This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Sami Akkawi, the 26-year-old cofounder of Petra Labs. He lives in New York. It’s been edited for length and clarity.
I used to work through consulting, where I interviewed close to 1,000 heads of marketing and CMOs.
It became really clear that they didn’t have great solutions for defining how much revenue was coming from AI search. So, I cofounded Petra Labs.
My team and I have outgrown five offices in the last year. From apartment lounges to a full floor in SoHo, here’s how we found our dream spot.
Office #1: Akkawi’s cofounder’s Dumbo apartment lounge
There was a pool table, which was amazing. Every time we had good news, we’d go play a game of pool. When we closed our first customer, we got some games in.
Other than that, it was just tables. We had portable monitors that we would bring in. No one was there except the occasional other remote worker and us.
There was ice-cold water coming out of the fridge, and tons of natural sunlight the whole time.
We only had one key fob, so we had to be really strategic about entering and exiting. The chairs were also super uncomfortable. We were there for a few weeks.
Office #2: Akkawi’s Lower East Side apartment lounge
We upgraded to my apartment lounge, because it had meeting rooms and phone booths. At the time, the three of us started taking more calls.
While one of my cofounders had to commute from Dumbo, and the other from Long Island City, I just went downstairs. The gym was a huge pro.
There was an outdoor terrace. This was in the summer, so it was really nice. There were also some fun celebrity sightings, like random people from “The Bachelor” and New York influencers.
A lot of other companies worked out of that space. We got, at the time, our biggest-ever contract just by saying “hello” to someone sitting next to us. We saw him carry a whole monitor down from his room and set it on one of the tables. I asked him what he was working on, and he said marketing. I said: “We sell to marketers.” We still work with them today.
We would get some complaints from management, because we were there seven days a week, 14 hours a day. They were wondering if we were running a company with this as the official business address.
We were there for three months.
Office #3: Afore’s San Francisco office
We raised a small pre-seed check from Afore Capital. As part of the check, they invited us to go work from their offices along with a lot of startups. We all flew to San Francisco, rented a house in Nopa for two months, and set up shop in their office.
This was the first real office where we had our own desk. We all had monitors, and there were snacks in the fridge.
We became good friends with Afore’s office manager, so we had a lot of influence on which snacks they would stock. A lot of coconut water requests, a lot of Chomps.
The other guys were really cool and were building cool things. We were sitting next to people who were also there seven days a week, staying later than us. It was really motivating. We’re still really good friends with all of them.
It just wasn’t our own space. We got our first employee there, but they wouldn’t let us bring people on top of that. The phone booths also got really hot.
Office #4: A SoHo WeWork
We moved back to New York and got a WeWork in SoHo for five months. It was an eight-person space.
We also met other startups there, like a rowdy Italian startup. They were very loud, but very fun. There was free kombucha on tap.
Man, we were cramped. It was a small space, and we didn’t have direct access to sunlight. We were there all winter, so it would start getting dark at 4 p.m., and we’d have six hours left.
Three different employees had walking treadmills, but they couldn’t use them at the same time, because there wasn’t enough space. We had to get a fan, because it would get stuffy.
That was probably the worst out of all the offices. We became very, very close friends with our first employees at the WeWork.
We tried leaving earlier, but the New York rental scene is tough. A few leases fell through. We ended up moving out on May 1, which was the absolute last deadline. If we didn’t move in, we would have had to go remote.
Office #5: Petra Labs’ SoHo office
We started working with a real estate agent and looking at backup options through Tandem. They found us this place that was listed as short-term, but was actually a two-year lease.
It’s two technically separate units. The second one has a big conference room with a Costco couch, which is probably our best investment. The other main section has a kitchen and a big, open layout with really tall ceilings. You get a ton of natural light.
We also have a fire escape, which is really fun.
This space is so fun. It’s fun that we all work next to each other; no one’s in separate rooms. We try to eat all of our lunches and dinners together.
The only downside: we’re outgrowing it, and we’re on a two-year lease. The landlord also made me sign a personal guarantee.
They said there might be another space in the same building. That would be ideal. If not, we’ll see.
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