This article was published on February 28, 2013
Anna Heim is the founder of MonoLibre and a freelance writer for various tech and startup publications. She is a polyglot French news junkie (show all) Anna Heim is the founder of MonoLibre and a freelance writer for various tech and startup publications. She is a polyglot French news junkie with a love for technology.
São Paulo may not be the most beautiful city in the world, but its vibrant tech scene boasts world-class offices when it comes to cool and functional interior design.
While tech companies tend to boast nice workspace in order to attract top talent, they have an extra incentive to do so in São Paulo, where the average workday can be longer than you’d thought. As Buscapé‘s VP of Organizational Development Pompeo Scola told us while giving us a tour of the company’s offices, many employees choose to arrive early and leave late, in the hope of escaping the city’s legendary traffic jams.
As a result, several leading Brazilian startups and tech companies have come up with spaces that let workers mix work and entertainment in a relaxed atmosphere. While it would be difficult to name them all, here’s a sample list of nine offices you should check out, in alphabetical order:
The heart of tech is coming to the heart of the Mediterranean
Airbnb‘s office in São Paulo is one of the many regional HQs it has opened all around the world over the last few months as part of its impressive international growth, which it recently summarized through data visualization.
Located in a tall building in Brigadeiro Faria Lima Avenue, most commonly known as just Faria Lima, the office was inaugurated in April 2012, and boasts a cosy work environment with views of the city. Its main trophy is a giant ping-pong table that the team won in a global competition between all Airbnb offices.

The main offices of Brazilian e-commerce heavyweight Buscapé are located in one of the many skyscrapers of São Paulo’s most famous avenue, Avenida Paulista, where they occupy four floors of 1,000 square meters. While the group has a total of 13 offices to host its 1,100 employees, a large number of them work from this central location, which was inaugurated in 2011.
While the office organization may look like a regular open space, it is actually structured around “hives” of desks which make it natural for teams to work together on specific projects. The furniture itself is modular and can easily accomodate small impromptu meetings.
On the relaxing side, there are several small coffee corners on each floor, as well as a massage and therapy area. The 17th floor also features a large covered terrace where staff can play virtual games, but also ping-pong and baby-foot, or simply chill out in a hammock – we are in Brazil, after all.

Flag is the name of the holding that includes several ventures, including well-known digital agency CuboCC and in-house accelerator S_Kull. According to Appies’ founder Bob Wollheim, who is the new CEO of this unit, it will be a laboratory aimed at disrupting an industry that lacks innovation and out of the box thinking and business models. It will invest in internal and external ideas that deal with communications and creative strategic planning.
All entities share the same space, which has become known for its quirkiness. For instance, the meeting room is also a gallery, and the team payed a lot of attention to interior design, handpicking furniture items and art pieces to create a quite unique work environment.