CHAPTER :
What IS this place?
With entries from:
Lily Jones   —   10 years ago

Capital Factory is a place that never sleeps. It is a place people are powerfully drawn to and some don't even know why. It is a big and powerful place, yet to some, still a mystery. It is a place people want to be. Capital Factory is the sun in a tech startup solar system where the gravitational force pulls in bright minds and unparalleled dedication. The companies are planets swirling around this giant life force. Except this solar system has about 550 planets. Capital Factory is a place starving startups can eat. It is a place of laughing, leftovers and laptops. Capital Factory is an exclusive place. An exclusive place with an incredible & growing VIP list. This is a place of languages: Java, C+, Python, Finnish, JavaScript, Spanish, Estonian, Ruby, etc. It is also a place of culture, both online and off. Capital Factory is an incubator not just for startups, but a place to foster community and camaraderie. It is a place of networking, news and novelties. So, what is this place?

Husayn Alvarez-Gomariz   —   10 years ago

As we grew up we all had our heroes. Our heroes were the things and people that made us believe that the world was a magical place, a platform to express our newly discovered teenage independence and a universe for exciting new science.
For me the Ultima game series in the Amiga computer was all that I could think of as a pre-teen. Guns and Roses' lyrics resonated with the new emotions and feelings that invaded my head as a teenager living in downtown Madrid because they expressed my refusal to the status-quo and the international politics of the 90s. Later on, while getting my degree in Physics at Northeastern University in Boston, I was completely mesmerized by the ability of Mathematica to deal with the symbolic equations of quantum mechanics in a Dec Alpha 500 at the basement of the Physics building. These were my heroes and I never expected, as most of us do, to meet them in real life. Heroes had that unreachable quality about them.
In January 2013 our startup company, GCL, was accepted into the Capital Factory. We applied because our adviser and chairman told us so. It was a business decision. I could not imagine that this simple business motivated decision would allow me to get close to the heroes of my past but it did... fast. In less than 4 months I got to sit down and chat about business and computer games with "Lord British" Richard Garriott, hang around with Guns and Roses most iconic figure Slash at SXSW, and meet with Mathematica creator Stephen Wolfram. That is 3 out of 3, all of them in one place: the Capital Factory.
Somehow a forgotten sense of magic has came back to me. A sense that anything is possible and that our heroes are reachable, if you are a the right place and at the right moment. For me that place is the Capital Factory and the time is now.

  • - just now