AOL offers free office space to attract Silicon Valley entrepreneurs

Source: Internet
Author: User
Keywords Attraction office building offering start-up companies

AOL's new office building in California State Palo has unveiled a mystery that it temporarily does not charge a penny to the Silicon Valley start-up companies, the Business Weekly Web page wrote today. The company, which has been founded for 28 years, hopes to inject vigor into its development in this way. The following are the main contents of the article:

Inject vigor into the development of the company

As soon as I walked into AOL's new office Hall in Palo, it was written on the white bottom of a few big Blue mother: "AOL is cool". The internet giant signed the 225,000-square-foot (20,000-square-metre) building for a 7-year lease in August 2010. Since then, AOL has been recruiting a variety of startups into the office building to work with 170 of thousands of AOL engineers.

It is reported that the office building set company offices, business incubator, University Community center in one. AOL management hopes that entrepreneurial entrepreneurship will inject dynamism into the company's 28-year history. The coolest thing, of course, is to show you the coolest side of the list, especially when you're the internet giant that's remembering the dial-up age. AOL was a mighty in the 1990s, but eventually became part of AOL Time Warner Group (AOL Times Warner) in one of the worst mergers in U.S. history.

AOL was split with Time Warner in 2009, with a market capitalisation of $2 billion trillion, only a fraction of its valuation when it announced its merger with Time Warner. However, AOL's quest for entrepreneurship may really work. Many startups are lining up to move into AOL's new office building. "Our opportunity is to recruit some of the world's best entrepreneurs and technicians to work in an attractive environment," said Armstrong, AOL's CEO, Tim Armstrong. ”

The AOL office Building is less than a mile from the Facebook headquarters and is not far from the offices of Cloudera, Box.net and other famous start-ups. The 75 employees from 25 companies work here, most of them have nothing to do with AOL, including digital comic developer Graphic.ly, anti-spam software developer Impermium, and SSE Labs, which helps Stanford students start a business. SSE Labs was created last summer by Cameron Dietermann Cameron Teitelman, a senior student at Stanford University.

Come together for a common purpose

"The entrepreneurial process is hard and lonely, so it will be an extraordinary experience to work with people who are going through the same hardships as you," Dietermann said. "At the moment the office space is free and the entrepreneurs will eventually have to pay a certain amount of rent, but AOL offers discounts and some free services such as a cafeteria with pool tables, table football games and bottled beer."

AOL holds a party every Friday and has a potluck every two weeks. Recently, the office has ushered in a new guest: The Huffington Post, The Huffington Post, which has created its own news review website, sold to AOL's Arianna (Arianna Huffington) for 315 million dollars. People from different backgrounds make AOL's life colorful. Dietermann said: "We come 12 o'clock in the evening and stay until the next day 6 o'clock in the morning." ”

The comings and goings of the crowd caught the attention of the locals. This January, Palo Alto police visited the AOL office building to ask why the company's staff had so many college students aroud at the office building at such a strange time. There is evidence that entrepreneurs have begun to communicate with each other. Several founders of Mapmein, a start-up company, have been exchanging items with Christian Dewail (Christian Dwyer), vice president of AOL's Mapquest website.

In a small talk, Dietermann told AOL's west Coast manager that the company should abandon its practice of sending large numbers of e-mails to potential recruits, and instead target students at Stanford University's CS210 computer science class. Trent Heren Trent Herren, head of AOL's innovation department, is excited by the influx of talented people. "These people will have the ability to change the world in the future," he said. "Heron is responsible for absorbing the work of start-up companies.

Create a positive corporate culture

AOL is on a massive overhaul of its alleged West Coast headquarters. In a recent media opening, AOL's office smelled of paint and workers moved furniture to an aquarium in the foyer. Until May, the first floor will have a gym, a coffee shop and a laboratory for testing products. After this renovation, the office space provided to the entrepreneur will be increased by one times. AOL will review new applications from April onwards.

Apart from the entrepreneurial dynamism, what does AOL want from this activity? AOL says it wants to take a head start in investing in or acquiring such promising start-ups. In fact, one of AOL's bigger ideas is that working with entrepreneurs will help create a positive corporate culture and attract talented people to develop products with market appeal.

2009, Armstrong invited former Yahoo senior Brad Gallinghaus (Brad garlinghouse) to reshape the company's brilliance. One of the most familiar things about Garlinghouse is that 5 years ago wrote an internal Yahoo memo called the "Peanut Butter Manifesto" (Peanut Butter Manifesto), criticizing Yahoo for its lack of a focused, cohesive development goal. As head of the AOL application and Business division, Garlinghouse has led numerous research and development projects, such as the E-book application of tablets and the upcoming editions of AOL Mail.

While AOL has recently laid off more than 900 people, Garlinghouse is looking to recruit new recruits to fill the company's 80 technical vacancies in Palo Alto, New York and Virginia State. He said: "AOL has not developed a sound product, the launch of the brand also reflects this." As for the future attitude towards AOL, we should take its essence, go to its dross, start again. ”

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