Heard a founder at a coffee shop on South Congress talking about their first office

They were telling someone they rented a 400 square foot spot above a bike shop back in 2015 for under a grand a month. Now their team is looking at spaces that cost ten times that. It really hit me how much the baseline cost of just having a desk here has changed in less than a decade. I remember when you could bootstrap something small without needing a huge funding round first. Does anyone else miss when the overhead to start a tech thing in Austin felt more accessible?

4 comments

4 Comments

the_jennifer3mo ago

But is the real barrier the cost of the desk or the expectation of what a startup should look like? I see plenty of people building real businesses from kitchen tables and coffee shops, they just aren't the ones featured in the news. The high cost seems tied to a specific, and maybe optional, kind of scaling.

paige3313mo agoMost Upvoted

Maybe we're also paying for the idea that work can't look like real life anymore lol

rowan_thomas841mo ago

Kept my home office simple for years with a hand-me-down desk and a lamp from a garage sale. Nobody ever asked to see my setup, they just cared about the work getting done on time. Turns out a quiet corner and reliable internet matter way more than furniture that looks good in photos.

jade5173mo agoMost Upvoted

That's a good point about the news only showing one kind of success. Do you think the real cost is in trying to look like those featured companies before you even have the business to support it? It feels like paying for a stage set before you know your lines.