
Yesterday, we signed the lease for our new space. After all the back and forth, all the design, redesign, adjust and negotiate, pen hit paper, checks were signed and handed over (yikes).

David is awesome, and we are grateful for his attention!
If there’s ever a doubt about the need for a great real estate attorney, please let a good one take a look at your lease, either the one you’re governed by, or the one you’re about to sign, and you’d be amazed at how many seemingly innocuous things are revealed to real expert eyes. We recommend David A Kaminsky for all your real estate legal needs. He’s an ace, he’s in your corner, and he WILL find places to protect you and your business. Never treat your lease as just “boilerplate”. It is a legal, binding contract, rife with guarantees and promises and exposure. Get a pro on the case!
After signing the (well-reviewed) lease, I took a moment to look back, and many memories emerged.
It was just 5 years ago that I finally got my own office, which I promptly started sharing with a variety of misfits. From our excellent dev team to my business partners, this little garage has been a rotating home for many people. Here’s a pic from move in day that shows three of my favorite roommates…
So much has happened in the past five years. I’ve been replaying and reliving it all.
We’ve doubled in size. Doubled in both gross revenue, and in tribe headcount.
We moved part of our team to Philly.
We opened an office in Los Angeles.
We opened an office in Brooklyn at the excellent Camp David.
We moved NOC and all of our datacenter equipment from Tarrytown to Cologix in Parsippany.
We changed our computer management toolkit from Kaseya to a combination of Autotask Endpoint Management and Addigy.
We created the Valiant Lounge with help from the excellent team at Rowan Woodwork.
We’ve won a few awards.
Personally? I had laser eye surgery to get rid of those dumb glasses. (Thank you Dr Donnenfeld!) and I lost 15 pounds (thank you beer allergy that spontaneously came on at 37 years old).
The Five Year Plan
And how about the next five years? What’s our plan?
We intend to double our revenue again, and we intend to carefully protect and maintain our “goldilocks” feel of being not-too-big/not-too-small.
As to me, I’m going to keep working to drop the next 15 pounds, and hold off on getting reading glasses as long as I can.
A lot can happen in five years. Thankfully.