It was time to move on, by Libor Mertl, one of the founders of ComAp

In 1991 we established ComAp. My wife Ivana kindly supported our urgent business needs and we converted our bedroom into a computer lab, office and meeting room. Eight square meters provided plenty of space for all what we wanted, and we had a lot of fun there.  A year later we started to develop a digital announcement system for the Prague underground train network (which is still in use today) and the repeated announcements of “doors are closing, next station is…” became a bit annoying for everybody around, especially at midnight! On the top of that, Ivana and I started to miss the bedroom.  It was time to move on.

In 1992 we moved to a testing laboratories building in the outskirts of Prague. The ownership of the building changed a year later, so we had to move to another address in north of Prague, to Světova Street. Lavishly, and after a lot of hesitation, we rented TWO! rooms in this building – 25 square meters. A few months later we rented three rooms, then four rooms, five rooms, one floor, two floors… we ended up renting the whole building.

 
In 2002 Prague experienced ‘1000 Year Floods’, which caused a lot of damage throughout the city. Our building was not that close to the river, but almost half of Prague changed into a big lake, including our street. Water reached the first floor and the whole area was closed for many days. For a few weeks there was no electricity there. We rented a gen-set (luckily we have few friends in this industry!) and were able to continue to work from the first day. But when we occupied a second building in the street, it was time to move on.

 
In 2006 we bought a building nearby. After a massive reconstruction year later we started to work there. For the first time we had open space, over 10 meeting rooms and 2000 square metres provided a lot of space.  In the next few years we filled the building and build up the gen-set control testing and training room and rented part of another building nearby. The building had served us well for 8 years, but it was time to move on....

Today, August 1st, we are moving into a brand new building in the Classic 7 development in Holešovice. The building is very environmentally friendly, and the whole complex evokes a university campus with many cafes around.  We had chosen one of the best architects to design the interiors to support our culture. When standing in front of the building think back to the original eight square meters ComAp started with, and think that 6000 square meters would make a pretty big bedroom! How quickly 25 years passed!