42Floors (YC W12) Raises $12.3M Led By NEA
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
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If you read the hiring alerts that hit HN, the 42Floors are very well written, inspiring and they give a strong feel of the company culture. I admire this business a lot and I can't wait to see what they accomplish.
Keep rocking in the free world, and congratulations on securing additional funding.
We try really hard to make this a wonderful place to work. Of course, all companies try to do that. Why wouldn't they? Our claim is that we try to be specifically good for founders. 7 out of 10 of us code and have started a different company before.
It takes some extra effort to attract and retain people that are talented and experienced enough to start their own company whenever they want.
We're not perfect. It's no Potemkin Village. But we try.
And then something funny happened. We started helping tenants find spaces. Real tenants, spending real money. Landlords got paid and brokers took commissions. It's amazing how seeing the product work changes people's minds.
We're not all the way there yet, for sure. We've barely begun. But we have nearly every top landlord on board--representing hundreds of millions of square feet. We work with every top brokerage, sending them leads that they make money on. And most importantly, we continue to serve the tenant, doing everything possible to make this experience better for them.
But I don't need to try to convince anyone--just keep watching. We had absolutely nothing 12 months ago. Just watch to see what we accomplish in the next 12.
I have spent time on your site and it’s no less convoluted than loopnet, costar, or craigslist (and about 100 others). To me, 42Floors is a prime example of the recent startup mess. An over engineered site with too much funding that no one really needs.
Congrats on your enthusiasm and good luck with your pivot.
This isn't really about finding 'tech startups' a home, but rather that there's a chance that any new business starting up will need office space. And don't forget, current office-space tenants are going to start wondering why they're paying such inflated rates and the people across the way are paying 25-whatever% less for the same kinds of space.
Don't focus too much on new converts; think about everyone paying more for office space now than they need to.
The US economy will implode shortly thereafter because business creation and expansion has stopped.
It's easy to get jaded and pessimistic about businesses if you sole vantage point is HN, but the idea that new businesses and growth of existing ones will completely stop (and hence the demand for office space) seems pretty naive and myopic.
Assuming very conservatively that an office with 20 employees requires 4400 sq ft, 2million/4400=454. Isn't that an extremely low number for one year of operations?
They are connecting on average 2,000 sf per office, so they are smaller startups, probably averaging 10 employees.
>Isn't that low for one year of operations?
I'd be pretty happy with that ramp. Those are serious numbers in a short span of time. I worked in Multifamily brokerage so we sold apartment complexes rather than renting office space, but the average broker would sell between 1 and 5 assets a year.
Helping to facilitate 1,000+ transactions from a ramp of zero is awesome.
Remember that in the early stages exponential growth looks worse than even linear growth. (example: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=y%3D1.5%5E%28x-3%29%2C+...)