RentHop Office Spaces: The Early Years

Our original office was Lawrence’s apartment on West 43rd Street and 9th Avenue. This was back in summer 2008 – Lehman Brothers was still around, I was still a quant at D. E. Shaw & Co. by day, and the only 99-cent pizza contenders were “Two Bros” and “99 Cent Fresh”.

Michael Grynbaum from the New York Times interviewed us from this apartment, and Ruby Washington took the photo (and made us do the pose).

ย 

ย 

Graduating Out of the Apartment

After our brief stint in Mountain View, CA, we upgraded to various Starbucks branches around the office. It’s Fall 2009, so there still aren’t many startups in New York or anywhere outside of Silicon Valley. We would usually be the only ones working from laptops, and a few old men would yell at us saying, “You know, some of us here want to sit down and drink our coffee!”

The Starbucks on 41st and Lexington was one of the friendlier places – it was had plenty of seating and reasonable hours. That’s the Starbucks where Julie Gordon shot our Reuters pitch video, which later became a topic of Jon Cook’s “expert panel.” All the experts claimed a new rental site like RentHop had no chance of success, but of course most of those experts were working on their own competing products.

ย 

ย 

That Starbucks was also next to the Level Group office, called Pari Passu at the time, who were our first brokerage partners.

 

SoTechie Spaces

Eventually, it was time to find a permanent home – even though paying rent with a daily latte saved us a lot of money. We found SoTechie Spaces, on 39th and 6th, which still exists today! We had an office warming party, for no good reason, and people actually showed up. Below is Andres Morey, the founder of Octopart, featured in How Not To Die.

ย 

ย 

 

Lee Lin
Lee Lin
Lee is a data geek from MIT who spent years at quantitative hedge funds cranking out models to explain and predict financial markets. Real estate has always been a big part of Lee's life. He grew up helping out at his parents' Jersey Shore motels, became a landlord his first year out of college, analyzed mortgages on a fixed-income trading desk, and acquired a New York real estate license. At RentHop, he combines his nerd talents and real estate knowledge to constantly tweak the secret HopScore. He currently lives near Bryant Park and his favorite restaurant was Cafe Zaiya (now known as Tomiz).

You May Also Like

Summer Decorations For Your Apartment

Summer is here to stay, which usually means a beach vacation, frozen margaritas, and chilling in a pleasantly decorated space. But, not everyone has...

10 Things to Check Before Renting an Apartment

Finding a new apartment is equally exciting as it is nerve-wracking. In places like New York City, renters only have a few weeks to...

The Hidden Waterfalls of New York City

New York City isnโ€™t just a huge, concrete jungle. Behind the bustling traffic and tall skyscrapers, are both natural and man-made hidden escapes. What...

Recent Articles