day
job
nor rent 'office space'. Farmers, especially those with small niche
markets
don't need office space.

Post by John A. Weeks III
2) I will not work for any company that is run out of
someone's house. I have had problems with that in the
past. Fighting spouses and nasty kids just add to it.
3) Working out of your house shows that business is not
your priority.

Or that you mostly work in your customer/clients' locations.
I don't care whether my plumber or my electrician has office space,
I care that I get a person answering the phone rather than somebody's
voice mail (unless it's a cell phone number, I happen to know most
of the prefixes around here) - and I don't care whether it's a spouse
or
a kid (as long as the kid is older than about 5)

Post by John A. Weeks III
4) People who work from home are highly inefficient. You
have to get people away from the telephone, the TV, the
relatives, the spouse, the lawn, the front door, and
away from E-bay in order to get them to focus. Many people
that I know that telecommute treat the telecommute day
as a free half or 3/4 day off out of sight of the boss.

My closest relatives (by marriage) are about 2700 miles
away. The TV has an 'off' switch, the lawn needed to be weedwacked
about a month ago (or two), never mind another day or three
(but yes, if it is dry on a Saturday (the only ay I really have more or
less
off) I will weedwack the lawn. Somebody else will answer the phone
and email can wait an hour or two (do you sleep? wha thappens to
you email when you sleep? I'm so far away in timezones from most
people I do business with that it rellay shouldnt matter).
- And, yes, my spouse works. He's usually out of the house most of
he day, as am I, as is the kid. Partly overlapping, partly not. -
What front door? (whoever used to come to it, other than the neighbors
who usually have good reason when they do, got used to that we don't
usually answer it unless we expect e.g. a pizza, so they don't show
up anymore)

Post by John A. Weeks III
5) Team building, corporate identity, and problem management
are all but impossible if people don't work in the same
location. Collaboration between employees also goes down
to very near zero when people cannot interact on a regular
basis.

this I agree with - to some extent.
I work in a small group. We largely do "each our own" work.
We interact when we need to, but - quite honestly - a lot
of that could be done by email (and we do, so we have a written record
as well)

John, your business is so different from mine that it doesn't surprise
me
that we go completely contrary an a large number of points.
This is why I said "it depends". It depends on what kind of business
you're in. It depends on where you are (if you are e.g. a carpenter in
a rural 5000 lot subdivision nobody cares whether you have an office
- you may still be the only carpenter there, but it you are in a big
town
with a lot of carpenters that's a different ballgame).
It depends on what you do. It depends on whether you have a niche
market cornered (it's a business, even if one of my niche markets makes
about $800/year. You most certainly can't afford office space on that.
(or to quit your day job)) - currently, if you want Tahitian Gardenia
seeds
you have to buy them from me or from somebody I supply.

The place I work for in my day job sometimes buys parts on Ebay.
Remember e.g. transputers? If you want spare boards these days
you have to go to Ebay (that's work, from a work location. VAX parts
and terminal servers may go similar ways).

Not everybody has cell phones glued to their ears and not everybody
goofs off whenever they can. And it may not depend on where they are
and
what they are apparently doing. I was once told by my boss "Maren,
you have to go and think, and I don't care where you think". He knew
that I was going to do a better job thinking when I was pulling weeds
than when I was sitting in front of an empty computer screen. The array
controller software that came out of it is still running several years
later. There's a difference between things you have to concentrate
on (like pulling weeds or weedwacking, or mowing the lawn, or washing
dishes) and things you have to think about (like array controller
software).
I have my best ideas to solve problems (or figure something out) when
I'm doing things that I have to concentrate on but not think about.

Completely different perspective.

Maren
Palms, Etc.: Tropical Plant Seeds - Hand-made Jewelry - Plants &
Lilikoi
http://www.jach.hawaii.edu/~maren/palms_etc/
(oh, yeah, and the UKIRT instrument software engineer - and a few
other things. Have a supply of fresh gardenia taitensis seeds but not
whole lot of Job's Tears at this point)

[Adam W. Montville]

Post by John A. Weeks III
1) I will not buy from anyone who works out of their house.
If they cannot have a business location, then they are not
serious about doing business with me.

Then again, someone who runs a business out of their house -- like a
consultant -- may not want to have someone with this attitude as a
client. So, it would probably work out. If you hired a consultant with
a downtown Chicago mailing address, but never had to go to their office,
would you really know the difference if they actually worked out of
their home?

Post by John A. Weeks III
2) I will not work for any company that is run out of
someone's house. I have had problems with that in the
past. Fighting spouses and nasty kids just add to it.

Be that as it may, not every house has fighting spouses and nasty kids
or dogs or cats or loud neighbors. Every situation is different, John.

Post by John A. Weeks III
3) Working out of your house shows that business is not
your priority.

I could not disagree more. I personally know several very successful
people who have operated professional businesses from their home because
they had no need to receive clients.

Post by John A. Weeks III
4) People who work from home are highly inefficient. You
have to get people away from the telephone, the TV, the
relatives, the spouse, the lawn, the front door, and
away from E-bay in order to get them to focus. Many people
that I know that telecommute treat the telecommute day
as a free half or 3/4 day off out of sight of the boss.

This is a problem with the people you know, and is not a general rule,
John. The telecommuters I know -- all of them -- are extremely
efficient. In fact, I would say they are more efficient than they are
on site. There are no people coming around to bother them about every
little detail -- people hesitate to pick up the phone, a telecommuter
can respond to e-mail as needed.

Post by John A. Weeks III
5) Team building, corporate identity, and problem management
are all but impossible if people don't work in the same
location. Collaboration between employees also goes down
to very near zero when people cannot interact on a regular
basis.

I can agree with the team building part and maybe even with the
corporate identity, but problem management, collaboration, and working
together are not near zero. Microsoft Communicator, Macromedia Breeze,
and even ICQ and other free IM applications can help with collaboration
(I'm purposefully avoiding security implications for the time being).
All that's needed is a good Internet pipe and the right software --
nothing more.

Operating a business from the home is possible and may even be the right
thing to do, depending upon the nature of the business and the practical
aspects of it.

[Jake]

Setting yourself up for problems, even if office space isn't feasible.
There's a saying that there's no such thing as a 50-50 partnership. If
you have 10 people with equal stakes, there will be problems, and
trusting everybody with that much independence is a bigger risk than
signing a lease on an office if you ask me.

[w***@aol.com]

Well, the 50-50 partnership that you brought up brings up some thing to
mind. I don't know if such an arrangement with the financiers are
ever done, but I think that having an equal stake would prevent one
party from dictating the decision making. While all parties would have
an interest in the profitability of the venture, no one is always going
to make the right decisions. Having a 50-50 stake would force the
parties to bring in a tiebreaker if there is a disagreement.

Any thoughts?

Post by Jake
Setting yourself up for problems, even if office space isn't feasible.
There's a saying that there's no such thing as a 50-50 partnership. If
you have 10 people with equal stakes, there will be problems, and
trusting everybody with that much independence is a bigger risk than
signing a lease on an office if you ask me.

[n***@hotmail.com]

John,

When you get a chance pick up a copy of the 'World Is Flat' by Thomas
Friedman.

Great book that every entrepreneur/business owner needs to read.

It may change your philosophy a little.

Post by John A. Weeks III

Post by w***@aol.com
How important is it to have a formal office space for a small startup
with a handful of people, say less than 10?

1) I will not buy from anyone who works out of their house.
If they cannot have a business location, then they are not
serious about doing business with me.
2) I will not work for any company that is run out of
someone's house. I have had problems with that in the
past. Fighting spouses and nasty kids just add to it.
3) Working out of your house shows that business is not
your priority.
4) People who work from home are highly inefficient. You
have to get people away from the telephone, the TV, the
relatives, the spouse, the lawn, the front door, and
away from E-bay in order to get them to focus. Many people
that I know that telecommute treat the telecommute day
as a free half or 3/4 day off out of sight of the boss.
5) Team building, corporate identity, and problem management
are all but impossible if people don't work in the same
location. Collaboration between employees also goes down
to very near zero when people cannot interact on a regular
basis.
-john-
--
======================================================================
Newave Communications http://www.johnweeks.com
======================================================================

[Adam W. Montville]

Post by w***@aol.com
Any thoughts?

There are probably three things that drive your decision to have formal
office space or not.

1. Your investors
2. Your clients
3. Your contributors

It sounds like you've got the third one pretty well worked out, but I
didn't pick anything up on the first two. I'm not the most experienced
businessperson, but I know enough to believe in the golden rule. If
your financial backers believe in formal office space, then you'll get
formal office space. If the business is the type that needs formal
office space to receive clients, then you'll get formal office space.

Otherwise, I would agree with you. Mature contributors, reasonable
investors, and no need to "impress" clients with a fancy office make for
a great telecommuting environment.

Post by w***@aol.com
Thank you in advance ...

No problem. Only hope I could provide some useful information.