To Office or not to Office...

As many people that work out of their home can tell you, spending months on end working long hours in your underwear is a dream at first, but can make the disentangling of "home" from "home/office" tough. Those with significant others will attest with particular clarity that, after awhile, separation of church and state begins to sound pretty darned nice.

As a result, we made the decision late in 2007 to find some humble little space to call "office." The reasons were obvious. We would all gain productivity and morale boosts by working in the same location and we could get out of the house without annoying every coffee shop owner in the Mission by spending entire days there for the price of a few measly lattes (or, in the case of Atlas Cafe, ginger lemonade...mmmm).

As luck would have it, a friend of mine from the very early days of StubHub recently founded an up-and-coming startup (Stitcher.com) and he had some extra space in their office near downtown. He offered a more than fair price, a month-to-month handshake agreement and the location was prime -- literally on Pier 9 -- so we decided to take the leap.

We moved in at the midpoint of January, 2008, and it proved to be one of the best decisions we could have made. This was particularly true for Keith and I, as we tend to be more chatty than most when we work. Gabe tends to prefer a quieter workplace, but that's what headphones are for, right?

Productivity and velocity instantly improved, and things really started rolling as we quickly signed on a fantastic financial and business building adviser in Bill Lentini of W.E.L. Enterprise, and began building our visual identity with Stanislav Udotov of D.Workz Interactive (more on this in a future post). We continued moving extremely well on the technical side of things and the views from the Pier were incredible! We could literally walk out a sliding glass door on to the pier, looking directly out onto the beautiful San Francisco Bay.

I'll be sure to post pictures of the location shortly for everyone's viewing pleasure.

With summer rapidly approaching and the San Francisco rain making way for sun and blue skies, we're now considering leaving our humble little office in favor of cafes with free wireless and outdoor seating. As a completely bootstrapped organization, keeping overhead low is key for our early success, and with a public launch quickly approaching, our hosting costs are guaranteed to be on the rise.

It will be sad to say goodbye to Noah, Peter and the Stitcher crew, the wonderful views of the Bay Bridge and my morning walks to work. That said, this is an easy way to cut some costs, get nice and tan while we work, and, honestly, our current spot won't comfortably hold the number of bodies we expect to need next winter. So onward and upward and we will definitely owe Stitcher a debt of gratitude for years to come for giving us an early boost at such a formative point in our development.

Thanks, Noah!

Acronyms FTW

What does the "GDK" in "GDK Software" mean?

Gabe, Dan, Keith, of course.

We let Gabe put his name first because it makes the initials sound like some new fangled software development kit. Plus he lobbied the hardest.