This NYC Startup Made All Its Own Desks From Hurricane Sandy Debris

Business Insider / Jillian D'Onfro Rytis Vitkauskas, co-founder of YPlan. When you work for a startup, chances are you're going to get your hands dirty doing a lot of different kinds of work.

Well, the employees of New York startup YPlan did exactly that.

The company, which makes an app that curates nightly entertainment in NYC and London, sourced all its desks from Hurricane Sandy debris. And the employees helped make them.

(Take a closer look at the app here.)

A few months before YPlan opened its new offices in Manhattan, employees road-tripped to a workshop north of the city to work alongside Robert Rising, a man who calls himself "The Black Lumberjack."

New York City Slab Note the metal planters still stuck to the bottom of the Sandy debris.Rising collected hundreds of felled trees after Hurrican Sandy to turn them into beautiful furniture. All-in-all, the employees helped him create 25 desks from this reclaimed wood.

Jessica Hack, YPlan's operations manager, said the team knew that it wanted to locally-source all of the furnishings for its new office to support the city (the company first was founded in London). Using Sandy debris was the perfect fit.

"We thought that it would be really cool to have something in our office connected to an event that was so huge for the city,"Jessica Hack, YPlan's operations manager, told Business Insider.

By helping Rising build the desks, YPlan also kept costs down and gave its new employees the opportunity to grow closer through team-bonding.

YPlan The YPlan-ers at work.

YPlan raised $12 million this summer for its international expansion, and it launched in New York City in September.

"Since then, we've been growing at double the pace as we did when we launched in London," co-founder Rytis Vitkauskas says. YPlan is available of iPhone or Android.

Business Insider / Jillian D'Onfro The YPlan team works in Manhattan.