As the Cloudant Founder (YCS08) that opened the Seattle office, I really enjoy the diversity of this comment stream. I wrote this post because I thought it would provide some insight into our company, and because others may find it useful. We have been exceptionally busy building product, revenue and team. After fiddling with the prototype desk in my backyard, we ended up with something economical, fast, ergonomic and flexible. You may say we have a "scalable" desk design.

A bit more about the desks, to address some of the comments below. We can move the desks around easier than "L" shaped ikea frames and have tried multiple positions. I prefer to gaze at a brick wall for focus, others like to gaze out the window or into the room. The desks can be moved in the center of the room and "stacked" like a big lab bench for group hacking. They can also be assembled into mega "L" shaped desks if you need to, say, sort through 2 years of receipts. Getting the height right was a big challenge, and we didn't scrimp on chairs. We also have screws in the feet to adjust the height of the desks if needed. Laptop heat is a non-issue so far, and they don't require coasters.

Per the bigger picture, I'm glad to discuss/listen on the relative merits of team building, brand identity/pride, and balancing running a surprisingly large global data service if that's of interest. We did this for many reasons, but a major portion was to have some fun in the (exceptionally rare) off hours. I would say that building something mechanical and getting the chance to do manual labor is all too rare in my life, and something from which I derive deep satisfaction.

Also, I can't say this enough -- we got a huge assist from friends and family of Cloudant.