Rofo caught up with Roost.com CEO Alex Chang to get the latest on life at the office. The residential real estate search engine will soon be vacating their executive office suite South of Market to move in to a Class A high rise in San Francisco’s financial district. Chang shares his perspective on the beauty of the short-term sublease and the increasingly important value he places on location and office ambiance.

Roost.com Office Space Interview with Roost CEO Alex Chang

Roost.com Office Space Tour

Roost is a search engine for homes. Roost is a way for the average consumer to find their next home to buy, and what makes us special is we give the consumer a really easy and fun way to search through great, comprehensive information that they can trust. So we partner with local Multiple Listing Services, and as a result the consumer gets access to all the current listings as opposed to a portion of the market.

How many employees do you have?

16

Tell me a little bit about about the office you’re in now:

We’re in a Regus office space in downtown San Francisco. It’s a big, open floor plan feel with a few semi-private offices but there are no ceilings, the walls are very thin so you can hear everything that’s going on in the office, which is good we like that environment. It’s on Folsom between third and fourth, which is a terrific location on a bunch of levels.

Tell me why you like the location:

The things that were important to us when we were looking for office space were really location so that it was convenient for our folks from all over. We’ve got a bunch of people in the east bay, south bay and people in the city. We’re three blocks from BART, Muni and a pretty easy walk from Caltrain so it’s a good commuting location and it’s a good walking distances to places to eat and bars. It’s just very convenient.

Tell me about the executive suite experience. What are the pros to it and what are the drawbacks you’ve found:

It’s like staying in a hotel. It’s great, the space is nice, it’s a great location, we have a lot of flexibility in the lease period which I wanted to have as much optionality in the term of the agreement as we could have so it’s great on all those levels. It’s a little bit like a hotel in terms of a lot the services are packaged with it and you tend to pay a little bit of a margin for those services. But it’s been a good experience.

Moving? What prompted your decision to move?

I think a couple of things. First of all, we felt like we started to outgrow this type of floor plan. We wanted a floor plan that would grow more with us. And then secondly, some of the things we’re missing here are our own private conference rooms, our own private kitchen, and we wanted to get in to that type of stuff.

When you moved into this space, how many employees did you have? What were your plans for growth?

We’ve probably got just about the same number of employees than we had when we moved in and that’s another reason to move is so that we have more space to scale. Here, we could add 4-5 more folks but not much beyond that. So we need to be able move into a place where we have a little more long-term flexibility.

How did you find the space you’re moving to?

Broker. We used a commercial broker. We’ve used the same couple brokers, this will be our third office space with them. One at a previous start-up and then this company (Roost) was in another space before this.

Can you tell me a little about the space you’re moving to and how it’s different from this space?

It’s class A building. It’s actually the McKesson building at One Post. We’re in a sublease there. The building itself sits on top of the BART and Muni stop which is terrific for all our guys. You don’t have to brave the elements if it’s raining and there’s no walk so that a huge selling point. It’s also a great location in terms of restaurants and bars and all that stuff. The space itself, it has a large war room area that we can use to do big conferences, and the rest of it is open space. So it’s just a nice mix of individual and group space.

How long is that sublease?

Two years. I’m a huge fan of having flexibility. I don’t like to lock into a long term as much as I can possibly avoid that because who knows, we might 10x in size if we really get it right and I don’t want to be locked into a contract that I can’t easily affect.

Tell me about professional services, experts you used along the way…

Our CFO has typically led the charge on looking for space, and we’ve used commercial brokers every time. It’s just felt like a more efficient way to go. We’ve looked a little bit on our own. But typically, in the commercial market, I’ve found that the commercial brokers have access to information quicker and have a better landscape than you would if you didn’t use one. And we always put the contracts through out attorney.

Who is organizing the move into your new space?

A little bit of me, a little bit of our CTO, a little bit of our CFO. We’re a start up so we do it all. I’m taking out the trash too.

Were there any lessons learned from your previous move into this space that that you turned to when looking for this next space.

I’d say three things. First of all, I mentioned flexibility before. When we moved into this one, most of the office spaces on the market, really wanted a three, four, five year deal. I just felt like that was a bad move. I felt like I didn’t want to get locked in for that long and I’m glad I didn’t. I’m glad that I made sure that we had flexibility after 18 months or so because it’s really to know what the future’s going to hold. So we made sure to do that again and did not go to anything that was going to be a three-year deal.

I think the other thing that you underestimate is what’s the day-to-day work environment in the office going to be like. So, as much as an open floor plan is great, it’s also loud. And I don’t know that I’d pictured that coming in so I thought a little more about that when we started looking for more space. What was it actually going to be like when we lived in the space.

And then Transportation. Again, I think if you look at the progression of office space that I’ve moved into with companies, it’s gotten more and more convenient every time. It’s hard to overestimate the value of convenience for the people on your team especially if they they’re working long hours.