Day: July, 28, 2009
Event: I visit Grooveshark HQ
I was staying at my grandparents house in Spring Hill, Florida for a few weeks over the summer and my goal was to get a chance to visit Grooveshark HQ sometime. Their offices are located in Gainesville, Florida, which is about an hour from where we were staying. Before leaving we arranged to come down on Tues, July 28 and since they are a young bunch that don’t exactly like to wake up early, I was instructed to come sometime mid-afternoon. My dad and I set out at noon for Gainesville.
On our way to Gainesville, it started pooring, which was odd because it was sunny when we left and when we got to Gainesville, it was sunny again. Nonetheless, we made it to Gainesville and their offices are in the center of the city, we tried to find a parking spot, however we had some trouble and ended up just parking in the parking garage across the street. We then proceeded to enter the office building, according to the sign, Grooveshark was on the second floor. Oddly enough, their first set of doors don’t get used because they are, well blocked, and lead into a tiny sitting room area.
We walked around to the second door and knocked. We were let in and I asked for either Ben or Josh. I knew them the best out of any of the employees and they were going to give me the tour. First they showed me the “former ping-pong room”, which is now the theater/presentation room. That room was surprisingly cold because the AC is actually controlled by their neighbors. Then the meeting room, which had a large meeting desk and chairs. When I visited, there was a meeting in there, but Josh let me in and showed me the large world map with safety pins where Grooveshark had a stronghold. There were also pins for Spotify, a direct competitor to Grooveshark. Finally there was the front room for small meetings, Sam Tarantino’s (CEO) office and the server room. All of the employees worked in the main room, which was basically the whole office and everyone had a desk. There were sectioned off parts of the main room for the different “departments”. Outside of the main room, on the side of the building there is a ledge where there are seats, the ledge extends the whole side of the building and is about 5 feet wide.
I talked with Ben, Josh and Colin for the majority of the time and we talked about my company, Grooveshark and their new Grooveshark 2.0 interface, which at that time, I hadn’t seen yet. I also saw some designs for some ad deals and a few themes they were working on. After a few hours of talking, Josh, Ben, Colin, John, my dad and I went across the street to this pizza place. The pizza was amazing! We talked a bit more about their hiring process as well as their original offices.
Then, after the pizza, my dad and I went across the city to the University of Florida campus. Their campus wasn’t much unlike the others that I’ve seen but they had a lot more medical buildings. On our way home, we stopped by Grooveshark again and picked up a few shirts then made our way back home.
Overall, I learned a lot and had a lot of fun! The Grooveshark staff is awesome and I love their open environment. I can’t wait to work for them.
-James Hartig
Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.