Today we bid farewell to a special treasure – our very own in-house “Tagged Studios.” As we prepare to renovate our HQ to make room for our growing team, we’re closing down the film studio and reflecting on some great times.
Growing from 50 employees in early-2011 to our present 150, we recently took over the first floor of our building, which happened to be the former broadcast home of NBC Television. As we explored the new grounds, we were pleased to find an abandoned studio space with a beautiful street view (NBC branding all in tact).
The territory was initially claimed by a few of our billiards and foosball enthusiasts, but a few of us quickly realized we could do a lot more with the historic room.
The studio project in its infancy - as a game room.
While sharing the space with our Happy Hour pool players and foosball fanatics in the evenings, we began piecing together a basic studio setup.
We bought some lights and cameras, and turned it into lots of action – Tagged Studios was born! We started filming small internal video projects and announcements, and slowly opened the door to the community. We invited startup founders, reporters, video producers and bloggers to take advantage of the opportunity – and they were thrilled to come in and produce.
Friends like Boonsri Dickinson and Carlos Rodela were frequent visitors, shooting personal projects and playing with live stream. Hermione Way caught an interview for The Next Web with our own Greg Tseng, and also shot a few episodes for Silicon Valley Live. (As many of you know, Hermione is onto much bigger projects now with Bravo’s Silicon Valley, but that’s another story!)
Silicon Valley Live with Duo Dater
Mike Wolpert used Tagged Studios as the broadcast home for Social Jumpstart TV and even caught an interview with our VP of Marketing Steve Sarner. VentureBeat shot a segment on RockHealth, after which, BitGym came back and filmed their demo.
Mike Wolpert on the set of Social Jumpstart TV.
VentureBeat films Rockhealth and introduces us to BitGym.
Finally, we were honored to host Jason Calacanis and his team for several episodes of ThisWeekIn Startups before winding down the appointment calendar.
Jason Calacanis with Dave Goldberg for ThisWeekIn Startups
It’s been a huge opportunity to spend time with these tech minds and video creatives, and we are grateful for all the learning experiences, fun memories and great people we got to work with along the way.
Though we are sad to shut down the studio, we look forward to the completion of our HQ renovation and the build-out of the first floor to accommodate a new, sleek lobby, kitchen, coffee bar and more. We are excited for this next phase of life, culture, and growth at Tagged, and we will continue to invite the community to drop by Tagged. Stay tuned for more events – meetups, happy hours, Tech Talks, and more!
While we hope to pick up studio production again sometime down the road, we say goodbye to Tagged Studios for now and thank everyone who contributed to its success.
Check out the photo archive of all our Tagged Studios guests and shows on Flickr.