• I visited an NYC coworking space, where startups spend up to $9,000 a month for a spot.
• There was a private chef, a robot, and a love for in-person work.
• The overall vibe more closely resembled a college campus than a midtown office.

I've been following and interviewing tiny team founders for the last year. As part of my ongoing research, I popped into the Series HQ workspace last month to observe how these founders are running their small teams.

As the elevator doors opened on the top floor of the Chelsea office building, the Series HQ office manager, a 21-year-old NYU student, greeted me. Balancing on a skateboard, the tall, young, and very casually dressed Gen Zer fit right in among the cohort of founders he works for.

Most of the founders at Series HQ are either straight out of college or under 30, with many of their startups being in early funding rounds.

"I do honestly think if you're 35 or 40 thinking about starting a company now, it's probably too late," Nathaneo Johnson, the 22-year-old Series cofounder, said. He recognizes that as a "harsh belief" but believes the average founder age at Series HQ reflects a growing community of young entrepreneurs.

Series itself was launched in 2024 by Johnson and Sean Hargrow as an AI social networking app for iMessage. After they both graduated from Yale and raised $5.1 million in pre-seed funding, the pair signed a lease for over 10,000 square feet of office space. They tacked on "HQ" to distinguish between the coworking space and the business.

When they moved their company into the building last October, they had roughly eight to 10 people on their team. The pair was preparing for growth, but AI has helped to keep their head count lean, and their tenants operate with similarly sized staff.

As I scanned the still mostly empty office, it seemed the tiny teams didn't require much to function. What stood out to me — more than the young, mostly male office demographic — was each company's desire to be around more people, despite operating with as few employees as possible.

The tiny teams here can spend up to $9,000 a month for shared space

I was at the office around 3 p.m. on a Thursday, and about a dozen people from at least five different companies were working, mostly young men and a few young women. The space usually hosts about 15 to 20 startups, and members have 24-hour access when possible, Johnson said.

In August, Series HQ charged between $1,250 and $4,000 for workstation pods that hold up to four people. For more privacy, founders can rent the glass pods for $5,000 to $9,000 a month. The more expensive rental options include meals cooked on-site by the private chef they hired last year to curb their takeout costs.

In the massive main room, across from the scattered row of founder workstations, was a basketball hoop and a roughly $21,000, beat-up robot holding a football.

When they talked about their robot, which was slightly broken during my visit, the room lit up.

It fascinated me that these founders would incur the expense to work in such a large office. They didn't need all of this physical space — which was, in some ways, obvious, as most of it still looked sparse with objects.

Many of the founders I talked to are around my age — 23 — and graduated from high school during the pandemic, when so much social and work interaction moved online. Now building companies, the appeal of Series HQ seemed to be less about the fancy office with a private rooftop and chef, and mainly about having like-minded coworkers to build in-person with.

Long hours mean more time together

Zain Ahmad, who was a summer tenant at Series HQ, works at the AI startup Evos. He said Evos found Series from the promotional drone videos that took over their social media platforms all summer.

"We figured if they're good enough to end up on both of our For You pages and get this much traction, there's a lot to learn from them and be in that space," he said.

Evos rented one of the private glass pods and, during my visit, gave me a tour of their space. Inside the small glass office, we stood in front of their two desks, chatting directly across from a small couch and coffee cart.

In between investor calls, which he said were powered by cups of tea with creatine honey, Ahmad confessed he has taken quite a few naps on that couch. An average workday for them is around 8:30 a.m. to around 10 p.m., sometimes longer. As tenants of Series HQ, they were in the office around six days a week.

He explained the concrete environmental benefits for Evos, which creates specialized agentic AI workflows for traditional industries. Ahmad said they were able to meet a new hire because the new hire was another tenant at Series. They even learned about their most-used AI tool at the moment through the Series team: Aside, an AI-powered browser.

Turnover was high at the beginning of the experiment, Johnson said. Partly because some of the summer tenants were just in town between school semesters. But those tenants probably didn't feel too far from home, since the vibe here more closely resembled a college campus than a midtown office.

The most important piece of growing an AI startup is still the human network

The majority of companies working in the space are AI or technology startups. Logan Milano, the 23-year-old founder of the drink brand Amryth, is one of the few non-tech founders. He recently graduated from college and said he spends well over 40 hours a week here despite living close by.

Milano said all he needs to operate his business is "my laptop, a good place to lock in, and being around other people who are building."

This was an overall sentiment I heard. Many of these young founders lived a hop, skip, and a jump away, based on the commutes they told me about. But simply being around others who are building is, in some ways, one of the biggest benefits.

"Even if we're getting dinner or going out or something, it's like you're still kind of thinking about work and it's all kind of related," he said about the Series community. Adding that "sourcing opportunities" everywhere likely drew them together and is their biggest similarity.

At a time when AI is making it possible to build companies with fewer employees and building solo can be the dream for many, these young founders don't need, or necessarily want to run their business with tons of employees, but they still seem to really want coworkers.

When I asked Milano if he's ever spent the night at the Series office, he smiled, looked over at one of the Series team members, and said, "Am I allowed to say?"

Do you have a story to share about working on a tiny team? If so, please reach out to the reporter at aapplegate@businessinsider.com.

• Hans Hasselby-Andersen quit Texas Instruments during the 2008 financial crisis with four young kids at home.
• He sold his apartment, cashed out his pension, and took on debt to build a semiconductor startup.
• Nine years later, his company, Merus Audio, was acquired by Infineon.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Hans Hasselby-Andersen, 56, CEO of Danish semiconductor startup Lotus Microsystems and cofounder of Merus Audio, which was acquired by Infineon in 2018. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

When I quit my job at Texas Instruments in September 2008 to start a semiconductor company, I had four children between the ages of 5 and 14.

It was almost the height of the financial crisis. You had Lehman Brothers going down in flames in the US, and the whole credit market was just freezing up.

So to jump out at that point and go into fundraising was a big, big step. My manager was looking at me like I was crazy, basically.

Thinking back, probably I should have waited a year or so and just cooled off a little bit. But the thing is, once you have an idea and you're really motivated, you can't really wait. You have to go do something about it.

I'm an electrical engineer by training. Earlier in my career, I joined a small startup that was acquired by Texas Instruments about five or six months after I arrived.

The whole concept of a company being acquired, an exit and all that, was all new to me.

It planted a seed in my head that, if the circumstances were right, this was also a path I could take, and not just build my career in a large company.

I stayed at Texas Instruments and worked in the audio semiconductor business.

I was picking up things from my interactions in the market where I thought there was actually a need for a much more energy-efficient way to drive speakers in products like portable speakers and soundbars.

I saw a market need, but I didn't have the technical solution, so my first task was to go out and find a cofounder who could come up with a technical solution for that market.

I think that's actually quite unusual for tech startups. Normally, somebody comes up with some technology, and then they go out and try to see where it can be applied. This was the opposite approach.

Four kids, one big decision

Just before I resigned, I called my bank and asked if I could get a basic bank overdraft facility just to give me some extra headroom to live on.

Honestly, I think if I had waited two weeks, I wouldn't have gotten it. It was just when the financial crisis started to really kick in, and I seriously doubt I would've gotten that line of credit.

Getting the first funding took the better part of a year.

I probably spoke to between 50 and 100 different investors.

It's really a dating game. You try to look appealing and interesting from a company point of view, but you mostly get rejections because the investor doesn't invest in your domain, you're too early, you're too late, or you don't fit their profile.

I paid out of my own pocket to travel to Japan, South Korea, and Singapore to meet potential customers. I wanted to pressure-test my idea, understand what they were struggling with, what their requirements were, and help mature my business case.

Eventually, I raised the equivalent of about $150,000 to $200,000. It was a very small amount, and we spent it in about six months. The minute we got the funding, we knew we had to continue fundraising immediately.

My wife, who was a school teacher at the time, has been very, very supportive. She never told me, "This is a stupid idea, go back and find a job."

With four kids, you can't just make that decision on your own. When we finally got the company off the ground, my wife and I made some adjustments to minimize the risk for my family.

We sold our apartment while we could still make a little money from it and rented instead, so we wouldn't risk having to sell at a loss if the company failed. We also sold our car and leased one instead.

I slaughtered my pension and took out the money. I thought, "I need it now. I'm not about to be retired anyway."

Throughout the life of a startup company, you're more or less in fundraising mode all the time. You always have to keep your eye on how long you have cash and where you're going to get your next funding. The worst thing that can happen is that you run out of cash.

If there's one recommendation I would give first-time founders, it's to prepare for things to take longer than they expect because they always do.

If you think you can do something in two years or three years, multiply that by two, at least.

If you plan financially for your cash to fund your plan as you lay it out, then you're going to be in a difficult situation because you're going to run out of cash before you've achieved the milestones you set out to achieve.

Engineers have to sell, too

Starting a company around 40 made me a different kind of founder. There were definitely things I had learned that I wouldn't have been without.

I had learned how to communicate with customers, how to find out what the market needed, and how to explain what I was doing and why it was a good idea.

Many engineers are obviously good at what they do technically, but they can have a big challenge explaining that to others.

When you're standing in front of investors, you have three minutes to explain what you're doing. You have to train to do that elevator pitch.

Nine years later, the company I cofounded, Merus Audio, was acquired by Infineon.

I stayed on to help with the integration, but I was really not looking to go back into the corporate world. I had already had that experience and I had really come to like the startup life.

Today, I'm CEO and an investor at Lotus Microsystems, another semiconductor startup.

I'm not a founder this time, but I feel ownership. I feel invested in the company.

Would I take that same risk again today as I did with Merus?

I think the answer is yes.

If you have that mentality of wanting to try something on your own, to build something, that is a major driver inside you. It gives you an enormous amount of energy and motivation.

When you do that, you can actually achieve a lot.