Office Tenant Advisory Services: Why High-Growth Startups Start From the Hiring Plan

The hiring-plan worksheet we fill in with you

Five lines. They turn a hiring plan into a requirement a landlord can price.

• People on payroll who need a desk now.
• Hires by quarter for the next 12 to 18 months, split by role, because engineers, sales and design use rooms differently.
• The peak inside that window. This is the number the floor is sized for, not the team you have this month.
• Square feet: the peak multiplied by 175.
• The stretch case: what the company does if the plan lands two quarters early.

A floor sized to the current team means a second move before the lease is over, with a second fit-out to fund and the disruption of moving twice. Planning space around an AI hiring plan works a full example.

What every ten hires add to the floor

At 175 square feet per person, every ten hires add about 1,750 square feet. The desk is a small share of that. The rest is meeting rooms, phone booths, the pantry and the space people walk through.

Open desking can tighten: a team can sit at about 140 square feet a person for a quarter or two. Rooms cannot, because they are fixed when the floor is built, and adding one later means construction and a landlord approval. So we count meeting rooms for the peak of the plan and let the desks flex. The office space calculator runs the figures for any headcount.

Lease structures that absorb a hiring step

• A right of first offer on the adjoining suite or the next floor, so growth beyond the plan has somewhere to go in the same building.
• A shorter first term with a renewal option. A one-year lease on a private floor can be had, two or three years is the norm, and the rent per square foot climbs as the term gets shorter.
• Sublet rights, so a plan that stalls becomes recovered rent and not a sunk cost.
• A floor plate that can be made denser with furniture alone, no permits needed.

All four are asked for in the letter of intent, while the landlord is still competing for you.

Why step-hiring teams tour Flatiron first

Flatiron is the center of New York's venture-backed tech cluster. Its prewar lofts have regular floor plates, tall ceilings and usually a single company on each level. The N, Q, R, W and 6 stop at 23rd Street, and Union Square is one stop south, so the hiring pool is most of the city.

The limit is capacity. Teams leave Flatiron when they need a larger floor than the neighborhood builds, which is why the expansion right matters here. The floors below are the ones we list in Flatiron, with sizes and asking rents, and the Flatiron guide describes the district in full.

How early a step-hiring team should begin the search

Count back from the quarter the first big hiring step lands. A pre-built floor takes six to eight weeks from first tour to desks. A floor that needs a custom buildout takes four to six months, and 10 to 16 weeks of that is the construction itself.

Send the plan, or just headcount, timing and budget. A broker reaches out within the hour during business hours, and a first shortlist can be ready within 24 hours.