After Weebly we used a startup called lyft to get to Zynga. Lyft is a ride share app that allows people to request a ride from someone else. People can sign up to be drivers and after a background check, a training lesson, and the gift of a large pink fuzzy mustache for the front of your car you are ready to be a driver for lyft! The way it works is you open the app and request a ride, the closest driver then responds to the request and picks you up in their car. They take you to where you need to go and once you get to your destination you fist-bump the driver and go on the app to make a “donation” to the driver, since they are not a cab service it would be illegal for them to just accept money. We used the service twice so far and a lot of the people we talk to highly recommend the service, in fact both drivers we had today started out just being a user of the app.
Once we were dropped of by our lyft we went inside and met my cousin Grant. Grant has been with Zynga since it was a company of 600, now a company of over 3,000, and before it was publicly traded. Zynga provided us a very different experience. So far on the trip we have seen startups that have taken up the space of an office suite to two floors of a building, Zynga is an entire building and not all the employees work there. It was very interesting to see how startups can progress.
Some common themes we have taken from our visits to these companies are:
- Collaboration is key
- Nerf guns aren’t just for kids (or the urban gaming club)
- Pool tables, ping pong tables, and foosball tables are a necessity
- You will never go hungry or thirsty while working
- If you where a suit jacket for fun you might get some looks
- Adam Stavely
Some common themes we have taken from our visits to these companies are:
- Collaboration is key
- Nerf guns aren’t just for kids (or the urban gaming club)
- Pool tables, ping pong tables, and foosball tables are a necessity
- You will never go hungry or thirsty while working
- If you where a suit jacket for fun you might get some looks
- Adam Stavely