The search

So about 4 months ago we set out to open our third office in San Francisco. I didn’t fully grasp how tiny San Francisco really was until recently. It is tiny. Its 7 m x 7 m and even within that, a good bit of it is taken by either parks (Presidio/Golden Gate + lots of tiny ones) or fully residential areas that have either serious micro-climate issues or are infested with tourists or senseless prices.

That doesn’t leave a whole lot of space for densely populated commercially zoned areas so you basically have left the Mission, Soma, Potrero Hill and the Financial District. Financial District pretty much sucks (you can tell by the name). Potrero Hill is cool and it has a lot of great open spaces but it’s too spaced out IMO and too far from center city so that only leaves the Mission and Soma. The Mission would’ve been a great choice if it had any large open areas like the one we found.

It’s funny how cities have so many similarities. You can always find a few blocks that deserted in between two well defined areas most of the time because of poor planning of major roads. The trip between Soma and Union Square (center city) from where I am currently residing reminds me a lot of Philly and it’s random deserted areas between Chinatown and Northern Liberties.

The office is located right next to the caltrain. The space is about 2700 sq ft and is on the corner of the building so it get s a ton of light and that nice and crisp San Francisco air coming through all day. We couldn’t be happier with the choice.

So why another office?

The move was mainly inspired by 2 things.

1. We’re releasing a new product (we can’t say what it is yet) that we’ll be releasing in the second quarter of 2010. San Francisco is better for this because of product feedback, distribution partners, and advice from experts in our field.

2. We’re expanding our web services to go full circle. That means that we won’t just build you product but we’ll make sure it executes on your business goals as well. For a full list of our services, please go here. San Francisco is better for this because of new talent, more education (meetups, conferences, new friends, mentors, etc), and partnerships with more specialized firms.

What now?

We’re planning on using the space to host a series of events centered around our industry. There are obviously a lot of events going on around us so we plan to just offer the space to anyone that has an exciting topic and at least 5 people that want to attend. Our space can probably fit about 100 people comfortably so if you have a meetup or tech related event that you need a space for, feel free to get in touch with us. We’re also looking for partners/consultants in the SEM, SEO, and Web Analytics area so please read this or forward it to anyone you might know that would be a good fit.

Just FYI – This doesn’t change our focus on the east coast in any way. In many ways, this strengthens us as a company and allows us to provide more comprehensive solutions to our clients in the east and west coasts by having access to a large pool of opportunities.

Image by thomashawk