California Trip Pictures
Similar to how I published photos of the companies I visited during my last trip to the valley, I have some new photos to share from my recent trip. During the week I was in California I visited San Francisco, then rented a car and drove to San Diego, Los Angeles and San Luis Obispo - a journey that put 1200 miles on the odometer. Click any of the pictures below to load a larger version within the page.
Note: There are a lot of photos here. This page may take some time to load depending on how many tubes are connected to your computer.
Pownce - San Francisco, CA
Pownce is a free social-networking and microblogging service aimed at sharing events, media and other files amongst friends. It is in the same building in SOMA as Wired, Yahoo! Brickhouse and shares office space with Cake Financial.
Qik - Foster City, CA
Qik is a video startup focused on streaming live video from mobile phones over cellular data networks and posting them online. Someone in their office also likes Yoda.. a lot.
Media Temple - Los Angeles/Culver City, CA
After being hosted on Media Temple for almost 3 years, I finally got a chance to meet with some of the people that keep PaulStamatiou.com running. Surprisingly for all the customers they have, they only have 80 or so employees. Media Temple’s marketing director Alex Capehart told me they automate as much as they can, making them efficient. However, the company is growing and will soon move out of their current location.
Professional Aptitude Council - Palo Alto, CA
PAC aims to change the recruitment industry by having online aptitude exams and making it easy for companies to hire the talent they need. They also have offices in Asia and India.
Red Bull Air Race - San Diego Bay, CA
Facebook - Palo Alto, CA
I had to sign an NDA before entering Facebook so I didn’t feel comfortable snapping shots with a big DSLR camera. However, since my last Facebook visit last summer they have grown immensely, absorbing several buildings around them. I would say they are close to 450 employees by now. Security is pretty tight and RFID card access is required for nearly everything.
Cars
It wouldn’t be a California trip with out some nice car sightings. I spotted 2 Aston Martin DB9s, 2 Gallardos, a Bentley Continental GT and a Continental Flying Spur, a Porsche GT3 RS, many Lotus Elises and 2 F430s.
Props to the Dash Express for leading us to every In-N-Out Burger on the 101. I visited a few other startups/companies but didn’t take any good photos: Cast TV, Yahoo! Sunnyvale, Socialtext, Yahoo! Brickhouse.
Paul,
Thanks for coming to the Qik Offices! Hope you had a great time!
It was fun meeting you at Yahoo I love the Red Bull Air Race video!
Looks like it was a fun trip.
@Paul - Do you know people at all the companies, or do you just ring them and ask if you can visit? Sweet trip.
@Brendan - I have some friends at each of the companies/startups I visit.
I’ve got no affiliation with them (these days, in comments, you feel like you should almost disclose that), but Office Snapshots has pics from other offices in the tech/web industry:
http://www.officesnapshots.com/
That was a fun trip and mad props to the Dash. Without it I fear we would have never visited an In-N-Out or made it halfway to San Diego without having to fumble with a ginormous map.
Huh, not sure what happened to my punctuation…
That’s a very strange DB9! SF looks mad fun, definitely my next vacation spot!
It was great meeting you too, Chris!
Media Temple have some very cool offices I must say.
It’s always great to see an inside scoop by you, Paul. We visit services like that by dot com on a daily basis, you do that every other months - in PERSON! Exciting!
The yoda office is astonishing!
wonder why facebook is so tight with their security. probably because they’re in debt?
sup Paul, Dope blog. looks like Cali is the spot to be…
You did say hello to my good friend @danielbru for me - didn’t you?
One of these days I will be lucky enough to make it over (not down - I’m living in NYC) to the Valley. It’s a tech lover’s dream town.