It’s amazingly hard to believe, considering we just had our 1 month aniversary, but it’s official: BrightMix is leasing a real, honest to goodness office space. No sir, no longer will we be running our day to day operations from the confines of Kevin’s living room.

On Thursday, Nov 1st 2007, we officially move into our new digs at 5018 Leavenworth street here in Omaha!

Here’s an arial shot of our new place:

Interestingly, over the course of about 48 hours, the opportunity to lease this new office space arose, we deliberated and discussed it, and, after realizing that timing can never really be perfect, we coolly and decisively decided to go for it.

Some Questions We Asked Ourselves

Do we even need an office space?

This was an important one. We’ve preached about the benefits of “bootstrapping” our company by running lean and mean. And, to be perfectly honest, we’re completely content and comfortable where we’re at now. However, we’re in this for the long haul, and we have to move out of Kevin’s living room at some point, especially if we take on more people. So, we figure, why the heck not now!

How will we benefit from this office space?

One of the hardest things I’ve found that we deal with as a freelancer-turned- small-business business, is handling the stigma of the individual. That is, conveying ourselves as a “company”, and not simply some dudes who write software in their spare time… and happen to make money in the process.

While we believe whole-heartedly in the value of staying small, there’s definitely a fine line. In my opinion, nothing legitimizes ones business more than having an office. However spartan, however small, if you have an office, you’re the real deal, and you can avoid unfortunate scenarios like:

Potential Client: You guys sound like the rockstar developers we need! So where do you guys work from?

Us: Uh, err, um, from Kevin’s basement.

Potential Client: Ah.. yea.. hey, gotta run.. to do.. other thing.

Is this the right space for us?

We’re very particular about the types of offices that we like and that we don’t like. This space, with its “lofty” feel, and more importantly its “non-office” feel, fell nicely into the first category. There were other appealing traits, too. First, it’s only a 1 year lease. No long term commitments for us; it’s just to early to know what kind of growth we’ll experience. Second, we don’t have to do much “build out.” The previous tenants, the rad guys of the Divvy Collective, did an incredible amount of renovating and remodeling to the place. As a result, it’s in move-in condition and then some. Oh, and thirdly, did I mention it comes with a pool table? I think that pretty much speaks for itself.

Stay tuned for more pictures and stories from the move-in, as well as the date and time of our Open House!

P.S. Here’s a sneak peek at how the office currently looks (prior to us moving in)… This is the entrance / waiting room.