I don't think it's unreasonable at all. I mean, perhaps the word "cool" is used too many times- I don't care if the furniture in my office is cool. But I have switched to a standing desk and love it- so an office with standing desks would definitely be an influencing factor when I choose where to work.
In contrast to this 'cool office' wave, when the company I work for was acquired, we moved to a new office and we used furniture that the company who had bought us had in storage.
I think the strategy for premium and relevant content is great. I always loved reading posts about the coolest offices out there.
But You know what really attracts talent? Talent attracts Talent....More importantly, talent doesn't waste money. While cool offices definitely have their value in both work ambiance, feeling cool about working somewhere they can brag about, etc...I think there are way too many emotional and nuanced triggers at play that 42floors seems to be overlooking.
I think a startup like this really needs to focus on their core value proposition, which is making finding the right space easier. So far, I think they are very far off base from solving that problem. Until they do, the marketplace for products is basically irrelevant.
It's an interesting situation because most marketplaces have a chicken and egg problem. The solution is usually to subsidize the side of the market that needs an extra push to participate. (When we launched gamestaq we thought we needed sellers for inventory, so we focused on them, but we found out later on that the buyers were a much more competitive market, and we never got the traction we needed because the buyers were loyal to price only, and the sellers had no barrier of entry. we had too much supply not enough demand.)
In this instance, they are taking a chicken and egg problem, and turning it into a chicken and egg, and breakfast omelet problem. They are making a huge assumption that finding the customers looking for office space are the easy guys to find, because they have a real problem.
What they just might discover is that the "customers" are the hard ones to find, and instead of focusing on selling them, they should be focusing more on attracting them with real solutions to real problems they have.
Bottom line, a broker making a 4% of the life of the lease commission is much more likely to be helpful to me as an office space searcher than a website pushing unnecessary product and social pressure to compete on me. Especially when they exacerbate a problem like finding good talent, and push it even further with hogwash that wasting money attracts talent.
You know what really attracts talent? Talent attracts Talent.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 19.5 ms ] threadAt a time when companies MUST have cool offices to attract talent
meh.
But You know what really attracts talent? Talent attracts Talent....More importantly, talent doesn't waste money. While cool offices definitely have their value in both work ambiance, feeling cool about working somewhere they can brag about, etc...I think there are way too many emotional and nuanced triggers at play that 42floors seems to be overlooking. I think a startup like this really needs to focus on their core value proposition, which is making finding the right space easier. So far, I think they are very far off base from solving that problem. Until they do, the marketplace for products is basically irrelevant.
It's an interesting situation because most marketplaces have a chicken and egg problem. The solution is usually to subsidize the side of the market that needs an extra push to participate. (When we launched gamestaq we thought we needed sellers for inventory, so we focused on them, but we found out later on that the buyers were a much more competitive market, and we never got the traction we needed because the buyers were loyal to price only, and the sellers had no barrier of entry. we had too much supply not enough demand.)
In this instance, they are taking a chicken and egg problem, and turning it into a chicken and egg, and breakfast omelet problem. They are making a huge assumption that finding the customers looking for office space are the easy guys to find, because they have a real problem.
What they just might discover is that the "customers" are the hard ones to find, and instead of focusing on selling them, they should be focusing more on attracting them with real solutions to real problems they have.
Bottom line, a broker making a 4% of the life of the lease commission is much more likely to be helpful to me as an office space searcher than a website pushing unnecessary product and social pressure to compete on me. Especially when they exacerbate a problem like finding good talent, and push it even further with hogwash that wasting money attracts talent. You know what really attracts talent? Talent attracts Talent.
...Aeron chair anyone?