Setting up a new office

AS I had mentioned in my previous posts we are setting up a new office. I am now a veteran in setting up offices. This is the third office I am setting up from scratch, and the second one for my self. So it makes it much more pleasurable.

Now that the lease is finalized (I mentioned we settled for a house) and the conversion of the house is almost complete. I have got the house wired for 15 people. Finally I am going to have an office room with a door that closes. So no more awkwardness's when conducting interviews.

I decided from day one to keep the conversions to a minimum. But electrical wiring was a necessity as no house comes with even placed electrical outlets every four feet!

But for the network connectivity it was going to be wireless all the way. And I was expecting one wireless router and a maybe a couple of access points to have the whole building covered. But I managed to locate the wireless router and the indoor unit for the broadband connection right on the middle of the building and even with a normal ‘g’ router I get a decent wireless signal throughout. And once I swap the ‘g’ router with a ‘n’ router, the signal will be much better.

Next on the card is some furniture that we need and things like a water cooler and crockery and cutlery, a coffeemaker, cleaning equipment, etc., which I will have to purchase over the weekend.

Finally, I have to arrange the janitorial/cleaning, and a security alarm. Then we are all set for the move. I am looking forward to the next week. It’s going to be the start of a brand new chapter in our business.

Diversity

We are getting into hiring mode again. The whole reason behind our decision to set up a new office was because we wanted to have more space to get more people in.

Looking back at my team one thing that is pretty obvious is that we lack diversity in certain dimensions. I mean, we come from different back grounds and are of different ages, have studied in different schools and universities and have different martial statuses. But there are a lot of common factors.

To start with, we are all guys. I had no qualms of hiring a female developers. I think, they make pretty good developers, on par with the males. Its just a pity that we don’t find that many ambitious females in development jobs these days. But the fact that we ended up with a all male team was purely due to the fact that at that point of time, the best candidates we had were males.

Secondly, we are all from the same ethnicity and religion. This once again was pure coincidence. I never discriminated against any candidate.

So now that I am going through the hiring process again, I some resumes from female candidates. And I see some more resumes from candidates of different ethnicities and religions. I am short listing them based on the merit of their resumes. I have so far short listed females as well as candidates from different ethnicities and religions. But proportionate to the total number, they are less. Hence, mathematically, they stand a lesser chance of getting in.

I have read a few articles lately about the diversity of teams and how that affects the quality of the team simply due to the fact that a diverse team has a richer outlook on issues. But, what I am not sure about is, should we bend the recruitment criteria simply because we want to add diversity in the team. Specially, when the recruitment criteria is purely based on merit (skills/experience/expertise/cultural fit)? I am open to any ideas.

Founders many hats

Being a company founder is one of the most diverse roles I have come to play in my life. This is simple because, being the founder requires you to make sure that everything goes on smoothly for the rest of the team and make sure the products get built and things do happen and make sure that the company complies with all legal obligations and attend to all the banking and funding and make sure the office and the toilets are clean and make sure the company culture is inculcated on to the team and…. you get the gist, the list goes on.

And since we are in the middle of an office move, I have to play some more additional roles such as a mover, cleaner, etc as well. The most time consuming part of it all is getting things set up prior to the office. Things like getting the place painted, wired, Internet connections setup, arranging movers, arranging security, are all falling on my shoulders. Since we have to move office with minimal disruptions to the normal workflow with minimum loss of productivity, I do not want to enlist the help of the team members. Apart from all these things to be done, there are a daily list of development/management tasks that fall on my shoulders which I am required to deliver at the end of the business day, in time for the start of the US business day!

Not that I am complaining, I am loving every moment of it. But nevertheless it is still hectic. I do get the support from my family. My wife and my father in law have been helpful beyond their limits. But still there are things that I have to do as I do not want to tax them too much amidst their busy schedules.

Where we stand now, it doesn’t make much sense to hire an admin person to take care of these tasks. We are going to hire some more people in to the company once we move. Hopefully one of them would be a person to run errands for the office. I am hoping to find a person who can wear many hats like janitor, helper, runner, cleaner. But until I find hire that person, I ‘m going to have to wear all those hats.

Office hunting–commercial space vs. converting a house

We have reached a point that the home office that we have been operating out of is no longer enough for us. Me and my team are currently cramped in there and it does not have any more space for any more people. And we are in a dire need to get more people or we are all going to work crazy hours for the next foreseeable future.
Moving to a dedicated office was not something which we planned to do anytime soon. A couple of months ago we had a plan to plan the move to an office in the second quarter of 2011. We never thought we would have the finances or work that would be required to have a dedicated office.
But as things moved rather well for us, and we beat our own prediction, we decided to advance the search for a new office to ‘now’. So the past month was spent hunting for an office.
One of the immediate decisions that we had to make was whether we were going to go for a commercial office space or find a house and convert it to an office. In Sri Lanka, you can convert a house to an office in most of commercial areas, if you can find a house that is, as long as you don’t disturb the neighbors. So our first decision was between an office and a house.
Both these options has their own pros and cons. And we wanted to make a fact based decision. I am going to share some of the things we considered and what made us reach our conclusion eventually.
Pros and Cons of a Commercial Office

Pros	Cons
Large open space	Higher cost per sq. ft.
More versatility in layout	Needs partitioning
Shared resources like janitorial/security services	Less privacy due to shared spaces
Higher availability of Air Conditioning/Back up power	Some expenses have to be borne like public spaces maintenance whether you like it or not.
Availability of high speed Internet in the building.

Pros and Cons of converting a house

Pros	Cons
High level of privacy. Ideal for a stealth mode start-up!	Conversion cost
Lesser cost per square feet	Backup power and central AC less likely
Your own parking/garden space	Have to have your very own security and janitorial services
You have private offices in the form of rooms	Depending on the location parking may be an issue
Pantry/Kitchen facilities	Depending on the location high speed Internet may be not available
Homely!!!	All landlords will not like to rent to an office
Can host office parties pretty easily.	Neighbors may complain
Bath/Showers are available if the staff works late.

Looking at the list we came up with the conclusion that we liked the pros of the house conversion better and that we can actually avoid certain cons, if we find the right building. What we wanted was house located in the central location, close to public transport and other amenities, which has a decent amount of reserved parking space available and with a small backyard (so we can have a company BBQ), which would be in s secure neighborhood so we can be pretty safe, probably which has AC fully or at least partially, and which is fairly big enough so we have room to grow and hopefully can accommodate us for the next 3 to 5 years at least.
For our luck, we found a location that met most of these criteria and had plenty of space to arrange in which ever way we wanted. Actually the house we found was a little bigger than what we needed, but it came at a price point which is something we can afford and we liked having the extra space for future expansion and staff recreation needs. We want to create a nice office atmosphere with some creature comforts for in house recreational facilities and this house has plenty of space for that.
It is in a secure neighborhood, so we wouldn’t have to worry about security initially. And it has all other amenities within walking distance.  The best part of the deal was a very amicable landlord. He agreed to our terms and was very supportive in getting the place ready for the conversion.
So now we are in the process of getting the place ready and hopefully we can move the operation to the new office starting from December.