Twitter Application - Twitter Joined in San Francisco By One Of Its Biggest Investors

By - Ari Levy
Category - Twitter Application
Source - http://www.washingtonpost.com

Twitter Application

May 25 (Bloomberg) -- Twitter Inc. will be joined by one of its biggest investors soon after the company moves to San Francisco’s gritty Mid-Market neighborhood next month.

Benchmark Capital, which bought a stake in the micro- blogging service three years ago, signed a lease this week for more than 10,000 square feet of space on Market Street, a half mile from Twitter’s new headquarters. The office is just above the Warfield Theater, a 90-year-old entertainment hall that’s featured everyone from Louis Armstrong to Bob Dylan.

While Benchmark is keeping its existing office in Menlo Park, California, the new urban outpost is the latest sign that the startup hub has moved north from Silicon Valley. In addition to Twitter, San Francisco is home to Zynga Inc. and Yelp Inc. as well as fast-growing Web companies Dropbox Inc., Square Inc. and Airbnb Inc. That’s pushed down vacancy rates and raised rents.

“The business moved and we’re all waking up to the fact that this is a monumental shift,” Peter Fenton, a general partner at Benchmark and board member at Twitter and Yelp, said in an interview. “These forces are long-term and we’re making a bet consistent with that.” Two-thirds of Benchmark’s deals since 2009 have been in San Francisco, he said.

Fenton and Matt Cohler are the only two of Benchmark’s six investing partners who live in San Francisco, though all of them will be using the space starting in the second half of this year. They’ll occupy the seventh and eighth floors at the top of the building on Market Street near the corner of 6th Street. Fenton declined to provide terms of the lease.

Source - http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/twitter-joined-in-san-francisco-by-one-of-its-biggest-investors/2012/05/25/gJQAMnQJqU_story.html