What Silicon Valley startups impress visitors?

Absrtact: The author of this article Dong Fei is a Coursera software engineer. I have no more than 20 Silicon Valley first-line start-up companies, a list of companies. I do not talk about interview questions, mainly about their company growth, environment and culture, as far as possible objective neutral. Other hot big

The author of this article Dong Fei is a Coursera software engineer.

I have no more than 20 Silicon Valley first-line start-up companies, a list of companies. I do not talk about interview questions, mainly about their company growth, environment and culture, as far as possible objective neutral. Other popular big companies such as Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Amazon, Apple, Twitter have a lot of Chinese friends, also have a lot of online sharing, I do not have to add.

In my eyes, excellent technology startups has the following characteristics:

Open Office, direct communication, less meetings, code wins argue

Free food, provision of working meals, or deliberate extension of work hours: (

Using a Mac, Linux, or cloud server

Embracing open source software, leveraging various tools, focusing on core products

Quick iterations, A/b TEST, Data driven

Focus on user experience, user benefits outweigh profit considerations

Minimalist design, focus on MVP (Minimum viable product), agile development

Engineer culture, at any cost to find the most suitable talent, hack competition, technology sharing, good at learning

Pinterest

Located in the city of San Francisco, the company is very creative.

Mission: To help users find interest and enlightenment. Culture, sincere to users.

User: Traffic is the most advanced in the social start-up, the user is sticky, attract many artists, middle-aged women, these are high-quality advertising target users.

Products: first waterfall flow, pin simple to see pictures to share, the inner beauty is found.

Financing, completed 6 rounds of financing, is currently valued at 5 billion U.S. dollars, Wall Street is also very optimistic.

Technology, AWS Loyal users, large traffic also means large data, many Chinese engineers, men and women more balanced. Technical cattle jumped from the Google,amazon a lot.

Airbnb

With Pinterest is a neighbor, the company has a lot of home design, such as the mushroom room above.

Culture: Strong corporate culture, see the founder of the above interview to understand. In the interview has a special 2 rounds of inspection, the overall requirements of a strong sense of ownership, be host, ownership,entrepreneurship. This year just changed the red logo, providing employees 2000 knives per year of living Airbnb subsidy

Financing, Y Combinator star Company. No one in Silicon Valley can stop Airbnb, the latest 13 billion + valuations

Products: Peer-to-peer rental to strangers, relying on commission charges. Shared economy, although the flow is far worse than the Pinterest, but a subversive field, growth is good, investors expect very high, with tourism upstream and downstream, to build the ecosystem.

Talent and technology, elite awareness, the need for a prestigious school background, but also based on Aws,mesos, engineers blog very recommended Airbnb UB

Uber

The hottest startup, the valuation of 5 times times a year, 17 billion U.S. dollars, revenue growth of 10X year-on-year, cash flow strong. HR "Think" 2 years in the market, the future to 100 billion is also possible, really to vomit blood, good at that time also give up their offer. Why is Uber so highly valued? So this is the first choice for many people to jump.

Culture: High-cold, black department, their office location in the San Francisco Center office, into the obvious feeling of tension rhythm, work stress efficiency, pressure is not small. Ditto, provide 2000-knife taxi subsidy every year. But at present, many drivers are dissatisfied with the live by others or Uber Commission increase. There are also many government policies and tax problems.

Product: Taxi software, pure mobile app. With Airbnb are subversive areas, Airbnb is living, Uber is good at. The core algorithm solves the real-time distribution driver, may enter the meal delivery, the logistics and so on broad domain, puts the peer-to-peer spirit to the extreme. Enter China's big cities, take the high-end route, also launched the people carpool this local service.

Technology: The main Mobile,nodejs, in real-time computing requirements are high, there are technical challenges. Personnel in 500+

Snapchat

In the Los Angeles area of Venice Beach, founder of the hometown. In a humble building, 200 meters outside is the beach. Perhaps choose here to be less recreational activities, let everyone concentrate on making products? Founder teenager, in Stanford find a few students did a young fondle admiringly app.

Financing, which has Tencent shares, Alibaba also want to join the fun. Last year Snapchat rejected the 3 billion-dollar takeover behind the scenes: as grandson, the wave of change this year, the value of billions of dollars. But it is said to be 42 to dial, Capital Mania.

Products, after the burning of the app, why so fire, we can think about what the young people want to see what things to delete immediately? Now consider commercialization as well. There is also a similar app Blink in China, criticized: "50 days, 100 million dollar valuation" is not a bubble, what is a bubble?

Technology, Google Cloud backstage, there are some google,fb to join. About 100 people

Flipboard (it is highly recommended that you take a look at 36 Krypton's "Insight video interview" with Flipboard CEO Mike mccue)

The downtown in Palo Alto, very close to Stanford, is a small and beautiful company

Financing: Last year's financing was estimated at $800 million trillion, and this year is looking for D-round.

Products: Mobile phone magazine, the first page effect, very focused on the design of the company. Claiming more than 100 million users

Technology: Personalized recommendation, real-time data processing with spark, personnel 80 people

Box

Located in the rich district of Los Altos, the company size should be 1000 people, belonging to the pre IPO company

Founder Aaron Levie, a 28-year-old from USC, was a very business-minded young man who founded 15 companies and later created box with Duke Partners.

Products: cloud storage, more focus on enterprise-class services. Sales-driven product development, capturing cloud computing and enterprise-class, is the tuyere on the pig.

Dropbox

Y Combinator Star Company, founder Drew Houston MIT Graduate, has a Chinese girlfriend. Are the various business forum guests.

Financing: Sequoia Capital, but also a valuation of tens of billions of companies, listing no suspense.

Gourmet: Have the best restaurant in the Bay Area reputation, what lamb chops, longan beef, salmon countless delicacies, under the lost.

Product: Similar to box, but more on the individual side, there are many giants of competition. But because of the early fame, it will not fall out of favour.

Technical talent: Pay attention to fast iterations, Python development. Many MIT graduates, high system requirements, a lot of MIT, CMU, Stanford, Harvard and other top schools, but also a lot of FB cattle people there. Acquired mailbox

Coursera (Here's another article for reading Dong Fei: How does it feel to work in Coursera?) ）

Kings View,stanford is located in the founding of professor, founded 2 years. On the left is the CEO (former Yale principal), the middle is cofounder

Financing: B round of total financing of 8600w dollars.

Technology: Scala + AWS

Quora

American version of the know

Located in Kings View downtown. The founder is former FB CTO. Not anxious to profit, but also do not know how to profit. This year has melted 8000w dollars. Anyway, the ideal company always has no shortage of money.

Product: After the most fiery period, now feel also tepid, find more and more Indian users, focus on a lot of how to come to the U.S. IT companies.

Technical personnel: Aws,python, forcing the lattice is very high, but also exclusively Ivy origin.

Pure Storage

With the upstairs is a neighbor, Google people out to do, financing has been to the first round after the next listed company

Products: Enterprise-class storage, SSD, cache. Technically with C, there is an interesting video, there is an engineer on the server Roar, monitoring dashboard immediately show an exception.

Tango Me

Located in Kings View, about 300 employees

Products: video-calling software across iOS and Android, known as billions of users.

Financing: Since WhatsApp was bought by FB 20 billion, it is a valuation surge, Alibaba investment 280 million, I reckon sooner or later is his home.

Many Chinese here, technically out, are still using ant, Java Spring, debugging is slow.

Square

Products: Card app, need to get through with each bank, the back end did a lot of interface transformation, oncall pressure.

Technology: A lot of Google FB employees joined, this year out of the rumors on the market stranded, but did not hear what job-hopping employees, or confidence.

Evernote (Recommended reading: Be a fearless elephant--36 Krypton interview Evernote CEO Phil Libin)

The famous elephant Company, on the 101 high-speed edge erected a huge logo, the company was founded in 2007, the founder is very idealistic. It's a slow company.

Products: Personal content Management notes, the introduction of Cross-platform versions, as well as selling souvenirs. Very focused on design.

Financing: The D-round total of 270 million U.S. dollars, the valuation is more than 1 billion

Technology: Java, more cliché

Quixey

Located in Kings View downtown, established 5 years

Products: App Search

Financing: The C-round total of 7000w, Alibaba again.

Hold a bug contest, see who first find out to reward 100 dollars.

Technology: Python + AWS

Minted

Do personalized greeting cards, a sound not big market also get a lot of pursuit, last year financing 4000w. Inside the company is also decorated with colorful, a lot of beautiful women. Lyft

In San Francisco, close to Pinterest, Uber's rivals, two of them fighting very badly, heard that there are high-level changes. Glassdoor

North Bay, northern San Francisco, picturesque, there is a seaside town: Chic Lido, listen to the name of the mood.

Products: Anonymous review company, interview Spit, salary evaluation. Commercial products are selling jobs, competing with LinkedIn.

Talent: About 50-60 scale, some are data mining, search based on Lucene.