Rofo moved to its 5th office space in our 2 year history last week. Those office spaces include a free conference room at a nearby university, an incubator space (kind of) that was occupied by about six other tech companies, a furnished rent by the cube month to month sublease space in San Francisco’s Soma neighborhood, a shared office space in the Bayview and now a direct lease in downtown San Francisco through Hines.

This latest move was significantly different than the previous moves on many levels. I’m certain that our experience is not unique but, nonetheless, worth describing in detail. Hopefully this can serve as a rough guide for other businesses on the move or considering a move.

Our lease situation prior to the move:

Up until the move we were occupying shared space (the other company was the actual tenant and was on the lease). We were well aware that our sublandlord was considering a future move and they had been in the market looking at office spaces for about 6 months with a tenant rep broker. They eventually settled on a space, made an offer, negotiated business terms and received a lease. The plan all along was to move to this new location in Soma and continue to reap the benefits of sharing someone’s space, furniture, services and equipment. However, at the time that the lease was being negotiated and the space layout and tenant improvements were being planned, we all came to the sudden realization that Rofo was not going to fit in the new space (based on some of our recent headcount). Our issue now was that we had already given notice to the landlord of our current space which meant we only had about 4 weeks to solve our own office space requirements.

Our search process:

Sometimes I think it was actually a blessing in disguise to only have 4 weeks to move. The commercial real estate market in the Bay Area (like every other market in the US) is soft. Meaning the available office space alternatives far exceed the demand. Because of this there are many spaces to consider. Fortunately for us, our entire staff was in agreement on location and amenity requirements. We wanted to be near public transit (buses and trains), parking was not important, and we wanted to be close to food and coffee shops (our prior space had none of that). Based on those criteria we knew, generally, where we wanted to be.