We were pre-profit, smiley face, so we were price sensitive.
I said it twice in the same email because there was no point wasting anybody's time. Reonomy was moving offices, we needed real internet in the new space, and I wanted to know what service was available without pretending the budget did not matter.
The request itself was basic. Tell me what you can deliver to the building, whether it is fast enough in both directions, and what information you need to investigate. We did not need an exotic setup. We needed enough bandwidth and reliability for a growing technology company to work.
Internet in an office is one of those things that disappears when it works. Nobody joins a startup because the circuit was ordered correctly. Everybody notices when twenty people arrive with laptops and the circuit is late, slow, or unreliable.
The awkward part was buying for the company we were becoming while paying with the budget of the company we actually were. Consumer internet could be cheaper. A serious office connection could come with better service and fewer surprises. We needed enough capacity for engineers, product, sales, and client success to work at the same time, but we did not need to perform wealth for a telecom vendor.
So I led with the truth. New gig. New office. Pre-profit. Price sensitive.
There were dozens of bigger things happening at Reonomy that week. We were hiring, working through the product roadmap, and trying to make the engineering cadence real. Still, somebody had to make sure the new room would have an internet connection when we walked in.
I sent the note and waited to find out what the building could support. The office move was becoming real one unglamorous dependency at a time.