Most of these seem like separate issues. Founders living in the office is weird regardless of it being a “ten million dollar house”.

> Is it centrally located for commuting workers and testing sites or the personal preferences of the founders?

The house in question was probably the comma.ai office in West Portal, SF (right next to the West Portal Station). Draw your own conclusions regarding commutes, it’s a pretty central location.

> Is it scalable for a growing company?

Offices are rarely very scalable, you just move somewhere else once it no longer works.

It was not comma ai. The house was in the hills of Silicon Valley and not in a central location.

Seems like setting up in houses is a common pattern for Bay Area self driving car startups then. I’d guess that the availability of decent office space with workshop bays is essentially nonexistent

Not in the South Bay where this company was. Plenty of machine shops, mechanics, etc with workshop bays imo. What was true at the time was that investors were throwing money hand over fist at self driving car startups, even to young founders fresh out of college. I would not discount the psychological appeal to a 20-something founder with millions of dollars a to burn to set up shop in a mansion.

The point of my original comment is not to say that doing so is objectively bad, but I had just left an abusive startup run by a young and inexperienced startup and I wanted something more stable. I ended up getting a job at a Toyota research branch in a boring office park and I played with a cute little robot. It was just what I needed at the time.

I've heard of tons of startups that do though, including some very successful ones.

Wasn't snap for example running out of a few houses on the la beach? Maybe they weren't mansions, but I'm sure the rent was high.

> * Are the founders or employees living in their office?

This is common for startups in the seed stage. I don't personally recommend it but I wouldn't consider it to be a red flag for a pre-series-A startup.

> * Is there adequate parking or public transportation?

There is practically no public transportation in the bay area. No, there is never enough parking.

> * Is it legal? Does it conform to HOA and city requirements?

Nobody takes a shit about HOAs. Startups exist to drill square pegs into circular holes. Hell, I'd love to create a startup to help people get rid of HOAs.

You consider HOA requirements and single-site scalability to be red flags for a startup?

You get it. It felt like they were inexperienced and burning cash unnecessarily. I had just left a very unprofessional and in hindsight abusive startup and I didn’t want to walk in to another “boys clubhouse” situation.