yesMike MurphyNone
CES 2021 won't be happening in person
The CTA has canceled its show floors in Las Vegas, but the event will go ahead online.
See you in … 2022?
Photo: Xinhua/Wu Xiaoling via Getty Images
Some 200,000 people descend upon Las Vegas each January to attend CES, with tech companies, analysts, vendors and press looking to see the latest and greatest in technology — although they rarely find it. As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to rage on in the U.S., the Consumer Technology Association, the event's organizer, announced today that this year's event will only take place as a series of online webinars.
"Amid the pandemic and growing global health concerns about the spread of COVID-19, it's just not possible to safely convene tens of thousands of people in Las Vegas in early January 2021 to meet and do business in person," Gary Shapiro, the CTA's president and CEO, said in a release.
Details are scant about what the 2021 format will actually look like, although the CTA's release promises "a new immersive experience" that will be "highly personalized."
While gaggles of tech bloggers will likely be disappointed that they can't see the newest connected refrigerators and robot vacuums, the real losers will be the tech startups missing out on their shot of finding that one investor or company that wants to take a chance on them. Each year, thousands of small companies from around the world come to Vegas, either buying a costly booth in the emerging-tech show floor called Eureka Park, or renting out a hotel room in a nearby casino to bring investors and journalists who are in town for CES to see their product.
The demise of the in-person event also scuppers an occasion for top execs to meet. For many foreign execs, this might be their only trip to the U.S. for the year, insiders have told Protocol over the years, and that face time is still often what's needed to secure the big deals. And not to mention all the parties: Events like MediaLink's party are where people want to go to be seen.
CES is the first big in-person tech event for 2021 that's been nixed, and was one of the last ones to take place in 2020 before the world went into lockdown. This year's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona was canceled as Spain became one of Europe's COVID hot spots, and SXSW in Austin was canceled at a time when many were still unsure whether the virus would take hold in the U.S. Now, it's starting to look like 2021 may be as socially distant as most of 2020 has turned out to be.
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Mike Murphy ( @mcwm) is the director of special projects at Protocol, focusing on the industries being rapidly upended by technology and the companies disrupting incumbents. Previously, Mike was the technology editor at Quartz, where he frequently wrote on robotics, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics.
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After loan default and asset transfer, The Void's future looks uncertain
The location-based VR pioneer lost Disney as a key partner earlier this year.
Multiple industry insiders told Protocol that The Void had been trying to secure more funding throughout the year. It appears that those efforts failed.
Photo: Veronique Dupont/Getty Images
Janko Roettgers
Janko Roettgers (@jank0) is a senior reporter at Protocol, reporting on the shifting power dynamics between tech, media, and entertainment, including the impact of new technologies. Previously, Janko was Variety's first-ever technology writer in San Francisco, where he covered big tech and emerging technologies. He has reported for Gigaom, Frankfurter Rundschau, Berliner Zeitung, and ORF, among others. He has written three books on consumer cord-cutting and online music and co-edited an anthology on internet subcultures. He lives with his family in Oakland.
Things are looking grim for The Void, once hailed as the future of virtual reality. The company recently defaulted on a key loan, forcing it to permanently transfer its assets, including patents and trademarks, to its creditor, according to documents reviewed by Protocol. Its financial troubles also led to Disney terminating a longstanding partnership, which means that The Void won't be able to use some of its most popular VR experiences based on Disney IP anymore.
Jim Bennett, the new owner of the company's assets, confirmed the transaction in a statement provided to Protocol, and said he planned either to sell the assets, or resume operations after the pandemic subsides.
<p>"The context for our actions is that malls were shut down due to the pandemic and it was apparent that they would not be opening up for a while," he wrote. "We had to take control of the assets and inform the relevant agencies that we were taking over ownership and management of the registered IP as part of our business plan."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1"> </div> </div></p><p>A spokesperson for The Void did not respond to multiple requests for comment.</p><p>The Void operated more than a dozen VR centers across North America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East, with plans to launch a number of additional locations around the world soon. Ticket-paying customers would put on a modified VR headset connected to a special backpack and freely roam across a stage with doors, levers and other physical props that made for more believable immersive virtual worlds. Some of the experiences shown were based on blockbuster franchises like "Ghostbusters," "Star Wars" and "Jumanji."</p><p>All of those locations had to shut down this spring due to the pandemic. However, the company's financial troubles began long before COVID-19 hit the U.S. Court documents show that the startup was unable to pay for millions of dollars of equipment last summer. At the time, the company's then-CFO promised to pay up as soon as expected financing went through, and thanked the supplier "for being patient," according to <a href="https://docdro.id/Gux7p57" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">one legal filing</a>. The supplier never got its money and sued; the lawsuit ultimately got settled this month. </p><p>It's unclear how much money exactly The Void raised since its founding in 2015. Funders included Verizon Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures and James Murdoch's Lupa Systems. Murdoch's VC company wrote two checks for The Void in 2019, according to a person familiar with the transaction. The Void announced <a href="https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20191016005944/en/The-VOID-Announces-Strategic-Investment-From-Lupa-Systems-and-Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">a $20 million cash injection</a> from Lupa Systems in July 2019.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2"> </div> </div></p><p>The startup underwent some leadership changes in recent months, with former Lululemon CEO Laurent Potdevin assuming the role of the CEO. Potdevin was forced out at Lululemon in early 2018 over an inappropriate relationship with a staff member, <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/06/lululemon-ceo-laurent-potdevin-had-inappropriate-employee-relationship.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">CNBC reported at the time.</a></p><p>Documents filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office <a href="https://tsdr.uspto.gov/caseviewer/assignments?caseId=86518836&amp;docIndex=1&amp;searchprefix=sn#docIndex=1" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">show</a> that The Void raised debt funding from Bennett in August 2019. To secure that loan, The Void put up its assets as collateral; VR Boom LLC, a company owned by Bennett, was assigned The Void's patents and trademarks as a security interest earlier this year.</p><p>That loan, and The Void's apparent inability to pay it back, also seems to have triggered Disney's breakup with the company. <a href="https://wdwnt.com/2020/07/the-void-at-downtown-disney-district-permanently-shut-down-due-to-license-agreement-breach-disney-springs-location-potentially-affected/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Documents posted</a> at The Void's former storefront in Florida's Disney Springs show that Disney terminated its licensing agreement for The Void's "Star Wars," "Wreck-It Ralph" and "Avengers" VR experiences due to a proposed asset transfer to the lender at the end of June. Without the rights to use Disney's IP, the entertainment giant immediately pulled the plug on The Void's leases at Disney's Florida and Southern California properties. A Disney spokesperson declined to comment.</p><p>Multiple industry insiders told Protocol that The Void had been trying to secure more funding throughout the year. It appears that those efforts failed: Documents filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office <a href="https://tsdr.uspto.gov/caseviewer/assignments?caseId=86518836&amp;docIndex=3&amp;searchprefix=sn#docIndex=3" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">in recent days reveal</a> that the company agreed to transfer "substantially all of [its] property," including key patents and trademarks, to Bennett in October. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="3"> </div> </div></p><p>The corporate entities used for that asset transfer tell much of the story of The Void's fall from grace: After getting a loan from VR Boom LLC last year, The Void's assets are now being held by a new holding company aptly named VR Exit LLC.</p><p>Without Disney's IP, it's unlikely that any reincarnations of The Void would be able to sustain anything close to its original retail footprint and expansion ambitions. The startup had a habit of using prime real estate for its VR centers, with locations including the Grand Canal Shoppes at The Venetian Resort in Las Vegas, the World Trade Center in New York and the Mall of America in Minneapolis. </p><p>The Void's chief marketing officer, Jamie Apostolou, <a href="https://www.protocol.com/location-based-vr-covid-19" target="_self">told Protocol in June</a> that the company was gearing up to reopen some of these locations with increased safety protocols in place, but also admitted keeping prime real estate with limited attendance wouldn't be easy. "It's going to be a challenge for everybody, ourselves included," Apostolou said at the time.</p><p>The startup isn't the only company struggling to take VR to malls and movie theaters amid the pandemic. Competitor Sandbox VR, which had been backed by investors including Will Smith, Justin Timberlake and Katy Perry, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/virtual-reality-company-sandbox-vr-files-for-bankruptcy-11597359561" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">filed for bankruptcy in August.</a> Still, some industry insiders believe that location-based VR could reemerge after the pandemic subsides. VR headsets like Facebook's Oculus Quest are growing in popularity, prompting consumers to give the medium another look. At the same time, these headsets will never be able to offer the same level of immersion as VR experiences like the ones shown by The Void.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="4"> </div> </div></p><p>Bennett echoed those sentiments in his statement. "Given the fact that two companies are moving toward release of Covid-19 vaccines with 90 to 95 percent effectiveness rates we are quite confident that malls will be re-opening and that location-based VR will be back in high demand," he wrote. "Beyond malls, we are looking at a bright future for location-based VR at professional sports venues, concerts etc. This technology is also extremely valuable for training police and first responders."</p>
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the void disney virtual reality location-based entertainment vr coronavirus covid-19
Are bored tech workers really playing games with money?
The pandemic has inspired millennials to get serious about all kinds of investing, including some young, tech-savvy investors who are exploring a niche idea: algorithmic trading.
A new pandemic hobby.
Photo: Scott Heins/Getty Images
For the legions of workers sent home in March, quarantine hobbies started out small. Banana bread, sourdough, herb gardens. But then long days and nights at the home office opened the door for more precarious projects — like retail investing.
Stuck inside without an outlet for his carefully designed sports betting model, Matthew Brownsword, a project manager at market research firm Edison Research, turned to the stock market. "I created a code that I can run at night, every night, and in the morning I buy stocks or sell stocks, and I just see how it does." With the abrupt cancellation of sports, the market's potential for a similar modeling hobby grabbed his attention.
<p>Side projects have always been common for programmers, and algorithmic trading is just the latest hot hobby. The r/algotrading subreddit has doubled its subscriber base since the beginning of the year and is now adding anywhere between 700 and 900 new subscribers per day, on top of a 60% increase in daily viewership since before the pandemic, the moderators told Protocol. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1"> </div> </div></p><p>This growing interest paints a big and complicated picture about the future of investing. Pandemic boredom and changing consumer habits haven't just created <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-10-22/how-robinhood-s-addictive-app-made-trading-a-covid-pandemic-pastime?sref=18veDlX6" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">a new era of gamified day-trading</a> — they've spurred interest in retail investing across the board. Financial experts told Protocol that since March, more millennials are opening retirement and brokerage accounts, moving savings into ETFs and experimenting with niche retail investing concepts, like algorithmic trading. The more sedate new investors tend to be older and more gender diverse, while most of the day traders in abundant and rapidly growing Facebook groups (some with tens of thousands of people) are young men. And of the traders who spoke to Protocol, the more tech experience they had (programmers and engineers, mostly), the more likely they were to experiment with algorithms that direct their trading for them. </p><h3>Beyond just bored</h3><p>The go-to narrative around retail investing has been simple: Reckless young day traders are creating market volatility and blowing up stocks like <a href="https://marker.medium.com/why-tesla-fever-is-the-new-tulip-mania-5bb077254832" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Tesla</a> and <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-06-12/if-you-want-hertz-have-some-hertz" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Hertz</a>. Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-12/barstool-sports-dave-portnoy-is-leading-an-army-of-day-traders" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">has inspired his legion of fans</a> to embrace day trading with cult-like enthusiasm. The stock-trading app Robinhood <a href="https://qz.com/1906670/how-robinhoods-no-fee-stock-trading-is-changing-the-stock-market/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">has gamified investing</a> by designing a platform more like a social media app than a Vanguard website. </p><p>"When it comes to a lot of new traders, it's greed. Greed is the number one bad attribute in trading," said Jon Cabral, one of the founders of a futures trading group on Facebook with more than 7,000 members. "Young, dumb" investors are causing a "nightmare" in the market, Cole Smead, the president of Smead Capital Management, recently <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/story/young-dumb-traders-have-created-a-total-nightmare-in-the-stock-market-fund-manager-warns-11602785951?fbclid=IwAR2K9cA1RdWFzAn-_MrBvdTkkJxc9yEni47dOwyxPi0byfuvSMKnRwHaEcM" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">told CNBC. </a> </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2"> </div> </div></p><p>At first glance, the data seems to back this up. TD Ameritrade <a href="https://www.amtd.com/news-and-stories/press-releases/press-release-details/2020/TD-Ameritrade-Reports-Third-Quarter-Fiscal-2020-Results/default.aspx" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">added</a> a record high number of retail accounts in the third quarter — 661,000 — and hit all-time highs for daily average revenue trades. Robinhood added more than 3 million new accounts in the first four months of 2020 and also saw millions of DARTs, according to data provided by Robinhood. </p><p>Yet a number of market experts approach this version of the story with skepticism. Yes, there are people with some spare cash playing games with money. There are also some new investors taking advantage of the previously inaccessible opportunity to borrow capital for their trading, which can land them in serious debt. Earlier this year, a 20-year old Robinhood user <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2020/06/17/20-year-old-robinhood-customer-dies-by-suicide-after-seeing-a-730000-negative-balance/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">died by suicide</a> after appearing to believe he had accumulated hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt, though it is impossible attribute any one cause to this tragedy. Those are both problems worth criticism, they said, especially of the platforms doing little to stop it from happening.</p><p>But less-gamified platforms like those from Schwab, Betterment and Stash have also experienced similar year-over-year growth in terms of new accounts and trades, and these new users are not engaging in typical day-trading behavior. When taken alongside the day-trading data and new fascination with algorithmic trading, they instead illustrate a bigger picture of a broad swath of the American populace interested in investing for the first time. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="3"> </div> </div></p><p>Before the pandemic, Wall Street leaders had been vocal about their fear that millennials weren't interested in understanding and investing in the markets, which could be a long-term problem for financial institutions and individual wealth accumulation, JJ Kinahan, TD Ameritrade's chief market strategist, told Protocol. And then the pandemic hit, and "what was Wall Street's reaction? They are idiots, they're not doing it right, they shouldn't be here," he said. </p><p>"Are some people just going out and making bad decisions? Absolutely," he agreed. He said he fears, however, that there's a part of the story people are ignoring: The industry wants people to invest, and they want people to get educated while they do it. And the data shows that's starting to happen in a big way.</p><h3>Algorithmic trading: Unusual lessons, but an education nonetheless</h3><p>Amid all the furor over day trading, newly serious algorithmic traders have been especially focused on teaching themselves. Though it might not exactly be the traditional investing, or education, that people like Kinahan had in mind. </p><p>Chris Stampar, who works with international development nonprofits and designs websites, was already working from home full time in March, so he decided to teach himself Python when he found some extra time during the shelter-in-place. Basic Python turned to portfolio optimization techniques, which turned to algorithmic trading, and suddenly it was way more than a quarantine hobby. "I've enjoyed the coding so much and realizing how incredibly powerful it is, I have incorporated it into my day-to-day investing," Stampar said.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="4"> </div> </div></p><p>Cabral, the futures trading Facebook group co-founder, has been tinkering with his own algorithm for more than a year. "The wife is pissed at me about it, saying, 'You've been testing this enough, it's time to go live.'" But he refuses to deploy the model until it has seen enough testing to make him absolutely confident. </p><p>"Tons and tons of people do it," said Evan Francis, the CEO and co-founder of cryptocurrency trading platform Coygo, where the majority of users are millennial men and many newer, "tech-adjacent" users don't have professional trading backgrounds. "Tons and tons of people also give up algorithmic trading after a year or so," he added. "The average Joe is not going to have a lot of success, but it really depends on the individual."</p><p>The inherent difficulty of the modeling and math skills required for algorithmic trading lends well to those who already have programming experience and are actually interested in educating themselves. Brownsword, after an Achilles surgery right before the lockdown began, printed out hundreds of pages on designing a trading algorithm with R (a computer language that's mostly used for statistics) and studied them for months. </p><p>And Stampar is part of the growing group of algorithmic traders on Reddit, where he found the educational resources and community that he needed for his projects. Many of the new traders on the r/algotrading subreddit shared stories with Protocol that are nearly identical to Stampar and Brownsword's. They work for big tech companies, as software engineers at major banks and investment firms, in data analytics and social science research and even in nuclear engineering — and they all have taken pandemic time to up their algorithmic game.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="5"> </div> </div></p><p>Writing trading programs remains niche in the grand scheme of investing because it takes a very specialized mathematical mind to be successful, Kinahan said. "But maybe it is a trend we'll see more and more of, particularly as some of the technology improves." </p><p>Years of research indicates that most retail investors, day traders and algorithmic traders do not succeed in making long-term profits, as every expert Protocol spoke with pointed out. And many new investors do not understand that this kind of trading is not about evaluating a company's prospects, but instead examining your own tolerance with risk and how you manage it to make money. "If they're just taking some cash and playing around, they could lose it all. But the lesson may be worth it," said Bradford Cornell, an economist and valuation expert at the Berkeley Research Group. </p><p>It's the lesson that's the key. "We think it's a great thing that more and more people are getting invested. At the same time, it's not just a game. How do you make sure people are informed and educated? It's got to be both," Michael Cianfrocca, a spokesperson for Charles Schwab, said. Even if they don't make much money, algorithmic traders are learning a lot by doing.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="6"> </div> </div></p><p>Creating access to financial markets is important for the long-term success of the banking industry, but it's also essential for wealth development to protect people in times of crisis, argued Brandon Krieg, the co-founder and CEO of Stash, a consumer banking and investment fintech. The pandemic reminded the world that even one financial disaster (especially one only 12 years after the last one) can be crushing for most of the population, a reality he kept in mind when designing Stash. The platform doesn't allow traditional day trading in order to encourage users to focus on the savings and investments they can control. </p><p>Because day trading is about risk management, Krieg explained that even people who do it for a living have a difficult time doing it well. "I've seen this movie before," he said. </p><p>And that's a concern the entire industry is trying to address. "What we're trying to do right now is find ways to make investing and trading sort of as accessible as possible, but at the same time giving it the necessary … seriousness. Making sure people can be as informed and educated as possible," Cianfrocca said.</p><p><em>Are you spending any extra time on side projects since the pandemic began? Tell me about them! Send your thoughts, stories and accomplishments to </em><a href="mailto:akramer@protocol.com" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>akramer@protocol.com</em></a><em>. </em></p>
day trading stocks coronavirus covid-19 robinhood stock exchange fintech
Ping-Pong and catered lunches are back (for the startups willing to reopen)
Remote is trendy, but some San Francisco tech workers are choosing to go back to work.
Tech offices are starting to reopen in San Francisco, but few companies are actually going back.
Photo: Engin Akyurt/Unsplash
Biz Carson
Biz Carson ( @bizcarson) is a San Francisco-based reporter at Protocol, covering Silicon Valley with a focus on startups and venture capital. Previously, she reported for Forbes and was co-editor of Forbes Next Billion-Dollar Startups list. Before that, she worked for Business Insider, Gigaom, and Wired and started her career as a newspaper designer for Gannett.
For the last few days, Fast CEO Domm Holland has been able to look out from his standing desk and see his co-workers working alongside him. They shared a catered lunch inside their lofty SOMA-based office, and Holland raided the snack kitchen.
These would have all been normal scenes at a tech company in 2019, but for Holland, it's the first time since March that he's been able to return to a bit of "normal" after San Francisco finally began reopening offices this week.
<p>He even managed to squeeze in a game of Ping-Pong, a startup classic, with a co-worker at his <a href="https://www.protocol.com/fast-checkout" target="_blank">online checkout system startup</a>. "It's a great activity because it's a socially distanced game," he told Protocol, even with masks required and having to wipe down the equipment after. </p><p>Fast's return to the office is still a rarity in Silicon Valley. While other cities and states have allowed office reopenings for a while, San Francisco <a href="https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2020/10/20/sf-offices-nonessential-reopen-yellow-tier.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">only announced last week</a> that it would begin to allow nonessential office workers back beginning Oct. 27 and capped office attendance at 25%.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1"> </div> </div></p><p>And that's if they choose to reopen at all. Many tech companies, including several Bay Area giants, have decided to go entirely remote or <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/06/facebook-will-allow-employees-to-work-remotely-until-july-2021.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">postpone reopening</a> until next summer. </p><p>"All my NYC companies are back in the office at this point, although with limited capacity and lots of ventilation," wrote Founders Fund investor Delian Asparouhov in an email to Protocol. He pointed out that some Bay Area labs have been back for a while, especially those working on hard tech, but many startups have held off so far. </p><p>"A lot of the companies in my portfolio in SF are being slower to the draw than I'd have guessed in terms of their time frames for returning to office. I'd still say most of them aren't even really thinking about doing it until end of Q1 at the earliest," he added. </p><p>Data from BART ridership shows there wasn't a major rush back once San Francisco gave the green light to reopen. Ridership is only up a few hundred people systemwide in the days since offices reopened, and it's still down 87% from previous ridership levels. </p><p>"The reopening is not a moment in time," said Envoy's CEO Larry Gadea. "The reopening is something that happens over the next one to two years, and it's going to be gradual."</p><p>His company, once synonymous with those tablets visitors use to sign in at tech companies, has been on the frontlines of trying to help offices get back to work. It's rolled out products like Envoy Protect, which helps manage desk reservations, health questionnaires and touchless sign-ins at the office, to help make it easier for companies to know who and how many employees are at work at any given time.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2"> </div> </div></p><p>Still, the CEOs Gadea talks to remain cautious about bringing their employees to work, afraid to be the epicenter of an outbreak or to be seen as forcing employees back before they are ready. In a recent national survey run by Envoy and Wakefield, <a href="https://envoy.com/content/ebook/ds02/as/how-to-make-employees-feel-safe-at-work-during-covid-19/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">73% of the 1,000 people surveyed</a> said they were worried about going to the physical office. The study also found that about a fifth of employees have returned to their offices already, and 39% of employees never stopped going. </p><p>Tech workers in the study were the most worried about returning to the office, and San Francisco tech companies in particular have been more conservative than most, Gadea said. Of the most ambitious companies going back, Gadea says he's seeing around 10% to 15% of employees returning to the office. At Envoy, only a handful of its 120 employees have been back to the office, and while Gadea has been in a few times for things like 2021 planning meetings, even he hasn't made a full-fledged return.</p><p>"I get that we can all be robots at home and write code and get evaluated only for the output that we do, but it's very hard to be creative, to brainstorm and collaborate very specifically on things," he said. "I think people are getting there's a difference between being able to get your work done and being able to get your work done really well in a way that you're really excited and bought in."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="3"> </div> </div></p><p>It's the potential boost in productivity and engagement with work and coworkers that has some employees excited to go back. Despite only being back a few days, Founders Fund's Asparouhov already likes the normalcy of commuting and being back at the office. The group team lunches may be gone and replaced with individual boxed lunches, but there's still the option of seeing a colleague through a glass wall and asking to go on a walk for just a small bit of watercooler talk. He'd already been going for socially distanced walks with founders to be able to meet them "mask to mask," but going back to work in an office has already helped life feel closer to ordinary.</p><p>"Despite having a very sparse office, and having to meet with founders wearing a mask, my current workflow actually feels pretty 'normal' despite being quite different from my 2019 workflow," he said. </p><p>Fast's Holland had been laying the groundwork for six months to make sure his company would be able to return when San Francisco finally decided to reopen. The office used to fit 120 desks comfortably, and it's been reduced to 25 socially distanced workspaces. The company set up a ticketing system so people can sign up for the nine available slots a day. The catered lunches aren't buffet trays, but individual orders from Uber Eats and DoorDash. Even with the changes, Holland is still feeling the rush from just being able to bring a small bit of community back into his work life, and so far, the maxed-out attendance in the office has shown that other employees have craved it, too. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="4"> </div> </div></p><p>"Most of the people I know today and am friends with I met through work," Holland said. "So I am bullish on keeping the community alive. They don't necessarily need to be on your team, but we can still provide a place and a community for people."</p><p>The biggest change, though, has just been rethinking what the office actually means to Fast. The startup instituted early in the pandemic a <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2020/08/05/the-flexible-workplace-of-the-future-is-here/#e1408a8351c6" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Fast Flex policy</a>, which allows people to work from anywhere, whether it's in a foreign country or while on a road trip or just from their couch. It also started hiring more people from outside the Bay Area, so now around 30 of Fast's 70 employees live outside of Silicon Valley. "We're in a position where nobody has to come in ever again if they don't want to — and that's fine," he said. </p><p>Because it will always be a distributed company now, Holland thinks the office will serve more as a co-working space that's exclusively for Fast employees rather than a place for entire teams to report to work. Dropbox is taking a similar tack by <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/13/success/dropbox-virtual-first-future-of-work/index.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">launching "studios"</a> instead of offices. For Dropbox employees, their daily work will be expected to be done in co-working spaces or from their couch, but the company will have more communal studios for team building, training and events. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="5"> </div> </div></p><p>While many companies are giving up their office spaces, Holland isn't backing away from them. Instead, he expects to see Fast open more in the future. </p><p>"I am bullish on the future of offices, but the way that I think of them is different from before COVID," he said. "We'll open up offices in other parts of the world, but I think of our offices as co-working offices for employees. They're not designed to be the office that you and your team and your boss all work from."</p>
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