Tuesday, March 29, 2011

TOUR: What Is AOL Doing In Its New Silicon Valley Building? (AOL)

aol office

Last August, AOL combined three Bay Area offices into a new building in Palo Alto, and the company hopes a bunch of startups will join it there.

We got a tour from AOL vice president Trent Herren, who explained a little bit about what the company is doing.

Google owns the building, and AOL was originally going to lease a single floor. But after losing its bid to an education company -- who later backed out -- AOL decided it better get the whole place or risk being stuck in a bad location or split between multiple offices.

The old space was unsuitable, so AOL worked with San Francisco design firm Studio O+A, which built out headquarters for Facebook and Square as well. The redesign will be completed in May.

Right now, AOL has about 180 employees on the third floor of the building, which is mostly finished. AOL uses part of its third-floor headquarters to house about 50 students from SSE Labs, an incubator of small companies started by Stanford students. There are also about 25 other entrepreneurs who use the floor.

AOL leases the second floor to a bunch of smaller companies, including Playdom, and has just started working on the first floor, which it wants to use to house small startups.

The lobby greets you with a big AOL logo.




Other company logos also show up on the same screen, which can be confusing if you're looking for AOL.





Turns out that the actual AOL part of the building is up the elevator on the 3rd floor.





View more at Business Insider

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TOUR: What Is AOL Doing In Its New Silicon Valley Building? (AOL)


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