by RYAN MURRAY, Bellevue Reporter Staff Writer
Jun 15, 2016 at 2:30PM
A professional co-working space isn’t a new concept for the Eastside. What Bellevue startup extraSlice is doing differently is building around the technology startup.
While the company has been in business a year, it opened its doors at its new 16,000-square-foot location in Eastgate June 1, and is eagerly awaiting the tech companies that call Bellevue home to come through the doors.
Binu Reghunathan, co-founder and co-chief executive officer of extraSlice, said the location was meant to help startups avoid the hindrances he experienced in his own foray into technology startups.
“This is a technology-focused space,” he said. “We went through the process of finding a good place to work. We had to go through all of the struggles.”
ExtraSlice wants to be more than just a place to work from 9 to 5, said the company’s spokesman, Dan Hoff. The building is already set up with a massive amount of space (the company started with 3,200 square feet before moving to the new location), a dedicated server room, dozens of ports for fully-wired offices to spring up and robust training services, all at a competitive rate, Hoff said.
“The co-working space market in the region is already relatively mature,” he said. “It started out of necessity. The first people had space, they had real estate. When you have real estate, that’s what you’ll sell. What we have is a group of developers and engineers who wanted to see if we could construct a space around tech startups.”
The company held a pitch event June 16, with vendors and developers mingling and looking at the space. One startup even walked away with $120,000 in gear and assistance (not to mention space in the co-working community).
