This week was the first full week in our new office with the full FL team! Ever since Monomer Software started in 2017, we have been a remote-work company, even though most of our employees are in the Tampa area. The flexibility of working remotely has been fun and we’ve found ways to get together and collaborate in person or as a remote group (for example, our weekly show-and-tell we call “Power Hour” which always turns into “Power Hours”…).

As a company that builds and assembles our own self-cleaning cameras, we deal with a lot of hardware, soldering, 3D printing, prototyping, and other activities that need space and organization. It was inevitable that we would move into office space at some point. When COVID happened, the timeline for moving into an office was delayed and we just continued to manage prototyping and building cameras in a home-based workshop (all great startup companies began in garage at some point, right?)

This summer we decided to move forward with office plans and found a great office building right here in Tampa, in the Brandon area. Our offices are on the 6th floor and give us a great view of one of our customer’s facilities!

Moving into the office has given me a big appreciation for other startups and companies that have moved into their first office or have expanded into larger offices. It’s a big chore to pick the right desks, chairs, cubicles, tables, a microwave, a fridge, white boards, artwork?, …… We are still a bootstrapped startup and I am happy to say that this is a bootstrapped office with plenty of pre-owned furniture (maybe you can say we are being “relentlessly resourceful” to quote Paul Graham, co-founder of startup accelerator Y Combinator http://www.paulgraham.com/relres.html).

Some photos of the move-in process:

It’s been a joy having everyone in the same office for collaboration and team-building — I’m also very happy to get my home workshop back. Shoot me an email if you ever want to come by and check it out! harry@monomersoftware