That would be a very strange detail to leave out. But sure, it’s the only way their comment makes any sense.
Otherwise, spending investor money on office space seems like a perfectly normal thing to do. The $ amount described doesn’t seem too unusual for the area, and a house might offer significant advantages over traditional office space for a startup that is working on cars.
Most of these seem like separate issues. Founders living in the office is weird regardless of it being a “ten million dollar house”.
> Is it centrally located for commuting workers and testing sites or the personal preferences of the founders?
The house in question was probably the comma.ai office in West Portal, SF (right next to the West Portal Station). Draw your own conclusions regarding commutes, it’s a pretty central location.
> Is it scalable for a growing company?
Offices are rarely very scalable, you just move somewhere else once it no longer works.
Seems like setting up in houses is a common pattern for Bay Area self driving car startups then. I’d guess that the availability of decent office space with workshop bays is essentially nonexistent
Not in the South Bay where this company was. Plenty of machine shops, mechanics, etc with workshop bays imo. What was true at the time was that investors were throwing money hand over fist at self driving car startups, even to young founders fresh out of college. I would not discount the psychological appeal to a 20-something founder with millions of dollars a to burn to set up shop in a mansion.
The point of my original comment is not to say that doing so is objectively bad, but I had just left an abusive startup run by a young and inexperienced startup and I wanted something more stable. I ended up getting a job at a Toyota research branch in a boring office park and I played with a cute little robot. It was just what I needed at the time.
> * Are the founders or employees living in their office?
This is common for startups in the seed stage. I don't personally recommend it but I wouldn't consider it to be a red flag for a pre-series-A startup.
> * Is there adequate parking or public transportation?
There is practically no public transportation in the bay area. No, there is never enough parking.
> * Is it legal? Does it conform to HOA and city requirements?
Nobody takes a shit about HOAs. Startups exist to drill square pegs into circular holes. Hell, I'd love to create a startup to help people get rid of HOAs.
You get it. It felt like they were inexperienced and burning cash unnecessarily. I had just left a very unprofessional and in hindsight abusive startup and I didn’t want to walk in to another “boys clubhouse” situation.
Anther explanation could be that many startups try to give out the vibe of "just look at how much investor cash we can burn, come join in on the fun!", and are very open about that. I can understand why you wouldn't want to join such a company, even though that is exactly what many others are looking for.
Sure, but now we’re just guessing. We could go on all day listing bad things founders could do, but the original comment simply doesn’t go beyond implying that it’s bad to use a $10M house in Silicon Valley as an office.
The price mentioned isn’t anything unusual even for fairly early stage startups in the Bay Area.
Well, when humans try to explain a culture that was alien to them they tend to use examples from that encounter. I can very well see the founder proudly saying "Look at this cool 10 million dollar office we have!", and then this guy latched on to that statement as being representative of their culture. When I work at an office I don't know what it costs, I doubt he would have looked it up if they didn't tell him, so this explanation seems likely to me. Of course to you that is not a good representation of the culture, so you protest here. Which is good, now we all know a bit more how to state things so others can understand it.
We're not guessing, at least not randomly, we're using intuition. Applying experiences and subtle cues to create something more educated than a random guess.
I see you have something like a half dozen comments now trying to rationalize this all cross the comment section, but like yeah renting out a mansion for your startup does send out a "vibe".
If you don't realize that a) you're probably who they're looking for, and b) you probably have some room to grow when it comes to picking up on subtext.
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Not everything in life can be quantified in a neat little bullet pointed list. But part of being an experienced person is being able to pick out the more subtle aspects of situations.
To me a mansion as a startup HQ screams tech-bro 24-7 party culture with some major WLB issues.
And again, it's not like using a mansion magically causes that means that, but it strongly implies it.
It's like walking into an office and seeing everyone in suits and ties vs seeing everyone in sweatpants and baggy tees.
Technically the choice of clothes does not directly force you to behave a certain way, but your intuition should tell you that those are two very different cultures, and it should tell you a little bit about each.
tl;dr Ignoring intuition because it's not backed by unequivocal fact is not a super-power, and it's not really productive.
> If you don't realize that a) you're probably who they're looking for, and b) you probably have some room to grow when it comes to picking up on subtext.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d never work with the manchildren at comma.ai. I’ve interacted extensively with George Hotz in the past and he’s certainly not a person I’d want to spend any time in the same room with.
I just don’t see any issue with their choice of office space, it just seems like a perfect fit for their business.
> To me a mansion as a startup HQ screams tech-bro 24-7 party culture with some major WLB issues
Where else would you put your car tech startup in SF? Software engineers aren’t going to work out of a garage, and good luck finding a traditional office space with decent facilities for working on cars.
> Where else would you put your car tech startup in SF? Software engineers aren’t going to work out of a garage
At the same time as the $10m mansion place I interviewed for a self driving truck company and they had their office located in an industrial park in a shop that looks like it used to be an auto mechanic with upstairs offices. That place was fine but I didn’t feel like working for a 22 year old CEO who had just left college. Back in 2016 investors were dumping money on self driving car startups but I wanted something stable.
> Where else would you put your car tech startup in SF? Software engineers aren’t going to work out of a garage, and good luck finding a traditional office space with decent facilities for working on cars.
In…a garage. I’m serious - there are spaces big enough in SOMA and other places that can fit a garage space plus open office space plus some conference rooms (I’ve worked in several of them).
To me it seemed more expensive than renting a boring office building with few workshop bays with roll top doors. So to me, they were burning unnecessary cash and this made it seem like they were inexperienced. The CEO was some university researcher who had done some self driving car work and then had investors throw I think more than $10m at him. I just got the sense that this guy was feeling flush with cash and wanted to burn some on a luxurious multi level mansion with a pool and a hot tub.
I had just gotten out of a startup where the guy treated the place like his personal clubhouse and had a really controlling and abusive attitude. I wanted to steer clear of any company that seemed inexperienced.
It apparently doesn’t look that way to you, but that’s how it looked to me and I see other people here can relate.
No, I just meant that they were using some extravagant home in the hills as an office rather than doing the less exciting thing of renting an office in one of the many office parks. It felt like they were wasting money on a lavish lifestyle. To me it seemed like an indicator of a lack of prudent business sense.
I had also just left a startup where the CEO treated the company like some boys clubhouse and I did not want to get in to a situation like that again.
