JIM BOOTH • Blog

Startup Office Space in Boulder…

Startups need to be scrappy, frugal, and sensible about their choice of office space. Shoot too high and everyone questions why you're wasting money on high-falutin office rent. Shoot too low and people will wonder whether or not you're a day away from shuttering the business. Anyway, choose wisely…here's our story of finding office space in downtown Boulder.

In April we sold the assets of our last business, Zuzingo, to Lifepics in Boulder. After the sale, Paul Berberian, Steve Tomsic and I decided to stay together to start our next gig – this prompted a relocation to a new space in Boulder.

The office search turned out really well for us – we spent a day combing Boulder looking for the best "home boy" deal we could find. Our search consisted of walking into any building we thought we'd want as an office. Half of the places we found weren't officially for rent, but after talking to the tenants we found that we could jack ourselves into the space.

All of the offices we looked at were named so we could quickly discuss the pros/cons of each. The "Boardroom" was a very nice windowless conference room in One Boulder Plaza in Class A space. A nice room, but who wants to be in a snazzy boardroom that has no character and the rent is way too high? We were after a smoking deal in a place that had character. Class A space was overkiil.

The "Old Google Digs" on Pearl near Starbucks was another space we considered. We approached the landlord and said we only wanted a few offices and would vacate as soon as he was able to lease the place to real tenants. The Old Google Digs were in a great location on Pearl, had some character and felt like it could be a great home boy deal since the place was a semi-mess post Google move out. The deal ended up going south though when the landlord got snooty and said he didn't need or want temporary squatters.

Next up was the "Glass Office" on Walnut – the location was okay and still in downtown Boulder, but a bit out of the way. Rent here was a smoking deal, but the downside was it was a street level office corner with a huge amount of glass which and didn't provide a lot of privacy. The "Glass Office" ended up being our backup space and we've since recommended it to several Techstars companies and a few others.

The "Green Spot" on 1200 Pearl ended up being the space we settled on renting. The "Green Spot" was in a smoking location right on Pearl/Broadway near Powell's Candy Shop and across from Paradise Bakery. The place used to be a deli called the Green Spot that was closed down when the owners were arrested for dealing drugs out of the deli (we're still looking for any hidden stash the cops may have overlooked). The business was truly an interesting entrepreneurial gig geared to the Boulder community. I mean who wouldn't want to eat a sandwich and smoke a bone, right? Anyway, the upsides to the Green Spot is that it was huge, ridiculously cheap because virtually no retail client wants to rent it, and had the right type of scrappy feel you need to have when starting a business. It had lots of free folding tables for desks, a drink cooler, sandwich making equipment, and a cool green color scheme. Visually the space has the effect of making most people chuckle when they visit – upon entering most folks smile and immediately ask what's the story is behind our office.

So stop by and say hello if you're in our neck of the woods on Pearl – we'll give you a tour of the digs, make you a sandwich, and then get down to talking business.

Sandwich making area...

Makeshift Conference Room & Drink Cooler...

Desks...

Back stretcher that doubles as a bed for Paul...

Front Entrance...

Startup Compensation…

Read a great post by Tony Wright – A Newbie's Guide to Startup Compensation (or "Stock Options Will Make Me Rich). Anyone thinking about joining a startup should give this a read as it answers the basics and provides a framework for evaluating compensation. The post links out to the piece below by VentureHacks, which lays out typical ranges for option grants after Series A funding. For a VERY thorough scrub of the entire topic I recommend Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson's compensation area on their Ask the VC blog.

Paycheck Players…

Sandi Mays, Chief of Staff, at the Zayo Group has a great post he's titled "A Paycheck Player." The short story on Sandi's post is that he recently came across a paycheck player at Zayo – someone who was in it for the money, felt entitled to move up in the organization, yet cared little about the company. The phrase comes from the movie Jerry Macquire where Tom Cruise acting as an agent to Cuba Gooding tells him the reason he hasn't been successful is because he doesn't play with his heart and is simply a paycheck player. I've come across a few paycheck players in my time and have had to take them aside and give them the cold hard facts.

As Sandi points out, in sports calling someone a paycheck player is the biggest insult you can offer a person.  In business, it should also be perceived as a big insult.  Why show up and go through the motions until the better job comes along?  If you are going to come to work … be a leader.  Put your heart into it.

And for those of you that loved the movie, here's the original conversation Jerry Macguire had with Rod Tidwell…

Alright. Here's why you don't have your ten million dollars yet. You are a paycheck player. You play with your head. Not your heart. In your personal life? Heart. But when you get on the field - you're a businessman. It's wide-angle lenses and who f@#!d you over and who owes you for it. That's not what inspires people.  I'm sorry, but that's the truth, can you handle it?  Just a "question" - Rod.  Between friends.

 

 

Zenie Bottle lives on as Spark…

Lifepics just re-branded and launched our ZenieBottle.com technology under a new brand name – Spark. Check out the screenshot below and this Lifepics link to see the new site. This is a big deal for all of our former ZenieBottle.com users who created virtual collages and were worried that they would be gone forever. Their collages now live on via Spark and won't vanish into ether.  Even for me it was a relief to be able to tell my 5 year old son not to get upset because the "Bummer Head" bottle he created for his 2 year old sister was not "lost."

Our former engineer, Justin Shacklette, joined Lifepics in April when we sold the technoogy and did a great job adding new features and re-branding the site. I'm really happy to see the technology live on with a company that can drive sales and provide the resources needed to take it to the next level.

For those that don't know anything about Lifepics – they're located in Boulder and have 20,000 retail locations that use their picture processing technology. Customers include large chains and small picture processors like Mike's Camera in Boulder.  A retailer's customers can upload pictures to the store branded Lifepics managed site, get their pictures processed, and then pick them up in over 20K locations. Lifepics dominates their market and our virtual collage technology will be a real asset to their portfolio.

Last week the Zenie Bottle team – Paul Berberian, Steve Tomsic, Meghan Siegel, Justin Shacklette and myself all had a few drinks at Connor O'Neills with the team at Lifepics to celebrate the successful transition and launch.

Taking a Break…

I've taken a little holiday from blogging this summer, but just decided to come back. Actually I just transferred some of my blogging time to keeping a handwritten journal for the family. The journal is pretty cool – an old black composition book like we all had in school.

My kids are young (son is 5 and daughter is 2.5) and I want them to have great memories of growing up and what we did together as a family. We also keep a "time capsule" that we put stuff into for them – the only problem with the time capsule is room. What started as a big single time capsule for each child has now grown into multiple boxes. I can't imagine how many boxes we'll have when they're both 18 years old. I'm doing this because as the last of 4 kids my family kept very few childhood relics – mom was way too busy keeping up with the four of us.

Zenie Bottle Postmortem…

It's been a particularly difficult past few weeks. Zuzingo, the startup company I moved to Colorado to help launch, decided to shut down operations as of April 1st. The short of it was that we weren't able to gain the kind of traction we needed to be successful. So we stopped short of our goal knowing that the chances of success were small given our existing funding level and runway.

Zenie Bottle wasn't a homerun, but it also wasn't a complete goose egg either.  We were able to sell ZenieBottle.com to a local company who can re-purpose the technology and utilize it in their industry. In selling the technology we were able to avoid the goose egg that plagues most failed startups and give our investors an interesting and real upside in another growing local company.

I won't delve any further into the details - Paul Berberian, our CEO, does a great job of giving a very honest and straight forward assessment in his recent blog post.

So I'm now back in the startup mode – looking for a new business idea. Our team is small and hungry -- it includes Paul Berberbian , Steve Tomsic, and myself.

Big Firm Expertise – Small Firm Accessibility & Creativity

I almost always prefer small great companies that think big. Right now I'm looking for a interactive marketing and blogger outreach company.  I want to find a small company that has big firm expertise combined with small firm accessibility and creativity. Having experience in the youth market (13 – young 20's) is also important.

So I'm on the hunt – it takes time to find these kind of people because they come through word-of-mouth and are truly diamonds in the rough. You know the profile – super talented exec with gobs of experience and success at the big "soul sucking" company leaves, starts his own boutique firm, and decides to do something unique and cool on his own. Finding these types of people is a real joy for me because they can have a huge impact on your business.

So if you know of anyone that fits the bill, let me know...

Interestingly enough, I apply the same selection criteria to restaurants, contractors, etc.  Seth Godin has an old post, Small is the new big, that ties into this post perfectly.