stock – Baghdad By The Bay

I don’t buy stocks and now I have an even better reason not to. Facebook managed to have one of the worst and most embarrassing IPO’s in history. I do follow stocks, mostly of tech companies I like and noticed that the day Facebook opened and its stock took a dump so did everyone else’s. Apple faired the best, but it still has sunk.

Social media has lost the game now. It’ll still be around, but it will be a smaller group. I’m hearing about all these new social media apps where you can share pictures, video, your location so stalkers can find you. There’s a new one everyday. There’s even a Social Media app for people who don’t like to use social media, it’s called Google+.

I doubt Facebook will go away anytime soon, but it’s certainly going to be hurt by the damage it’s caused to all the tech companies. Most of which are in the Bay Area. Now those companies that are privately held will have a much harder time getting investors and especially if they’re a social media start up. Mark Zuckerberg has figuratively screwed the pooch with this IPO. Sure he made money from it and he already had money, but I’m sure his investors will be poking him very shortly to answer for this debacle. Many investors have also invested in other tech companies and they’re probably all sweating like a man on his way to the gas chamber.

The value of Facebook stock has dropped 25% in the first week and people are thinking it’s going to keep going in that direction. It doesn’t do much besides let you find people you haven’t seen in years to become friends again, yet meet up with face to face. It’s going to be interesting to see where this turns in the near future. People already didn’t like Facebook for the changes it made and how it made things you wanted to keep private to only your close friends public to the world. If you haven’t done so already it would be a good idea for you to check what your page looks like to the public by going to the Activity Log and choosing View as…

You might be surprised at what you see. I’ll still stay on Facebook until the new whiz bang site comes along, but it will be interesting to see how long that is.

I received an email from a friend of mine about a meeting she wanted to set up with a few of us who work for a non-profit. I was told it was at the Sandbox Suites and first thought, “That’s a funny name for a hotel.” I looked it up on google maps and even looking at the street view I couldn’t see a hotel that might have conference rooms anywhere. Then after searching for it on the regular google I found out I was in for a surprise.

Sandbox Suites is aimed at start up tech companies. I used to work for one and I have to say it was great. I was working from home 5 days a week with a couple of hours on Monday’s spent in a meeting when we all got together. With everything now working off of the cloud you don’t really need a big office that costs you lots of money. Each person can work from their own virtual office space and then you either get together once a week or just use something like skype to have a free conference call.

This was a change that didn’t take much getting used to and the old place I worked would use a conference room at the place we’d have our meetings when they were making pitches to investors. Sandbox Suites was a bit different. Yes, there was free WiFi and you could print out up to 50 pages/hour, but it had something other places I’ve been at didn’t. It had amenities. Not just clean bathrooms, but they had a water cooler and coffee for free and there was a small dispenser that sold candy bars and chips that sat on the counter top. The best part was that it didn’t look like it was a carpeted echo-y room. It looked and felt like an actual workplace. The room we were in was about 12’x12′ and had a whiteboard, telephone and projector [big bonus!]

I believe this room cost around $25/hour and sat the four of us rather comfortably. There were smaller cubicles on the two floors and in the entrance area they had a couch and several plush chairs with tables you could use for small one on one meetings. Very nice.

For many people they need to get out of the house to actually get their work done and I know I was a bit like that at times. When I was working with a start up I’d get up and start working around 7:30 and sometimes not finish until 8pm at night with the day broken up by trips to the store and such. Sometimes you just want to be able to say I’m done with work for the day and with a place like this you can make it happen.

The place was busy with people who were renting cubicles, but it wasn’t the least bit noisy. Everyone there seemed very happy and at least looked like they were being productive. The receptionist was more of a concierge in that he was getting us everything we wanted and when we wanted it.

They have several locations around San Francisco in the SOMA and Union Square areas and also locations in Berkeley. You can rent conference rooms by the hour and each room has an electronic calendar outside that shows who has the room booked. You can rent cubicle space on a daily or monthly basis as you need it. We’ll probably we using this place again in the near future. It’s a short walk from a short metro trip and the environment is definitely worth it.

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Tag: stock

Sandbox Suites: A nice place to work, when you need it.