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Take a tour of Betterment, the $500 million New York startup with insane perks for its employees
Betterment has 15,000 square feet of space in a historic building in New York's Flatiron District. The startup occupies two floors — one that was once a karate studio and another that served as a storage room for a toy company.
And the space is beautiful, with lots of light spilling onto comfortable couches next to the windows. Betterment has been in this part of the office since the summer of 2013.
The team has about 90 members and expects to grow rapidly in the next year. "We'll need more space soon," founder and CEO Jon Stein told Business Insider.
The office has several conference rooms that embrace the building's history. This one includes a vintage windowpane and a subway map mounted on the wall. Lightbulbs above the doors show which conference rooms are occupied.
For this one, the designers scoured eBay for finance-related board games.
They even played some of the vintage games before mounting them on the wall.
This vault-like door stays true to the finance theme.
There's also this library, decorated with leather couches and vintage globes.
Another conference room has whiteboard walls and stadium seating.
And this one has chalkboard walls and a beautiful light fixture.
A cool feature is this pressurized tube, which can shoot lightweight items ...
The other end of the tube is in the kitchen!
And there are certainly plenty of snacks in this office.
Betterment gets cold-brew coffee delivered from Joyride Coffee, which our tour guide joked is about five times as strong as regular coffee.
The snack area is spacious enough for impromptu meetings. We spotted Stein with his laptop here.
Betterment has a chef who cooks breakfast and lunch several times a week. Here chef Chris Ramos, formerly of Michelin-starred restaurant Per Se, prepares a collard-greens dish for the next day's lunch.
Employees eat their meals at these long tables next to the kitchen on the office's lower level.
This floor of the office was completed in the fall of 2014.
Most of Betterment's engineering team is based here, as well as the HR department.
The far corner of this floor was decorated with lounge chairs to create a relaxing, outdoorsy feel.
This new conference room has a table that can be raised and lowered with just the touch of a button.
Some employees commute by bike, so the design team built a rack to accommodate them.
The team hosts a happy hour every Friday evening. You can see the beverage selection here.
And they have a sound system set up on both floors of the office.
Santiago the fish makes his home on the kitchen counter. We're told that employees are also welcome to bring their dogs in to work any day of the week.
Now tour another awesome startup office.
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