Is it important to your business whether you work out of an office or remotely? This episode offers advice that's tailored to your business needs, emphasizing the importance of considering the type of business you run, and its goals. And while remote work took hold during the pandemic, it is still apparent that humans crave interaction and connection. Having a physical office space can provide a space for networking and collaboration, increasing the likelihood of productive relationships.

I've heard different arguments.

Paul.

Can a startup be a resounding success without an office, meaning

a purely remote only startup?

Yes.

Objectively, yes.

I'm sure that could work, right?

Um, it, I, I, look, I think it's, let me be the.

Distinguished older business thing person, which

is,

business thing.

uh, it depends, right?

So I saw somebody on, um, Mastodon today, uh, say, you know, that their,

their team is starting to get together and do its planning in person.

People come together and plan and then they go off and work, right?

And I think that that's an interesting dynamic to like, to get a clear dynamic

as to what requires people to be in a.

Places matter.

They're social.

If a, if a business is a, I think if a business is like a purely abstract

cloud service that is turnkey and that you never interact with a human I, I

think building that remotely is fine.

Yeah.

I think if we had tried to build a.

Exactly.

If we tried to build a services firm, an agency purely remotely,

it would've been a disaster.

It wouldn't have worked.

It's challenging.

Right.

And so I think that what

we, we were very remote worth noting, but the core of the

business was in New York City.

Look, everybody's looking for everything to be monolithic all the time.

Everybody wants one answer to everything.

Yeah.

So the question is, what kind of business are you building

and what are the goals for it?

What social interactions are gonna allow it to be the most productive?

Mm-hmm.

, then you decide your office structure.

Mm-hmm.

. So for us, I think that the better deal is, you know, what is a board?

A board is a product about communities and groups working together.

How are we gonna sell and market a board?

Well, we'll do YouTube videos and we'll do this, that and the

other, but we'll also have events.

We'll bring people in, we'll have enterprises that we want to talk to.

We hope that they wanna buy a site license.

Mm-hmm.

. point we don't know.

In fact the kinds of, okay, so you're touching on two things.

One is people working together at a startup

and then there's the interaction with the outside

world, which also happens at an

We, we, and we are biased because we're in one of the most

dynamic cities in the world, but we often used to say, and we want to

recreate that again, which is that train terminal where everyone flows through.

The best part about what we were in an agency to me, was

always that we would have the big bank and the, the transit agency

would kind of be at the same party

and the nonprofit.

That's right.

And out of that there would be conversations and introductions and

things would move along in a broad way.

And that's, I want that back.

I do want that

back.

Good chaos.

Good chaos.

A space where you can host people.

The ability to, um, do a seminar and training, things

like that are really important.

What's the point of all this, Paul?

What happened to like turnkey product led growth services where people get a

URL and fall in love with the software and then get their credit card out?

Why they, why do they need to come to my office in Manhattan?

Man, that is some West Coast stuff

Nah,

I, I.

I don't know.

your hand here, Paul.

We are an East Coast startup,

I'll tell you what West Coast people are like, you know what?

I don't even know what human beings are and I can't wait until

artificial general intelligence shows up and does it all for us.

Why do you even need a

Why have a, yeah, why have a human, I can't wait to just

plug the internet directly into my colon and just like blast 90

gigabits of information into my butt.

This is the old school ingredient that I think we believe

You still have to kind of pound the pavement and talk to people

and interact and see their faces.

Like even if you have built the best tech in town,

people see this as like a moral failure too.

They're like, oh, well then it's not real.

Or you're, you're, you're exploiting humans by making them

come to the office or whatever.

I'm like, I'm sorry I can't change many millennia, uh, many hundreds of

millions of years of human evolution.

Uh, what's ironic is that we view building a business

purely transactionally without seeing other humans as a moral failure too.

Well, no.

exactly.

Look, I mean,

it's, it's another flavor of moral failure.

Look, everybody wants to make, I don't know, they wanna talk

about capitalism or they wanna talk about this, or they wanna talk about the other.

We're social creatures.

You know, you ever, monkeys don't like pick knits out of

each other's hair remotely.

They don't go like, hold on, let me get that off you.

Let me, let me groom you over Zoom.

It, it's just what it is.

And so like, and it, it's, that's, you know what I, it's

kind of a sticky truth, right?

The sticky truth is that like human beings have power dynamics.

They have, uh, ambition and they have goals, and they like to be

in rooms with other human beings.

And sometimes the, those rooms aren't perfectly equit.

I, I read the, uh, Salesforce book by Mark Benioff.

That's great.

I took about 32 minutes.

The font is big.

I love when you get to a business books, the line

spacing and the business book.

You could fly a plane.

You could fly a private jet.

Let me die.

Through the Spacey

for a second.

I bought the Andy Grove book, one of the Absolute Pioneers of Silicon Valley.

It was like a fourth grade education book.

I didn't understand it

a business book right there.

Well, that's just, so, that's the ghost writer and the

editor taking care of business.

I go, well, well, Andy, you're a smart guy.

I'll take it from here.

It is

I gotta say, when you, everybody talks.

CEOs and pisses people is absolute geniuses.

Yeah.

But then look at the materials that have been presented for them and by them.

Well, you know what it is.

It's not that they're all absolute, some are incredibly intelligent.

The best CEOs know how to talk to the widest audience possible.

Yeah.

But most of those books are written for a dog.

They're written for like nine year

Yeah.

For like a like, or, or a Shetland Poie.

I was like, this could have been an essay

Oh yeah.

Uh, anyway, from that book, it's actually fascinated,

the story arc is fascinating.

They, Salesforce did not have a Salesforce, they

were a product-led growth.

They're probably the first ever real product led growth

company.

Definitely at that scale, right?

right?

You signed up and you bought stuff like it was Amazon.

And then you deployed it in your Oregon guess.

They

nailed it and they plateaued and he said, you know what?

We need to throw parties.

Yeah.

They got the force part.

Right.

But they forgot the sales part.

They went on tour.

They started to go to parties, they started to go to c

trade shows and conventions.

They became an old school, classic sales driven

I mean, look at, look at the way that Dreamforce, their

giant conference takes over the

the, that's how the, that's the bookend.

Right?

And

they always have like the Foo Fighters play.

It's pretty, it's pretty rough when those, those YouTube videos hit and

it is, I think Metallica did it one year.

Metallica was like all in, like, it was like

I just want to thank

Oh no, they, they were talking about how they use

Salesforce to bandage the fan

No, they were

Swear to baby Jesus.

Yeah.

God bless.

Yeah.

But he says in the book, I realized that to really

take off and to really grow the business, I need to meet people.

I need to build a great sales organization and they need to get on the plane.

He knew it.

And look

God, you and I just, we fantasize that we're

technologists, don't we?

We think we're such smart

we're salespeople.

You

and I are salespeople, aren't we?

all.

Every, all,

rich.

I'm like a thoughtful essayist writer.

I, I, I question the status quo.

I'm known as like someone who's very ambiguous about technology and,

You, you sell the sleep number

I just roll around,

That's all

Roll my big fleshy body roll look.

This is number eight.

Look at this.

Oh,

You're watch, you're watching this.

The left side.

She can tilt it up.

Your wife, the wife can be up further.

You could be laying flat.

I'll tell, look, watch me take a nap.

Two remote controls.

boy.

And it smells good.

Uh, and so that takes us back to what it means to, and, and look, we

you know, it feels good to just say, it feels good

to just be like, you know what?

I am an enterprise software salesman.

Let's just get in there.

All, I love product.

I love technology.

I love Kodak.

I love all of it top to bottom.

But you know what seals the deal.

You get a a, a fridge with a clear glass front and you fill

it with really good beverages.

I'll tell you that is 80% of a successful software firm because

what people do is they come in and they go like, oh, you know what?

They really, they're, they're, first of all, their employees are so valuable

that they'll get them probiotic beverages

Eminem dispensers,

because I'll tell you, when they, when people come from the world of.

To the world of like

Cold brew

Yeah.

They go

That's how they know.

They're like, it's, it's a fantasy.

You're giving them the fantasy of, of the startup and of connecting to

something that is young and dynamic.

They have a hundred times more economic and cultural power than you do.

Yeah.

But their coffee comes in a little canister.

What is so powerful about creating social settings

is that there is no end game.

You really don't know what's coming down.

All you know is it's a good kind of chaos.

creates opportunity in a way that being in your house does not

I, whoa God.

Spotify, it's good to see you here.

What are you thinking?

Do you have a minute?

I wanna talk to you about how Spotify playlists and a board can play.

Nice.

We're not even, whoa, I didn't expect this.

being, you're actually being more transactional than you really are.

Because what happens is it's like, oh, you work at Spotify?

Where are you guys?

Oh, you're like six blocks away.

Totally.

Yeah.

And that's it.

That's the end of the conversation.

And then six months later, yeah.

Um, someone named Cynthia gets in touch and mentions the name of the person

at the party that you can't remember.

That's right.

And that's the future of your business.

That's more how it goes

down.

Well, obviously we could, we could reproduce that with a Miro

board and Zoom and we just have to get them to come to the meeting.

They're not gonna come to the meeting.

You know, why?

No probiotic beverages, no beer, no

No other

no other humans to meet.

No one to impress, you know, humans like to, you know, why they go to that room?

You know why they come to the event?

Why to figure out where they are social.

you can't do that remotely

And, and oftentimes to sort of, uh, reveal themselves

in what they view as like, this is a valuable place for me to reveal

Where I, where I lose my mind is everyone is just like, wow.

You know, it shouldn't be that way, but it is, it is.

It's above my pay grade.

I don't know how to change human behavior.

I do know how to get a fridge and put attractive beverages

Look, I, I, I think, I think what we're saying

is less and less shocking.

It was shocking a year and a half ago.

It's less shocking now.

The pandemic's in the rear view mirror to a large extent.

And I think we're realizing first off, how much we need it.

Like we need to connect with other people.

That's real.

I get the convenience of just being in your shorts on a Friday.

everybody's excited to go to the dentist these days.

Everybody's excited to get outta the house, man.

So there is that.

Um, we're looking forward to it.

We're gonna invite people.

Well, there will be a big welcome party in New York City when we, we, when we

open it up, it's not gonna be about us tweeting a photo of the office.

We're gonna actually welcome people in and we're looking forward to it.

and then if, if we're true to form, we'll, we'll close

the office down and launch it again.

Six months later.

we'll throw a party.

Welcome everyone, and then move

to be clear in in, in the great tradition of this podcast being

about a vaporware product and a company that doesn't exist, there's no lease.

We haven't even picked a neighborhood.

Let's end on that.

How are we gonna pick a neighborhood?

If you're not in New York City, you don't know how important this is,

It's a big deal.

Um,

are we gonna go back to Union Square, like with the agency?

You know, cuz that's like, that's like kind of where the

startups were nine years ago.

know if it

I don't think Brooklyn should be off the table.

Okay, interesting.

Yeah.

But you know what, I'll tell you what.

It's hard to get 'em out to br Well, here's what's tricky.

We threw our party and everybody was like, oh boy.

Wow.

Manhattan, that is on a, on a weekday night.

That's a, that's a lot for me coming in from Brooklyn.

there.

Everybody's working at home.

Everybody's working at.

think we can get people to come out and we aren't, we aren't an enterprise play.

We can say that without, I mean, we can say that unequivocally we've

shifted from being enterprise to more

Yeah.

But I'll tell you, I gotta.

I'd rather do Manhattan than like Dumbo, like the quasi Manhattan.

yeah.

If we're gonna do, if we do Brooklyn, it's gotta be something like

Goads or someplace a little weird.

Dumbo's to

I don't wanna do proxy, A big

dump on Dumbo, but it's, that's not.

interesting.

I don't wanna do proxy Manhattan.

It's gotta be Brooklyn.

there's also one choo train that barely like dips into

Dumbo,

and then you gotta walk the

All right.

So not that, but this is a big conversation, which

a big one.

think absolutely no one listen cares about.

However,

It, it's what makes this more and more real.

Uh, yes, but no.

I mean, I don't know if they cared about the last one either.

So we're okay.

Fair

enough.

I would say, uh, I think downtown, that's where the big companies are.

Sure

Okay.

Alright.

Uh, have a lovely week, Paul.

Get that Real Estate li listing.

Uh,

well the great thing about office is, is you don't have

to, they just send them to you

Boy, do they?

Yeah.

There's a lot of New York real estate

One New York realtor finds out who you are and that you might

be in a position to run an office.

That's it for life.

Yeah, I will be

all, it never

ends.

I will be cremated and I will still be receiving information on 3000

square feet to just open up in Midtown Well, alright, Richard, that's a

board, that's the ABOARD podcast.

If you wanna check us out, check us out at aboard on Twitter or

send us an email hello@aboard.com.

Have a lovely week.