Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on Seattle 2.0, and imported to GeekWire as part of our acquisition of Seattle 2.0 and its archival content. For more background, see this post.
By Nathan Parcells
3 days ago our company moved to Silicon Valley for 6 months to join Dave McClure’s 500 Startups incubator in Mountain View. This change is really big for us, probably only topped in the past year by the day we brought on board our third founder and CTO, Kyle Wilkinson.
Seattle has always been our home and has offered incredible resources and unique support for building our business. I am going to especially miss being close to the many people who have dedicated huge hours in helping us grow this past year. In the meantime, I am excited to offer some snapshots over the next 6 months about what is different, for better or worse about being an early stage company here, 15 hours south, in Silicon Valley.
A New and Different Chapter:
On this past Thursday, in a manner very reminiscent to Andrew (my co-founder) and I’s first move from the East Coast to Seattle, Andrew and I packed our cars full of office supplies and our minimal personal belongings to move to the valley.
For the past year our international HQ was our small apartment in Madison Park where we covered the walls with whiteboards and post-it notes, sat in back pain inducing folding chairs, and revolutionized our understanding of the internship market and how to build a real solution for students and employers. Our house-office created a company culture: one of bootstrapping and resourcefulness, one of intense overlap between work and personal space (that forced everyone to find humor and fun in the close quarters), and these are all elements that made InternMatch who we are and which will now be changing dramatically.
In retrospect it is clear that a company’s first office is incredibly important in creating a company culture and in creating a lasting glue between founders. Despite the challenges of balancing a home office, the work from home experience impacted us very positively as a company.
Our new office space could not be more different, but fortunately the 500 Startups shared office is perfect for any early stage startup. It offers an unbeatable view from the top floor of the tallest building in Mountain View, and a floor plan that allows companies to maintain their culture via unique meeting spaces, while still taking advantage of the benefits of being in an open floor space with other interesting and high performing companies.
The Valley Isn’t Evil After All:
My biggest first reaction is that I was really wrong on some of my biggest assumptions about the valley. InternMatch had such tremendous support in Seattle by mentors and advisors who were passionate about early stage startups and I attributed a lot of this to the tight-knit smaller tech scene of Seattle. After reading enough TechCrunch, I thought the Valley was going to be more egocentric, more about the big guys, and more disinterested in helping early stage companies.
Instead what I have found in only a few days has been the opposite – everyone here loves talking about tech companies in a way you find nowhere else. People here are more likely to suspend disbelief (and pessimism) about your company’s vision (it seems there a less “yeah but” people here). And I have already met a wealth of fantastic mentors who are entrepreneur focused and who dedicate more hours than they have time in the day, in order to help young entrepreneurs navigate the pitfalls and hazards of the startup life.
Kyle our CTO remains in Seattle and I will be coming back frequently during the 6 month incubator, but if anyone has any questions about comparing what it is like to be a lean company in Silicon Valley vs. in Seattle, whether on fund raising, startup life, networking, or general lifestyle differences I would be happy to try my best to offer honest insights.
