Luke Embden’s Mural in our New Office
New Beginnings
There comes a time in every startup’s life when you have to fly the nest and strike out on your own. It’s a lot like moving out of your parent’s house. You leave the comfort and security of a shared workspace and all of sudden realize you’re the one responsible for making sure the kitchen is stocked…who knew? By the same token you know that the only way for you to grow is to make your own way in the world. For us, this time came last Friday.
A Fond Farewell
Last week we said goodbye to TechHub London, which has provided us with desk space for the past year and a half. They’ve watched us grow from just 3 guys – quite literally Livin’ on a Prayer – to an ever-expanding team of 14 who just took home the top prize at Web Summit. It’s been a long, and sometimes bumpy, road to where we are today and we couldn’t have done it without the encouragement and support of Mike Butcher and the wonderful people at TechHub. I’m not one to get emotional, but we will certainly miss the movie nights, member breakfasts and the fabulous Irina who always greeted us with a smile. Thanks guys!
The Lovely Irina 
Table Tennis!
Character Building
No matter how well you plan, or how much prep work you do, moving always turns into a bit of a mess. Packing up our old office was surprisingly quick and relatively painless – well for me anyway, since as CEO I refuse to lift anything heavier than a laptop. We even managed to unearth a few things we thought we’d lost! Once the office was packed we loaded up the van and headed to our new office!
Packing up the Office 
Totally forgot he had that jacket! 
Time to load up the van 
He’s building character
The Space
Our new office is located a bit north of Hoxton Square; about a 10 min walk from Old St station – ok so we didn’t exactly go far. We now occupy the whole of the 2nd floor loft in a large open plan style. I will admit that moving all our junk – I mean office equipment – up two flights of, very narrow, stairs was a bit of a challenge. But, I like to think of it as character building for my team.
Time to unpack
All roads lead to IKEA
No move would be complete without the obligatory trip – fine, 2 trips – to IKEA. In the space of two days I managed to clock 8 hours – much of which was spent in an infinite loop I like to call purgatory between returns and collections – and come away with more than 300 items. And yes, before you ask, I needed all of them. Once we’d lugged all 300+ items into the new place the team got to building, albeit with varying degrees of success – you know who you are!
At least we ended up with plenty of allen keys 
CCO – Chief Carpeting Officer
Back to Work
It took us about two days of banging IKEA furniture together, cleaning about 6 months of dust and stuffing things into corners to get set up. And it looks pretty good – if I do say so myself! We now have a large workspace with management in the center and the team arranged around the edge, a kitchen with a large table for group meals and a meeting room complete with conference table. The space I’m most proud of is the breakout space fully kitted out with couches, a TV with video games, football table and green carpeting to give it an outdoor feel. We even commissioned Luke Embden (designer of our infamous t-shirts) to paint a large mural on the wall!
Break Room 
Office
Growing Pains
As with any move there are bound to be a few growing pains – for some reason people seem upset that one of the toilets leaks onto the stairs below. And yes, we are going to need to sort out who stocks the kitchen. But at the end of the day this new space is going to give us the autonomy we need to learn and grow as a company. We’ll make sure to invite you all round for drinks in the New Year!