1415T1g1 Silicon Vallley/Participant Information/Teams/Team5
If you have any "lobang" or information that would help us in contacting and negotiating with the companies, please contact us:
| Name | Mobile | |
|---|---|---|
| Andi Martinez (Nitrous.IO) | (415) 374-7164 or (530) 908-4928 | andi@action.io |
| John Howell (Twitch) | Unsure | jeh@twitch.tv |
| Brandon Seet Wei Zhong | +65 9127 7035 | Brandonseet.2012@sis.smu.edu.sg |
Contents
Founders
Nitrous.IO was co-founded by Andrew Solimine (CEO), Peter Jihoon Kim (CTO) and Arun Thampi (VP Engineering) in July 2012.
Product
Nitrous.IO's product was created in response to the problem of having to configure software for new employees. The company originally developed a cloud development platform which provides a centralized way for companies to manage the development environment that their employees are working on. Since the development environment and codes are stored in a cloud, employees and developers are able to access their work on multiple devices from anywhere they wish to work. However, they realized that not everyone wanted to store their work in the cloud, hence they launched desktop apps for Windows and Mac to allow developers to use their favorite editor and save their work on their localhost.
In 2013, the company released a packaged app for Chrome, which will turn Chromebooks into web-based IDEs. By using Google's packaged apps, developers have access to APIs for hardwares, such as Bluetooth, that they typically do not have access to.
Funding
In 2013, Nitrous.IO raised $1 million in seed funding in a seed round led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from notable companies and people, for instance, TIBCO Software, Eduardo Saverin, the co-founder of Facebook and Michael Arrington, the co-founder of CrunchFund. It also announced that Joe Stump from Sprint.ly and Tobias Lütke from Shopify had joined its advisory board.
In another funding round that was also led by Bessemer Venture Partners in 2014, Nitrous.IO received $6.65 million in funding, which the company intends to use to push Nitrous.IO for usage into the enterprise level. David Cowan, a partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, believes that "in coming years, Nitrous.IO will save billions of expensive manhours."
Interesting Things about Nitrous.IO
- Nitrous.IO was originally named Action.IO, but the company changed its name to avoid any legal issues that might arise with another company over the trademeark.
- The company uses Nitrous.IO to build Nitrous.IO
- They have a very interesting work culture. These are some of the practices they have:
- The developers decide on what needs to be done, and assign tasks to themselves
- All the codes developed have to go through peer review
- They have "library rules" in the office
How we contacted the company
We first contacted the Nitrous.IO customer support via email. We then got a reply from Peter Jihoon Kim, the Co-founder and CTO, before we were put in contact with Andi Martinez, the Office Manager. Andi then confirmed our visit to Nitrous.IO.
| Date | Action |
|---|---|
| 8th October 2014 | Company visit confirmed on 10th December, 5.30pm-6.30pm |
Mainly Featured Games
Video on what Twitch is : http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/pay-for-play-twitch-turns-gaming-into-spectator-sport/
| Things we should learn or find out from Twitch |
|---|
| 1. How did they decide to provide such a service from the beginning. |
| 2. How they are able to identify a field and industry to cater their service towards. |
| 3. From their flexibility to adjust themselves to fit an unintended audience. |
| 4. How they are able to provide such a service on such a massive scale. |
| 5. How they increasingly improve themselves to stay ahead of the curve. |
| 6. What other industry or markets do they see their service can be expanded towards? |
- It started in June 2011 and within 3 years, in August 2014 Twitch Interactive was valuated at 970 Million[2]
- By February 2014, Twitch(4th - 1.8%) is considered as the fourth largest source of peak Internet traffic in the United States behind Netflix(1st - 32%),Google(2nd - 22%),Apple(3rd - 4.3%)[3]
- Sparked a new internet trend and emoticon - An employee named Josh Kappa back when it was Justin.tv. Kappa the monochrome face received popularity for being synonymous with either sarcasm or trolling and they kept the emote after he left -
-
Plays host to the online social experiment, TwitchPlaysPokemon, which is aims to see if the community effort of the entire Twitch viewership can collaborate and complete the ever fantastic game of Pokemon! http://www.twitch.tv/twitchplayspokemon
- One of the perks of being a Twitch Interactive staff is that all transportation through public transport(Taxi's not included) will be reimbursed by the company, this is in effort to encourage the staff to not drive and to help keep the planet green
- Contacted the Twitch public relations executive through Twitter.
- Referred to message the Twitch relations executive through Twitch Message.
- Referred to contact the Twitch Head of Office, Emily Williams, through email.
- Referred to contact Twitch Director, Partnerships Development, John Howell, through email.
- John Howell confirmed our visit to Twitch!
| Date | Action |
|---|---|
| 10th October 2014 | Visit to Twitch HQ at San Francisco on 9th December 1500HRS - 1700HRS confirmed. |
