Check out pics of Product Hunt’s new (and first) office — where the magic happens

Big changes for Product Hunt team — it’s gotten a real office in San Francisco.

For more than a year, founder Ryan Hoover held a well-known residency at the Philz Coffee shop on Golden Gate Avenue in San Francisco, from which he ran the Product Hunt community, took meetings, and consumed debatably too much coffee. That coffee shop was also where the idea for Product Hunt, a community-generated leaderboard for tech products, formed in his head — Philz is now something of a startup landmark.

But after raising more than $7 million in total funding, getting a board of directors, and hiring several people, Hoover has finally gotten a “real” office at Mint Plaza, in downtown San Francisco.

This is where the magic will be happening from now on.

“Part of it is, like, we have no home base. When people want to meet, it’s ‘what coffee shop do we go to?’” Hoover told me as he sat on his first office chair, at his first office desk.

Product Hunt has several remote employees and plans to continue hiring overseas for some roles like community management and support, but Hoover is looking to centralize his team more in San Francisco now that he has an office.

To help Hoover find his first “home base,” Custom Spaces, a commercial real estate and interior design firm with clients such as Square and Airbnb, came to the rescue. In total, it took visits to about eight to 10 offices before the team found its new home.

The office isn’t all done yet — the team still needs to finish assembling its Ikea furniture, get some bean bags, maybe a hammock or two, and some decorations. I just hope Hoover takes my idea and plants a massive version of its famous “Glasshole kitty” logo on its wall (see my rendering of that in the gallery below).

We swung by the office to check it out, so take a look at the shots we took of the yet-to-be-finished office. It’s modest, but really, who needs more distractions when running a community as dynamic as Product Hunt?