It’s starting to seem like everyone who got their start in Silicon Valley is putting down an anchor in New York City. Earlier this year Facebook set up an engineering office in Manhattan, then this week Alexia Tsotsis made her move to the Big Apple (miss you!) Doesn’t anybody stay in one place anymore?
The latest techie to head east is Polyvore, the website that lets people create collages of apparel and accessories using images from any online store. Polyvore today is announcing the opening of its first-ever New York office, in SoHo. The NYC office has a staff of eight to start, while Polyvore’s 40 other employees and its executive team headed up by CEO Jess Lee will remain headquartered in Mountain View, California.
NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg issued a personal welcome to Polvyore, which is pretty cool:
“By opening an office here, Polyvore is joining the growing group of tech companies who recognize that the benefits of being in New York City are irresistible, regardless of where a startup began.”
Polyvore’s setting up an office in Manhattan makes a ton of sense, since as hard as the San Francisco Bay Area may try, NYC is still the fashion headquarters of the United States (and arguably the world.) I know that Lee and one of her co-founders Pasha Sadri have found themselves spending more and more time in New York as Polyvore has grown, so now they will have somewhere to hang their hats when in town. In a statement, Sadri said: “We’ve come a long way since Polyvore was five people in my living room. Polyvore has always been at the intersection of technology and style, so being in close proximity to the fashion powerhouses of New York was a natural next step.”
And speaking of Polyvore’s growth, the company is also announcing today that it has hit 17 million unique visitors per month. That’s a nice bump up from the last time we checked in with the company in May, when it had 15 million uniques. Here is a video interview from then, in which Lee and Sadri discuss how embracing “the Pinterest effect” has helped them grow the business:
Photo credit of Polyvore NYC office: Patrick Butler