Sponsored by Monday Properties and written by ARLnow.com, Startup Monday is a weekly column that profiles Arlington-based startups and their founders, plus other local technology happenings. The Ground Floor, Monday’s office space for young companies in Rosslyn, features a 5,000-square-foot common area that includes a kitchen, lounge area, collaborative meeting spaces, and a stage for formal presentations.

Less than two years ago, Politico alumni Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen and Roy Schwartz struck out and launched Axios, a media startup with a single goal: to “help people get smarter, faster.”

Since then, the company has grown so rapidly that it needed to leave behind its old office space at the MakeOffice coworking space at 3100 Clarendon Boulevard. But Axios isn’t going far — on May 30, the company moved in to new digs on the 13th floor of the same office building, on a 10-year lease.

Downstairs, they were “bursting at the seams,” Schwartz said. “I don’t think we had a free chair.”

The company’s Clarendon headquarters currently houses around 85 employees, of over 115 total. By the end of 2018, Axios aims to grow its staff to 150 across its Clarendon, New York and San Francisco offices.

Schwartz believes the 13th floor space will allow the startup to grow in a location that is the “physical manifestation of our principles.”

From conference rooms with glass walls labeled with Axios catch phrases (“Axioms”) like “Be Smart” and “Between the Lines,” to wood tables built in Wisconsin by VandeHei’s brother, the office is full of personal touches.

“We wanted an environment… where everyone felt that they belong,” Schwartz said.

The company’s work to build an inclusive culture is evident within and beyond its workspace, which includes a gender-neutral restroom and glass rooms to promote transparency. Placards on shared desks include names, titles, and short “why I matter” statements. And when new employees start, they input their pronouns on collaboration software Slack, according to company spokeswoman Megan Swiatkowski.

Employees have plenty of spaces to work, take breaks or perhaps do both: for instance, in a conference room with a table that can be converted for impromptu ping pong games or on treadmills that double as desks.

An area dubbed “Relaxios” features picturesque views of Arlington, and windows in the office’s kitchen capture D.C. landmarks like the Washington Monument. Instead of using the Relaxios space for something like an executive’s office, Axios has “democratized all the views,” Schwartz said.

Near the entrance, “Snaxios” offers a wide selection of food, from Goldfish to fruit and candy.

With interns starting today and the “People Operations” team reviewing applications for a number of open positions, Axios isn’t looking to slow down anytime soon.

“The space allows us to have the freedom to grow,” Schwartz said.

Check out more photos of Axios’s new space after the jump:

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Sponsored by Monday Properties and written by ARLnow.com, Startup Monday is a weekly column that profiles Arlington-based startups and their founders, plus other local technology happenings. The Ground Floor, Monday’s office space for young companies in Rosslyn, is now open. The Metro-accessible space features a 5,000-square-foot common area that includes a kitchen, lounge area, collaborative meeting spaces, and a stage for formal presentations.

(Updated at noon) When Shavanna Miller’s Bloompop was featured in an April 2014 edition of “Startup Monday,” it had been just seven months since the company’s official launch. At the time, the Crystal City company sought to connect high-quality florists across the country with customers in their communities who might otherwise order arrangements from larger businesses — but plenty has changed since then.

“When we launched, we were… competing in the same space as the larger flower companies people would know about, like 1-800-Flowers,” Miller said. They were also competing with another D.C. area startup: the expanding direct-to-consumer floral delivery service UrbanStems.

After curating a base of florists to serve the D.C. area, Bloompop expanded its reach to offer gift order services across the country. Although Bloompop still takes gift orders, the company now serves primarily corporate customers, often providing flowers “on a weekly subscription basis to their buildings,” Miller said.

Companies on Bloompop’s client list include Tiffany & Co., fashion designer Carolina Herrera and real estate development and construction company Bozzuto. Bloompop’s reliable, creative partners give it an edge in building relationships with high-profile clients, Miller said.

“The big differentiator is that we have really beautiful designs, really high-quality design partners and florists that we work with… who are very reliable,” Miller said.

Bloompop has chosen the florists it works with carefully since its founding, when Miller would comb through online review sites to find florists with exclusively four- and five-star ratings.

“On the consumer side or on the corporate side, it’s not just any florist,” Miller said, adding that Bloompop considers questions like “who’s the best local florist?” and “who does the most unique designs?”

But Miller figured she could change things up even more. She branched out in 2016 to found Freshcut, which connects farmers in locations such as Colombia, Ecuador and the Netherlands directly with florists in the U.S. to eliminate the wholesale middleman.

When florists aim for unique designs, “it can quickly get expensive,” Miller said. “We figured out if you go directly to the source… we can get substantial discounts for our florists who can then actually pass that along to the clients in the form of better, bigger, more beautiful [and] more unique arrangements.”

To develop Freshcut, Miller applied lessons from her experience with Bloompop to work on a “much more true [minimum viable product] path,” she said. Under a MVP model, businesses develop a basic version of their product that they use to receive feedback before advancing to more complex variations.

By employing this strategy, “we were able to develop [Freshcut] for a lot less money [and] we were able to scale it up much quicker,” Miller said.

Reflecting on the past four years, Miller noted that “it’s been so long since 2014, it’d be easier to say what hasn’t changed.”

Photos via Freshcut and Bloompop websites