For many years, the Beehive State has successfully established itself as an attractive location for startups. Utah is home to Silicon Slopes, which is inspired by its mountainous terrain. Thanks to the state’s plentiful tax breaks, many tech companies, including Microsoft, Adobe, Twitter, Domo and Pluralsight, have set up shop in it.
If you have a promising tech venture, locating your company’s headquarters in Silicon Slopes can help boost your brand. To find the perfect place for your startup in this fast-growing metro, follow these tips.
1. Think About Your Team
The best commercial real estate agent in Utah would advise you to consider your staff foremost. If you want to attract and retain sought-after talents, you have to choose a strategic location for your office. It should be easily accessible to those who live uptown to make the everyday commuting experience pleasant.
Apart from making the daily lives of your employees convenient, choosing a centralized office location helps improve productivity. After all, your team can accomplish more when they don’t have to spend a lot of time on the road and when they enjoy work-life harmony.
2. Be Honest With Your Budget
If you’re bootstrapping your company, you need to keep your costs to a minimum to avoid draining your funds quickly. This way, you can avoid acquiring any debt or lose equity to investors as much as possible.
One of the expenses you can control from the beginning is office rent. No matter how adamant a landlord may be about the listed price, understand that everything’s negotiable.
This is where proper representation matters. It’s imperative to find a reliable commercial real estate agent to work out a deal on your own terms. Nobody knows what landlords want and how much they may be willing to give up better than experienced agents do. Hire a seasoned representative to haggle on your behalf to obtain your prospective office for the least rent.
3. Don’t Disregard Size
Choose an office that’s big enough to allow your team to work comfortably but small enough to avoid inflating your costs. This part is tricky, and it requires imagination. You may need a professional designer to draw your space’s layout to make sure your prospective office is right for your startup’s needs. You may have to rent a space with enough room for growth, giving you the flexibility to accommodate a bigger team when the need arises.
4. Consider Building Amenities
Go beyond a unit, and pay attention to the rest of the package. Take a tour around the building, and assess the structural integrity of the property and the condition of its electrical, plumbing and HVAC systems firsthand. Search for red flags, and discuss your concerns with the landlord.
5. Talk to Other Tenants
You may be the CEO of your startup, but you’ll still answer to the building owner. Some landlords are hard to deal with, and it can be hard to read the character of one during initial encounters. It may help to interview the current tenants to avoid ending up with a problem “boss.”
Utah is among the top places to do business in America, but it takes tremendous work to find the perfect location where your startup can grow and thrive. With the help of an experienced commercial real estate agent, though, you can narrow your best options and simplify your office hunt.
