Ben in the Bay

Friday, October 23rd, 2009



The videos take forever to upload...I put a few up, but need to sleep. They will all be up by the end of the weekend.

What

I have decided to walk into as many technology places as possible and film what happens. I will try to make it as entertaining and exciting as possible. I plan to spend about 15 minutes at each company. Maybe less. Maybe more.

Why

I got accepted into StartUpSchool at UC Berkeley so I'll be in the Bay Area for a while. I also like technology companies.

When

I am going to start in the South Bay around 8AM. I'll be traveling up the peninsula and then end up in San Francisco.

Who

I'm Ben and I started a company a while ago in Omaha, Nebraska. I also go to Creighton University. I'll be traveling on a scooter/moped type thing. Here is a picture of me on it. I also want to test out Caltrain/BART.

How can I help?

I've submitted to Digg and hackernews--I'd appreciate it if you upvoted both of those. If you work at these companies and want to let me in or pull some strings, that would be super fantastic. Also, feel free to use the twitter hashtag #beninthebay.

Thanks to Silicon Prairie News for letting me borrow one of their branded flipcams!

This site is ugly

Tell me about it. I tried to compensate my lack of design skills with sweet CSS class nomenclature.

Bentern.com?

I interned with a company. They bought this domain. Ben + intern = Bentern.

So who are you visiting?

Here is the list so far in order of when I'll be visiting them. I searched around for about an hour on crunchbase. I'm sure I'm missing a lot of good ones, so let me know if I don't have your company. Email me at Ben@GoPollGo.com.

CompanyI want to meetI'll setttle forLocationVideo
MySQLAnyoneA picture next to their signCupertinovideo
AppleSteve JobsThe ReceptionistCupertinoVideo
GoogleSergey & LarryThe ReceptionistMountain Viewvideo
FlickrAnyoneA picture next to their signSunnyvalevideo
Y CombinatorPaul GrahamThe ReceptionistMountain Viewvideo
Video Upload Break
Mint.comAaron PatzerThe ReceptionistMountain Viewvideo
UStreamBrad Hunstable & John HamThe ReceptionistMountain View
FacebookMark Zuckerberg & Paul BuchheitThe Engineering TeamPalo Alto
PhotobucketAnyoneA picture next to their signPalo Alto
TechCrunchMG SieglerLagunaPalo Alto
Video Upload Break
NingMarc AndreessenThe ReceptionistPalo Alto
Funny or DieWill FerrellThe ReceptionistPalo Alto
SurveyMonkeyAnyoneAnyoneMenlo Park
Caring.comChris Eppstein, Patrick Wright, Andy Cohen, etc.A picture next to the signSan Mateo
Video Upload Break
TwitterEvan WilliamsThe Locked DoorSan Francisco
LiveJournalAnyoneA picture next to their signSan Francisco
DropBoxAnyoneA picture next to their signSan Francisco
KongregateJim GreerThe ReceptionistSan Francisco