First Floor Labs: Free Palo Alto Office Space For 6 Months
Finding office space is a pain. Upon completing AngelPad we were looking for office space to accommodate our growing team and started looking around San Francisco and the valley for great office space.
One requirement that Matt and I were looking for was office space that had a community of smart people we could learn from. We began asking other startups we knew what spaces they liked. Somewhere along the way someone suggested we check out First Floor Labs. An “incubator” that provides free office space for 6 months.
We applied, interviewed, and were accepted into the program.
Community
Upon our first day we met the other 15 companies we would be sharing office space with for the next 6 months. The amount of gray matter in the room was pretty incredible. We wanted to be surrounded by people whom we could learn from and we were served exactly what we were looking for.
The diversity of experience and tech backgrounds was amazing. There were startup newbies, seasoned veterans, funded and unfunded companies, and early Facebook and Google engineers. Once we all met, the community immediately began helping each other. The group didn’t care if you had built a successful startup before or if this was your first one. Everyone in the program was willing to help.
Along the way, some companies went on to raise financing. One company began fundraising in the middle of the program and sought advice and wisdom of others who had previously raised successful rounds. They said the help the rest of the community gave them was invaluable in helping with their fundraising process.
Don’t care about help with financing? How about a huge developer community. Mark Logan of Artillery would ask Matt Stump, my co-founder, incredibly technical questions all the time. The success of your current and future startups can be defined by the relationships you establish. Everyone in the FFL community will bend over backwards to help you be successful.
Buying Lunch
The program isn’t 100% free. Every Thursday there is a group lunch where all the companies sit around, eat lunch, and talk about what they accomplished for the week. If you become a member of First Floor you are required to purchase lunch twice while you are in the program. In the grand scheme of things, not a big deal.
This communal activity helps incubate the environment of knowledge transfer. You hear from other founders what worked or didn’t work regarding customer acquisition, fund raising, business models, and recruiting.
Location
The FFL office space is beautiful and located in Palo Alto and a 4-minute walk from the California Avenue CalTrain station. The office is located in the AOL Building on Page Mill Rd. Since you are in the AOL building you get access to the AOL gym, a cafe serving blue bottle coffee, an awesome coffee machine, and a kitchen filled with kegs (yep) and snacks.
All Good Things Must End
We are approaching our last day at FFL and we are sad to go, but our experience was incredible. Not only did we save a ton of our capital by not paying for office space, but we were surrounded by some amazing founders and great teams. The relationships we have established will last for a long time. It’s amazing how tight you become with people when you are with them for 6-months.
First Floor Labs are now taking applications for the Fall Session until Sept 9th. They accept teams of one to four, but are very accommodating when it comes to teams accepted that grow. If you get in the program, you will have office space from October through April. This is one of the easiest applications to fill out and only takes 10 minutes. Ask yourself: Is it worth 10-minutes to save a ton of capital and work with other amazing entrepreneurs.