Enterprise

Dyn Is Turning New Hampshire Into A Startup Wonderland

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Dyn Office tourWe've told you about startup Dyn, an old-fashioned tech success story far from Silicon Valley.

CEO Jeremy Hitchcock and his cofounder, Tom Daly, are both 31, and started this company in their early 20s in their hometown of Manchester, New Hampshire.

Since then, Dyn (pronounced "dine") blossomed into a company employing 170 people serving 4 million users with its domain-name and email services.

Its 2,000 business customers include some of the coolest names in tech—companies like Bitly; Twitter; Rovio, the maker of Angry Birds.

The company finally took its first round of outside funding, $38 million from North Bridge Venture Partners, last fall. Dyn, which has bootstrapped itself so far, didn't need the money, Hitchcock and Daly say, but it will enable the kind of growth that will let them turn their hometown into a real startup community.

Prior to that investment, Dyn's founders and early employees have backed about six other New Hampshire tech startups, Hitchcock says, and Dyn has made four acquisitions.

Employees work in a 30,000-sq. ft. office, formerly an abandoned lumber mill.

We recently toured the office and saw a place stocked with booze, rock-climbing walls, jet simulators, a private gourmet restaurant, and best of all, a stage that hosts rock concerts for the local tech community. It's a startup culture which treats employees as lavishly as any in the Valley.

Dyn's 30,000-sq. ft. office headquarters is located in an old mill yard building in Manchester, New Hampshire.

Dyn Office tour
Dyn

The Dyn office is so big, employees often ride Segways around. Here's sales rep Bruce Green on a Segway. Dean Kamen, the guy that invented the Segway, has a nearby office.

Dyn Office tour
Dyn

The star of the office is the rock stage. During the day, it's good for community meetings, like this one with CEO Jeremy Hitchcock.

Jeremy Hitchcock Dyn
Dyn

But at night, the stage is used for rock concerts and tech networking events. Here's Portland, Oregon's Quiet Life performing.

Dyn Office tour
Dyn

At the first event, the lead singer of the band crashed a Segway into the stage and chipped it. He signed the stage near the chip.

Dyn Office tour
Dyn

Since then, every band has signed the stage ...

Dyn Office tour
Dyn

And visiting dignitaries sign the stage, too. Here's Newark Mayor Cory Booker signing it.

Dyn Office tour
Dyn

The networking parties can get wild. Brian Brady, Dyn's director of strategic partners, hangs with a few guests at one.

Dyn Office tour
Dyn

On Fridays, Dyn employees have massive Nerf-gun wars with free beer on tap.

Dyn Office tour
Dyn

Shhh: There's a secret Scotch room in the office. It's hidden behind another wall. Pull on the wall to find it.

Dyn Office tour
Dyn

There's also a not-so-secret candy stash kept by "candy man" Dave Mandel, an inside sales rep.

Dyn Office tour
Dyn

Employees can play Skee ball on this authentic game bought from a New Jersey arcade. There are tournaments some afternoons.

Dyn Office tour
Dyn

Or they can hang in the Dyn lounge playing video games like Guitar Hero.

Dyn Office tour
Dyn

Or use Hitchcock's flight simulators. He's a pilot and anyone can log legit training hours on these machines.

Dyn Office tour
Dyn

Dyn also has a private, employees-only cafe serving local organic food. The corporate chef is Kevin Donahue, who studied at the Culinary Institute of America.

Dyn Office tour
Dyn

The Dyn office includes a climbing wall. Implementation specialist Matt Torrisi helps a youngster play on it.

Dyn Office tour
Dyn

The rock-climbing wall is part of a bigger fitness program they call DynFit. Dyn pays 100% of health insurance. Employees get cash prizes for meeting fitness goals. Here's a group heading out for a lunchtime run.

Dyn Office tour
Dyn

Employees are into other activities as well. Here's a group participating in a Mad Men dress up day.

Dyn Office tour
Dyn

There's a wall dedicated to Dyn's funky ad slogans, like "Get Some IaaS" and "Surf with the sharks."

Dyn Office tour
Dyn

Instead of a street address, Dyn has its Internet address etched in concrete. (Geeks will recognize this as an IPv6 address.)

Dyn Office tour
Dyn

Here's a better view of the enormous mill building where Dyn's office is located.

Dyn Office tour
Dyn

How does Dyn stack up against this San Francisco startup?

GitHub office tour
Owen Thomas, Business Insider

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Julie Bort was Business Insider's Editor at Large for the Tech team. She loves investigating stories and shedding light on the tech industry's most amazing people.Here's a small sample of some of Julie's work.Former Pinterest employees describe a traumatic workplace where managers humiliate employees until they cry, Black people feel alienated, and the toxic culture 'eats away at your soul'Sex, tequila, and a tiger: Employees inside Adam Neumann's WeWork talk about the nonstop party to attain a $100 billion dream and the messy reality that tanked itInsiders say WeWork's IT is a patchwork of cheap devices and Band-Aid fixes that will take millions to fixWeWork's toxic phone booths were created in-house by its Powered by We business70-hour weeks and 'WTF' emails: 42 employees reveal the frenzy of working at Tesla under the 'cult' of Elon MuskElon Musk works so many hours at Tesla, employees are constantly finding him asleep under tables and desksHow this woman went from a Pizza Hut employee to a founder of a $4 billion startupAn Oracle insider explains how some salespeople gamed the system to sell more cloudTHE TAKEDOWN OF TRAVIS KALANICK: The untold story of Uber's infighting, backstabbing, and multimillion-dollar exit packagesMicrosoft is in talks to buy GitHub, a startup at the center of the software world last valued at $2 billionThe alarming inside story of a failed Google acquisition, and an employee who was hospitalizedInside Facebook's plan to eat another $350 billion IT marketHow a registered sex offender wound up living in an Airbnb hosting unsuspecting guestsA controversial ex-banker is the person who really runs Twitter — and he's gambling the company's future on one risky betSecret passages and skipped meals: Oracle's CEO gave us a rare peek at what it really takes to run a $37 billion companyHP told some employees to choose between becoming contractors with no benefits or being fired without severance'I felt like we were being extorted': Customer says Oracle tried to strong-arm him into a cloud saleHow the queen of Silicon Valley is helping Google go after Amazon's most profitable businessAirbnb host: A guest is squatting in my condo and I can't get him to leaveLIES, BOOZE, AND BILLIONS: How one of the fastest-growing startups in Silicon Valley history raised $580 million then spiraled out of controlGitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart — and we have the full inside storyWhen she's not writing for Business Insider, Julie can usually be found on the trails, on my mountain bike, or on my skis, if you know where to look.