Many San Francisco startups inhabit industrial warehouse spaces: the lofty, open structures readily adapt to become modern workshops for artisanal software development. Founded in 2009, the mobile- payments company Square, Inc., which makes credit- and debit-card readers for tablets and smart phones, would have been happy to consider a brick-and-timber warehouse for its headquarters in 2012. But by that time, with a staff that had rapidly grown to 300, there were very few buildings available in the city large enough to accommodate it. So when four levels of a 22-story downtown office building became available, the company signed a lease.
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