5 Lessons learned from building & growing our office in NYC

Last week, the Index NYC team moved into our new office space in the Meatpacking District of New York City.  Our team’s chemistry has been fantastic since we all came together in our initial WeWork space this summer with the same goal to grow Index’s connection with the local community and a shared excitement to live and work in NYC. One of the great joys of opening up a new office is the freedom it gives to experiment with new ways of working. 

In order to establish the right team in the right city at the right time, we have made several key decisions both as a global organization and as a New York team that have led us to this moment. To celebrate our new space, and share insights for anyone else opening an office in in another city and in NYC in particular, I’ve put down my thoughts on how we got here and what we’ve learned so far. 💭

1. Bring culture carriers over and reach critical mass quickly

Like with any startup, getting a new office off the ground requires a huge amount of initial energy to create sufficient momentum, and having the right number of the right people in the original team is critical. I was fortunate to be joined in this adventure by several existing Index team members and strong culture carriers from San Francisco: Shardul Shah , a 15-year Index veteran, as well as Damir Becirovic and Rex Woodbury . To which we added well-connected locals Adrianna Ma , Caitlin Johnston Klein , Rebecca Payne and Paris Heymann . Landing from the get-go with an 8-person team (a typical “two-pizza team” in Amazon parlance) with both deep history at Index and local connections, meant we could hit the ground running and fast-track the awkward first year that can come from starting with an isolated individual acting as a GM. 

2. Take the long view

Anyone who has lived or worked in the city knows how hard it is to secure real estate here and how that challenge can create pressure to settle. Given our long-term commitment to the city, we took a strategic 3-step approach: rather than prematurely signing a lease in our first days here, we spent 2 months in a coworking space (WeWork on Greenwich Street - a great spot I highly recommend) before moving into a transitory ‘swing space’ that will serve as our HQ for the next two years. After a few months here, we will use the knowledge and experience gained from on-the-ground experience to reassess our goals and work on finding the perfect permanent space to house Index for decades to come.

3. Align priorities early

For many of our team members, this was the first time we have ever worked together in person. During our first week, we decided to have an ‘on-site,’ wherein we collectively defined what success looks like, agreed on office norms, and discussed our respective ways of working. The exercise was hugely beneficial in ensuring that our team is collectively aligned on strategy, priorities, and which (recyclable) beverages we want to stock the refrigerator with.

4. Sweat the small stuff

Even minor office practices and routines can make a huge impact on #productivity and #collaboration. For example, we created a #P0 NYC Slack channel where every day we each religiously share our most important task of the day and set aside at least an hour to get it done. It helps us to both stay in sync and hold each other accountable. We also have weekly family-style lunches on Monday that are perfect for sharing the past weekend’s activities and looking forward to the week ahead. Finally – and potentially most controversially – we keep our phones locked away during the workday to protect our time and energy together. I’ve already made some good money as the office enforcer of this particular rule 😉

5. Foster community

The office should be a meeting space not just for Index employees, but also for our wider network of founders and friends, and we’ve already hosted several board meetings and customer meetings for our visiting entrepreneurs. In that spirit, one of our favorite team activities is our monthly guest dinners, bringing in an external guest from our network each month to break bread and teach us about their field of expertise. We are fortunate to have invested in the great teams of many NYC-based companies such as Datadog , Squarespace , Etsy , Cockroach Labs , Wiz or Justworks from our London and San Francisco offices in the past, and can also tap into the flow of great EU talent passing through or settling in NYC. In fact, our most recent guest was Hanno Renner , the CEO and co-founder of Personio , who was visiting from Munich. He shared with us his learnings from building Personio’s culture in the early days. 

Some of these experiments will succeed and some will fail, and we’ll revisit them at least once a year to ensure they are still serving their purpose. If you’ve recently opened an office in NYC too, we’d love to hear what experiments you’ve conducted that have made a real impact.  

And for more comprehensive playbooks and advices on expanding to the US, please check our Expanding to the US guidebook.