My startup worked out of 5 different spaces in a year. Here's how we found our dream office.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Sami Akkawi, the 26-year-old cofounder of Petra Labs. He lives in New York. It's been edited for length and clarity.

I used to work through consulting, where I interviewed close to 1,000 heads of marketing and CMOs.

It became really clear that they didn't have great solutions for defining how much revenue was coming from AI search. So, I cofounded Petra Labs.

My team and I have outgrown five offices in the last year. From apartment lounges to a full floor in SoHo, here's how we found our dream spot.

There was a pool table, which was amazing. Every time we had good news, we'd go play a game of pool. When we closed our first customer, we got some games in.

Other than that, it was just tables. We had portable monitors that we would bring in. No one was there except the occasional other remote worker and us.

There was ice-cold water coming out of the fridge, and tons of natural sunlight the whole time.

We only had one key fob, so we had to be really strategic about entering and exiting. The chairs were also super uncomfortable. We were there for a few weeks.

We upgraded to my apartment lounge, because it had meeting rooms and phone booths. At the time, the three of us started taking more calls.

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While one of my cofounders had to commute from Dumbo, and the other from Long Island City, I just went downstairs. The gym was a huge pro.

There was an outdoor terrace. This was in the summer, so it was really nice. There were also some fun celebrity sightings, like random people from "The Bachelor" and New York influencers.