Hyper Growth at the Hill

Up until last Thursday, when we've wanted to get together as a company for a meeting or for training, we've had to use makeshift space in our offices.  Our offices were opportunistically leased from a company that had too much space in the bad market of 2009.  We took it furnished and finished, and it was much nicer than we probably would have been willing to spend money on.  But it was the back office space of the prior tenant, so it didn't come with some of the basics you expect in an office, like a reception area or conference rooms.

For the past year, as we've grown from about 40 people when we first moved into this space, we've met in various places.  We moved a couple of cubicles to storage, and stuck a reception desk in the open space and a few chairs for guests to sit in.  Candidates interviewing for jobs have had the very real experience of knowing what it would be like to work here, because the waiting area chairs were sandwiched between cubicles occupied by people doing their jobs.   Guests have become part of our world by virtue of the fact that they were seated in the middle of the main thoroughfare through the offices.  And we've packed people into conference rooms far smaller than we had any business using for that large a group.

Staff meetings were once held standing around the reception desk, then they moved into the more open space of the next floor we took.  Eventually, and for many months, they took place in the kitchen we share with the prior tenant.  The last time we met in the kitchen, we had people standing in the hallways outside the doors to the kitchen.

So, it was with much excitement that we held our first meeting in our newly completed training/meeting room.  This is a huge room, that, with our new conference room and reception area, takes up one third of our main floor.  It is filled with stackable, foldable tables and chairs.  For our first meeting, we put out every chair, and filled the room.  We also filled the chairs.  Every one of them.

In other words, we're already at capacity.

Growth is a great thing, and we're excited to be assembling our team so quickly.  But it is a little daunting, as the one who signs the leases, to know that we already need more space.