ByRichard Nieva,
At
the downtown San Francisco headquarters of Corgi, an AI insurance startup, most conference rooms have a mattress tucked into the corner. There’s a reason for that: the startup’s employees work 7 days a week in the office and sometimes they need a place to crash. For CEO Nico Laqua, the routine is even more extreme. Most nights, he sleeps in a room called the “Founders’ Room” and showers at a nearby Equinox gym. "I technically have a room [in an apartment] but I never really go there," he tells Forbes.
The space occupies the thin line between tech startup and lived-in frat house, cluttered with bags of trash, well-worn furniture and the occasional stray banana peel. The air is stale, like at the end of a 72-hour hackathon. The company’s mascot, a brown and white corgi named Trudy, is often underfoot. The pet is collectively owned by employees, who feed, walk and bathe her with the help of an AI bot on Telegram that reminds employees to carry out the tasks. Downstairs, the startup owns and operates the Corgi Cafe, an all-night coffee house that’s open to the public, which has become a beacon for the city’s set of 20-something startup founders who work until twilight trying to hit product deadlines or close deals.
