We’ve all heard about the amazing Facebook, Apple, and Google offices. Even if you don’t have their money, there are things every startup office needs. Some of the bigger offices have got everything you want to find in a workplace (and at home) that includes everything from gaming systems, to ping pong, air hockey, and napping rooms. We are sure there are employees that would rather live out of their company office than at home, especially when taking into account the gourmet food some of these places serve.
Spotify in NY
Evernote in Redwood City
Until you raise a few million dollars for your startup, you’ll probably have to settle for a bit less. Here’s our list of must-have’s for startup offices.
White Boards and Writing Spaces
Over are the days in which we used to show colleagues our ideas in notebooks. Gone are the days of wasting paper. You have got to attach a few white-boards to a few walls or have markers that can be used on glass in order to maximize creativity. Do you want employees to be confined to working in one area? No, you want to create a border-less work place that enables them to think of ideas in the break room, in the hallway, and in between.
General Assembly: walls for creativity
Pantry
Entrepreneurs, from all edges of the world, whether designers, developers, marketers, or finance gurus love coffee and/or getting their health on with fruit juices – and we all love something sweet every once in a while. You don’t have to have a kitchen in the office – it can understandingly be a bit pricey. What you do have to have is a coffee machine or two, and then either a mini fridge, juicer, and/or a blender.
Get coffee @WeWork (via dgrubs.com)
Big Computer Screens and Projectors
Go big or go home. It’s a statement we hear about “doing” whether in sports or in business. The same holds for our computer screens. At some point or another you are going to need or want to share something with employees or investors. Having a big computer screens around the office for daily use can only help.
Still not convinced you need this? You want the team to get together to create chemistry. What better way than watching a marathon of a new season of House of Cards, Silicon Valley, or Suits?
Liveperson HQ
Reading Corner
Squarespace
Ideas are the child of life. No one ever got an idea from sitting in a dark room (in that case, maybe the idea of a light bulb). Reading can span from novels, history, science-fiction, fiction, and to business. Every type of literature adds to the human brain and our ability as humans to create.
In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Unconventional Sitting Areas
Sometimes I don’t want to sit at my desk to work. For those of us that don’t have offices with a glimmering rooftop or balcony views, the next best thing is adding a few innovative sitting areas, or just chairs to the office.
Couchsurfing HQ
If you want to keep up with the rest of the competition sometimes you need to think outside of the box. Sitting outside of the box might just be what you need to reach your plateau-level of thinking.
At the end of the day, the only thing that is a must for startups to have in their offices are the right people. Ideas only get you so far. Great, innovative people are what take ideas and turn them into successful and prosperous businesses.
