It seems like only yesterday that we moved but now we're at it again. After the BarNone acquisition, we were starting to get very cramped in our current shared office space. Thankfully, we were able to sign a lease in a great building just a few blocks away. The London Building is just across the street from the Barnes and Noble in Jack London Square, right in the heart of the produce district. It's been newly renovated and is LEED certified with the latest green features. Our top floor suite has a ton of natural light and beautiful exposed brick on one side. Our official move in date is Monday so I'll snap a few shots then and post here.

It's been a while since I've been able to get away from the office for an afternoon at the cafe. Today was perfect cafe weather if not for the sun being blocked out by the APL building. Centrro's first offices were at 22nd and Broadway at the BroadLake Plaza Building, a standard eight story office building in what is now called the Uptown District. BTW, what's up with the naming of Oakland's districts? Guess it's just another phase of the gentrification of the city (not 100% bad, but not 100% good either). More on that another time. At any rate, one of the consistent things we noticed was that even on sunny days, it always seemed dark outside of the downtown buildings except for the hours right around high noon. Contrast that with the Old Warehouse District where there are very few buildings over five stories and you can get decent sunlight on the sidewalk for most of the day. Can't wait for Jack London Market to open up so I can get my cafe fix within closer walking distance.

I've mentioned before that Centrro uses shared office space. It's great because it's month to month, relatively cheap, and allows us to make use of conference rooms, a reception desk, a kitchen, and free internet access. Well today, you can scratch one of those off the list. Internet access has been down all morning so I packed up and headed to Peet's. It's actually a great day outside so I don't mind.
 
The one other benefit of shared office space is that you get to meet some really interesting people outside your company. For instance, one of our cube mates is a lawyer for the adult entertainment industry. How cool is that? For that reason, I think places like JellyDesk are great. If we didn't have partner/board meetings, I'd be fine working in that environment.

It's strange how themes seem to emerge in our daily lives. The History Channel had a program about Sun Tzu's Art of War a few days ago (interesting if not a little campy with the graphics and re-enactments). Then a friend forwards this interesting article about junior girls basketball from the New Yorker. They both highlight a specific tenant of competition, be it sports or war. Always attack your enemies weaknesses and never engage them in the things they do exceptionally well.
 
Centrro is in a very large, very competitive market that is currently dominated by much larger players with much larger war chests. We'll never be able to out spend out competition but instead of spending $1.00 to make $1.10 (of course, multiply that by millions), we've decided to take the route of spending $1.00 to make $3.00 or, in some cases, $6.00. We do this by engaging in certain channels that our competitors either disregard or cannot efficiently play in. Over time, this efficiency will allow us to grow large enough to enter more mainstream channels but still carry over the learnings and processes from our best channels.
 
The other thing I found interesting about the New Yorker article was that instead of adapting and innovating, the Goliaths tend to force the Davids to play their game by their rules. How many times have we seen the music industry sue their way out of an issue? Now the movie industry is doing the same. Kudos to Redwood City girls basketball team and their coaches for thinking outside the box!