RSS FeedSilicon Downtown?
Ever walked by a rather nondescript, thin historic building on F Street between 13th and 14th Streets and see the word Swapdrive in the window? Wonder what it is? We sure did and a recent story in the WaBiz Journal revealed it to be a $124 million dollar tech company acquisition by none other than Symantec, the company that makes enterprise security software for both home and business computer users. That got the PQ Living staff thinking. Are there any other high tech companies downtown? The answer sure is yes.
Swapdrive (1313 F St NW) – online Internet data backup service; acquired by Symantec for $124 million
Smartbrief (1100 H St NW) – industry and trade e-newsletter and aggregator service provider; privately held
Blackboard (650 Mass Ave NW) – publicly traded education software company; market capitalization of $1.22 billion; ticker is BBBB
Searchles (1220 L St NW) – a mash up search and social networking service provider; privately held
The Map Network (formerly on 7th St NW, now at 1875 K St NW) – provider of fanciful online destination maps; acquired by Navteq who was acquired by Nokia; now called Navteq ID Maps
Distributive Networks (819 7th St NW) – text messaging content and service provider; privately held
Streamsage (1110 Vermont Ave NW) – TV programming and video search technology provider; acquired by Comcast; technology behind TV Planner and Fancast’s video search
During the go-go tech days of the late ’90s when you could still find Michael Saylor of Microstrategy fame throwing parties at Cities (now The Left Bank) in Adams Morgan, DC was trying to drum up NoMa and its empty warehouses/lots as perfect spots to build data centers. Those days are gone but just maybe we can now lay claim to having a small but budding Silicon Downtown.
Are there any companies out there that we missed?
Ed. Note: gpliving contributed to this story.
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Comments
This isn’t suprising as many corporations have DC offices, but it’s nice to hear about tech companies as opposed to energy behemoths and lobbying groups for fruitless ideas such as offshore drilling.
There are many more small shops, too. Offices with 5 or fewer coders working on everything from social networking to web-based solutions. I can think of a dozen off the top of my head — and more move in every month.
The ESA (Entertainment Software Association) is in the Venable Building.
I used to use Swapdrive, it was very cool – I was able to have a mapped network drive on my laptop that I could share with colleagues in other cities.
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The primary high-tech trade association, AeA (www.aeanet.org), is also in the PQ at 601 Penn.