Hot Seat

Chapter 6. Spending Money

It took Ontela a long time to get an office. We worked out of my basement for the nine months prior to financing. As we did, we poked fun at more profligate startups, like my friend Robbie’s company Cozi, who had moved directly into nice offices after incorporating.

Once our financing closed, we were still loath to “up our burn rate” by committing to real estate. We worked with Washington Partners to find something cheap, and finally stumbled into a bizarre cubbyhole of a space on the very edge of Seattle’s Pioneer Square, in the shadow of CenturyLink Field (then called Qwest Field), from which we could hear the shouts of fans on game nights as we worked late.

The office was shaped like a lowercase letter “b,” with the circle part filled in—a long, narrow hallway, leading to a single, modestly sized room. And then we noticed: our productivity went up. A lot.

When we’d been in my basement, we were a lot more distractible. Sitting virtually on top of one another had yielded benefits in collaboration, but often at the expense of productivity. The highest price had been paid by our CTO, whose measured output nearly doubled when we got real office space and a few feet between desks.

At the same time we were suffering in my basement, Cozi had set up shop in the Smith Tower, a monument to early Seattle industrialism. Built by L.C. Smith, a magnate of typewriter¹ and rifle² fame, the monument loomed above the Seattle skyline as the tallest building ...