Qwiki is known as a Silicon Valley company. The support of this amazing community is certainly one of the primary reasons we’ve enjoyed such a remarkable journey since introduction of the alpha at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco in September 2010. Since then, our journey included a public launch live on CNN, acquiring millions of users across multiple platforms just 12 months later, and recognition by Apple as 2011 iPad App of the year in the Reference category.
Now, we’re excited to announce the next big step in the company’s evolution with a relocation of our headquarters to NYC…
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Posted on December 21, 2011 by doug
At the one-year anniversary of our launch, Qwiki announced two important milestones at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2011: the Qwiki Editor for publishers and the evolution of the Qwiki player from Flash to HTML5.
The new HTML5-based experience expands Qwiki’s potential across different devices and brings us a step closer to fulfilling our promise of an interactive, cross-platform experience.
Today’s post features Hakim El Hattab, our Lead Interactive Developer who built the Qwiki HTML5 player. Meet Hakim as he demos the new player:
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Posted on September 26, 2011 by cece
Qwiki’s hiring philosophy is simple: “We only hire people we fantasize about working with.” Whether it be at a VP or intern level, we look for people who are both qualified and who we look forward to learning from on a daily basis.
Mairead McNally is our Communications Intern whose enthusiasm and passion for Qwiki can be felt every single day. She joined the Qwiki team 7 months ago when we were still in the old Palo Alto office and has experienced the launch of our iPad App and, most recently, News Qwikis.
Meet Mairead, a rising sophomore at Stanford University, and see Qwiki through her eyes:
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Posted on August 31, 2011 by cece
The college summer internship can be a stepping stone to your first full-time job out of school or a serendipitous detour into a completely unknown industry. You can find the internship through a series of organized on-campus interviews or happen to talk to a person who knows a person who happens to be hiring. Regardless or what it is or how you found it – summer internships are a chance for discovery (and a bit of fun).
Qwiki had two interns this summer – a Business Analyst Intern who assisted our COO and CEO and a Communications Intern who worked with our Director of Communications (me!). As August wraps up and the interns head back to school, it’s our pleasure to introduce our Business Analyst intern…
Meet Cobi Gantz! A rising senior in the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania. Cobi played an important role this summer helping Navin Thukkaram (Qwiki’s COO) with financial modeling, research projects, and business development.
Meet Cobi and learn more about how he spent his summer at Qwiki:
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Posted on August 22, 2011 by cece
Qwiki’s Core Values: Wisdom, Impact, “No.”
As a startup innovating on the edge of the technology stack with the stated goal of inventing a new medium, we’re making hundreds of decisions every week . These decisions are across a broad range of issues: product, design, technology, resource allocation and more.
How’s it going? Well, in our short history, the team at Qwiki has made a lot of correct decisions. We’ve also been wrong a number of times.
But lately, we’ve been getting more and more right. Why? Because of our values. That’s why we painted them 12 feet high…
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Posted on July 27, 2011 by doug
Qwiki’s App on the iPad saw a remarkable 500,000+ downloads just 7 weeks after launch. Today, we introduce the man who made it all possible: Qwiki’s IOS Engineer, Greg Pape.
At the time Greg joined the team, our iPad App was still nothing more than a few lines of code and one big vision. After months of hard work, Greg was able to translate that vision into the beautiful, intuitive Qwiki App that users have called “mesmerizing” and “revolutionary”.
While he’s not busy coding Qwiki’s next mobile product, Greg is an avid practitioner of martial arts. Watch the video below to meet Greg and learn how to defend yourself!
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Posted on July 25, 2011 by cece
Everyone at Qwiki has an incredible story to share about how he/she ended up at Qwiki World HQ. However, perhaps none can equal the unique experience of Owen Bossola, Qwiki’s first employee.
Owen made the move from New York City to Palo Alto to join CEO/Co-Founder, Doug Imbruce, on the wild ride that has culminated in a website with millions of users, an iPad app with over 500k downloads, and soon, a publishing platform that will forever change the way people create content.
Owen has worn many hats on his journey with Qwiki: backend engineer, IOS developer, and now, lead front-end developer. Let’s drop-in on Owen in a rare moment when he’s not busy coding…
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Posted on July 18, 2011 by cece
Last Thursday, Qwiki World HQ opened its doors to over 140 participants on a “Startup Crawl” organized by Zaarly.com. The crawl presented a great opportunity for potential candidates from Stanford and other nearby universities to meet the Qwiki team.
Each startup office on the crawl organized a different activity to show-off its office and company culture. For example, Foursquare held a dodgeball game and Scribd hosted a taco bar.
At Qwiki, well, a picture is worth a million words:
It’s a Qwiki Hoedown, folks!
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Posted on July 13, 2011 by cece
Qwiki = Art + Science.
In our last two posts, Tommy and Paul gave us the inside scoop on back-end engineering and mobile development at Qwiki – the Science. Today, we explore Qwiki’s Art – and meet the man responsible for Qwiki’s inspired design: Rasmus Knutsson, Creative Director.
It’s been over a year since Rasmus moved across the world, trading his former role as Design Lead on the Nike account at advertising agency R/GA in London to become a part of our family in San Francisco.
Learn more about the man responsible for what users and press refer to as the “beauty,” sleekness,” and “futuristic appeal” of Qwiki (and for our nomination for the Crunchies 2010 Best Design Award!).
Meet Ras:
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Posted on July 12, 2011 by cece
What’s it like to be an engineer at Qwiki? Tommy Chheng, Qwiki’s Lead Backend Engineer, explains the interesting challenges he tackles everyday.
Tommy grew up in sunny San Diego and holds a BS in Computer Engineering from UC San Diego and a MS in Computer Science from UC Irvine. Before making waves at Qwiki World HQ, he held senior engineer positions at multiple startups including Quid and PeopleJar.
Meet Tommy and see how he jumpstarts a day at the office!
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Posted on June 28, 2011 by cece