Today our team experienced a growth milestone. Over the week-end we moved out of the offices that facilitated our formative period, and moved into a beautiful downtown Seattle office that will nicely facilitate our growth.

Our office mascot (Ubu), and Director of Security, isnt quite sure he's as excited as we are, but he'll adjust.

Reflecting back, I thought I'd list a few of the 3 best things that we learned, or that happened, in our first office space:

1. Creativity: Our office space was located in a turn-of-the-century warehouse in the South of Downtown (SODO) area of Seattle. The amenities were lean, but it forced us to be creative and open-minded as we made the space our home away from home. The same creativity is clearly going into the development of iMedExchange, as the physician community will soon see. (I don't want to insinuate that we lived in complete austerity...we had a Starbucks Coffee next door and a Krispy Kreme on the other side. This, however, is trumped in the new office by a Starbucks in the lobby, 3 additional cafes within a block and a state-of-the-art espresso machine in our expansive kitchen. Does it seem like caffeine is important to us?)

2. Resourcefulness: We have run a lean and mean operation from Day 1. I believe our "hungry" attitude would have been spoiled had we immediately pursued institutional capital, plush benefits etc. With iMedExchange, each and every member of the team is passionate about creating the greatest physician experience to date. So, we gave up our plush benefits, high paying jobs etc and are focused on building a world-class company. We also made a deliberate decision to fund this company from within the physician community and management team. Everyone wants a "piece" of physicians. We, on the other hand, want to give back to the physician community, and there isn't a better way to do that than letting physicians participate in the success of iMedExchange.

3. Team: We have a team comprised of amazing healthcare, software, web 2.0 and marketing experts. The heart and soul of iMedExchange is the collection of folks that have put their blood, sweat and tears into the company...and we are in Chapter 1 of a 30 Chapter book. Over the past year we have bonded, learned about one another's strengths and weaknesses and a lot more as we shared an often cramped space. In the end, our office will hold some great memories of the "early" days.