My early stage startup has been looking for commercial real estate in New York City and the entire process is just broken. No transparency, no reputation system, no repeat game for brokers. I'm hopeful 42Floors can bring needed innovation to this industry.
Look, 42Floors is going to succeed not because their problem domain is the most interesting, or because their code is the prettiest around. The reason 42Floors is going to be successful is because of Jason's hiring practices and the entrepreneurial spirit of the staff.
If you read the hiring alerts that hit HN, the 42Floors are very well written, inspiring and they give a strong feel of the company culture. I admire this business a lot and I can't wait to see what they accomplish.
Keep rocking in the free world, and congratulations on securing additional funding.
We try really hard to make this a wonderful place to work. Of course, all companies try to do that. Why wouldn't they? Our claim is that we try to be specifically good for founders. 7 out of 10 of us code and have started a different company before.
It takes some extra effort to attract and retain people that are talented and experienced enough to start their own company whenever they want.
We're not perfect. It's no Potemkin Village. But we try.
I can't believe this site is still around. Yes RE tech is broken, but their overly exuberant posts about the geek culture of the office and hiring practices aren't going to fix that. The fact is, RE brokers like to do deals with each other, landlords trust their brokers, RE deals are quirky. The office market has been on a rocketship ride for the past three years, probably exactly as long as 42floors has been around, and 2MM SF is not a lot. What happens when office leasing momentum stops?
Totally fair. I may disagree, but it's a fair assertion that the commercial real estate community won't want a tech company getting involved. It's what I heard from virtually everyone when I talked about starting this company. And for months, that was the response that I got.
And then something funny happened. We started helping tenants find spaces. Real tenants, spending real money. Landlords got paid and brokers took commissions. It's amazing how seeing the product work changes people's minds.
We're not all the way there yet, for sure. We've barely begun. But we have nearly every top landlord on board--representing hundreds of millions of square feet. We work with every top brokerage, sending them leads that they make money on. And most importantly, we continue to serve the tenant, doing everything possible to make this experience better for them.
But I don't need to try to convince anyone--just keep watching. We had absolutely nothing 12 months ago. Just watch to see what we accomplish in the next 12.
This site seems short sighted. "Tech startups" will soon be an undesirable tenant. Landlords are looking for long-term leases from credit tenants (it's how you sell a building: the stable rent roll. No one wants unsustainable income from a hot sector). They are taking tech startups as tenants now because they overpay for space (with angel money), that would otherwise sit empty. Once the seed money dries up (or Round A, etc) startups will be unable to pay rent and landlords will soon lose their appetite for small short-term leases at above-market prices. Just wait to experience the herd mentality of real estate investors; obviously no one on your team seems to want to remember 2007? Why would they if they are on the payroll of a funded startup and no longer humping it out for RE commissions.
I have spent time on your site and it’s no less convoluted than loopnet, costar, or craigslist (and about 100 others). To me, 42Floors is a prime example of the recent startup mess. An over engineered site with too much funding that no one really needs.
Congrats on your enthusiasm and good luck with your pivot.
The current market is completely out of sync with the real value/costs of commercial property. The field has insulated itself from true price discovery for so long that it is starting to hemorrhage.
This isn't really about finding 'tech startups' a home, but rather that there's a chance that any new business starting up will need office space. And don't forget, current office-space tenants are going to start wondering why they're paying such inflated rates and the people across the way are paying 25-whatever% less for the same kinds of space.
Don't focus too much on new converts; think about everyone paying more for office space now than they need to.
> What happens when office leasing momentum stops?
The US economy will implode shortly thereafter because business creation and expansion has stopped.
It's easy to get jaded and pessimistic about businesses if you sole vantage point is HN, but the idea that new businesses and growth of existing ones will completely stop (and hence the demand for office space) seems pretty naive and myopic.
Since launching a year ago, 42Floors says that it has connected some 1,000 businesses with over 2 million square feet of office space
Assuming very conservatively that an office with 20 employees requires 4400 sq ft, 2million/4400=454. Isn't that an extremely low number for one year of operations?
"1,000 businesses with over 2 million square feet of office space."
They are connecting on average 2,000 sf per office, so they are smaller startups, probably averaging 10 employees.
>Isn't that low for one year of operations?
I'd be pretty happy with that ramp. Those are serious numbers in a short span of time. I worked in Multifamily brokerage so we sold apartment complexes rather than renting office space, but the average broker would sell between 1 and 5 assets a year.
Helping to facilitate 1,000+ transactions from a ramp of zero is awesome.
Not necessarily. With startups it's all about growth, and your calculation misses that completely. For example, your number implies they do a "sale" about once a day, however if they've seen good growth, they might have been doing one "sale" a week last year, and 30 "sales"/week today.
I know nothing about the industry, but I'd guess you'd have to compare that number against how many office placements traditional commercial real estate agents place. Using your number, that's still more than one company placed per day, which sounds pretty impressive to me.
This is a marketplace business. You can't expect explosive growth when dealing with a two-sided market. You have to grow solidly on both sides or you risk having too much supply or demand, and alienating your early customers.
Ever so slowly, but consistently...Get some supply, go find demand. Expand. Get some supply, go find demand. Lots and lots of small fly wheels to get going...
