Construction on the new Startup Lab continues, and we are on target for an early-July move-in date. This picture is from a couple weeks back, when the construction crew was framing out the walls. The walls are now up, paint’s next, and floors and furniture are just a few weeks away.

As Bill noted in last month’s Fast Company interview, the Startup Lab is one of the keys to our investing strategy. More than just a building, it’s also the collection of workshops, office hours and guest speakers we bring to the portfolio on a regular basis. Our current location has served its purpose well, but no longer really fits our needs (or those of the portfolio). Though we’ve cobbled together a good solution for broadcasting our workshops, neither the lighting nor acoustics lend themselves to the quality we’d like. When we host larger events with breakouts, we run out of space pretty quickly, and that can be disruptive for the companies who use the Startup Lab as their office. And let’s not talk about the alarm system, which, well, has issues.

We’re nearing the end of a nearly 9 month process to construct a dedicated building that met our exact needs. This new Startup Lab will feature dedicated conference space for workshops (with seating for up to 100 people), a full-time UX lab for use by the portfolio, live HD broadcast support for all events, and office space for portfolio companies (including conference rooms of various size and several phone/interview rooms) — whether they are in town visiting and need a temporary desk, or are in the Bay Area and need a place for the team to meet that isn’t someone’s living room. We’ll also have rooms suitable for team offsites, large rooms for board meetings, and several open work areas with more whiteboards than you could possibly hope to fill.

We’ll share more details as we get closer to moving in. Stay tuned!