Chateau Upverter

Let me tell you a little bit about where I live... the townhouse we lovingly refer to as the Upverter Hacker House. But first, let me tell you why.

I have 5 biological sibilings that my parents have told me about ;) They are all younger than me, and they are all boys. Thats right, I have 5 younger brothers. My cofounder Mike likes to tease that its like looking at the evolution of me - you know that t-shirt showing the stages of a hunched over ape evolving into a walking human - its kindof like that.

Anyways I love my brothers dearly, and not to diminish their place in my life, but 2 years ago in my world they gained 2 older brothers - my co-founders Steve and Mike. We even all lived together for a little while when Upverter was still in my parents basement - all 8 of us. It was a little scary. But its really a pretty important part of my life and the start of this company.

Anyways, where I'm going with this, is we are kind of a big family. And for me were also an extension of my already pretty big family. And inline with being a family we have always lived together. Whether it was in my parents basement, or my Mike's mom's basement, or our student townhouse in Waterloo, or our living room in Mountain View, or our hacker house in Toronto. We definately blur the lines between family, work and fun. And so far it may be one of our biggest assets.

Needless to say when we moved back to Toronto from Mountain View we didn't get 3 appartments and an office, or even just an office and a single apartment. Nope. We got a townhouse. One great big, open, and funky townhouse with enough bedrooms for sleeping and enough "office" (livingroom) space for working. And then we gave everyone we knew keys to come and work in our new house.

I'm sure at first glance it was be a little out there - but its been absolutely incredible. We all live, work and play together. All 8 of us. We have family style lunches and dinners. We go for beers on Friday afternoon. We all eat from the same fridge, share the same dishes, and have keys to the same house. We are kind of one big crazy family - and its magical.

Now, don't get me wrong - this isn't some kind of Peter Pan thing. We are all painfully aware that someday we will have to (growup?) get a real office and fill it with our particular charm. But at this stage I could not imagine a better environment for incubating the DNA of a transformational company.

These days were opening the house up a bit more too. We do a 6-month running invite-only startup cash poker game on the first Wednesday of the month (last time we had about 20 players and 2 tables going). And we just recently started a founders-only series of tech talks into the deep dark underworld of the hottest Toronto startups.

(If youre interested in coming to poker just shoot me an email)

Long story short - if youre starting/running a startup and youre on the fence about where to live (or if you just want to be successful) you should very seriously consider the hacker house model. I know a dozen or so Upverter current and alumni employees that would highly reccomend it.

We will always look and feel like Upverter because of the early days spent living and working together. Upverter will always be one big family. And I will always have a few more brothers than I started with.