Alex Theodore, co-founder of Fracture, a photo-printing startup based in Gainesville, Fla., once dreamed of furnishing his new headquarters with the kind of chic décor that fills gleaming Silicon Valley offices like Google and Facebook. But after glancing at his books, he went dumpster diving. “I don’t like spending money, and if it was between R&D and having nice, fancy desks, it was R&D,” says Theodore. He opted to prop his desk on cinder blocks. One colleague began using a plastic lawn chair.
But Theodore’s since taken out the trash. Fracture was one of five winners of a small-business office makeover competition held last year by the furniture maker Turnstone, a Steelcase (SCS) brand, which provided $25,000 worth of new furnishings to winners out of a field of more than 200 applications. (Turnstone’s next competition begins tomorrow.)
While the submissions were a rogue’s gallery of unsightly interior designs, the Turnstone executives were impressed with the level of ingenuity they saw regarding makeshift furniture. ”You see adaptations,” says Kevin Kuske, Turnstone’s general manager. “When someone takes cinder blocks and puts a door on top of it, that means they couldn’t find what they wanted easily, and for the price they wanted. Because entrepreneurs are prototypers, they’ll just make it. We can get product ideas from that.”
We asked Kuske for more observations of startup offices:
- Startups seem reluctant to buy furniture. One company had only one chair, says Kuske. Whoever sitting in it would try not to get up in fear of losing the seat and joining colleagues set up on the floor, lying on mats, and perched on window sills.
- What little money the startups have seemed to be going toward booze and junk food. Several of the small businesses invested in snack bars or full kitchens where people could prepare weekly meals for the office. There were also lots of wine and a kegerators.
- Startup workers crave privacy. Kuske says a number of companies had purchased phone booths or created ones out of dry wall. He also saw multiple screens or large monitors up to 40 inches acting as walls. Other companies implemented “do not disturb” codes (one was based on whether you had one, two, or no earbuds in, for instance).
- Startup workers have really, really fancy bicycles. While the offices might not provide chairs for every worker, many provided parking spaces for high-end bikes, some costing as much as $3,000, which were too nice to lock up outside.
- About half of the entrants had pets roaming freely. Usually it was a worker’s dog, cat, parrot, or hamster. Some even built homes for the animals—including habitrails—in the office.
