- A venture capitalist built a virtual layout of Silicon Valley using the web design tool Figma.
- She shared it with other tech workers in the region, who built scores of digital offices, bars, and other symbols as the San Francisco Bay Area continues to shelter in place.
- The result is a digital Silicon Valley rife with inside jokes unique to the region’s tech culture.
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The glistening tech offices of modern-day San Francisco may be closed, with workers hunkered down in their homes, but a digital layout of the tech region has been constructed online.
Investor and founder Brianne Kimmel with WorkLife Ventures and designer Fiona Carty built the virtual environment, dubbed Stay At Home Valley, in the collaborative web design platform Figma. Kimmel told Business Insider that she started with a few landmarks, and then shared it with other designers to add what they wish.
Within 12 hours, the offices of 200 companies were created in the virtual world, with Dropbox, Slack, Airbnb, Uber, and the Salesforce Tower being some of them. People started “reopening” their favorite bars and cafes — like Blue Bottle Coffee and Boba Guys — that have been shuttered for weeks due to the shelter-in-place order. Electric scooters dot the streets, climbing gyms have been reopened, and a “secret tunnel for Jack Dorsey between meetings” is noted next to the CEO’s Square and Twitter digital office blocks.
The result is a virtual placeholder for Silicon Valley insiders to build and “live in” their region and among its idiosyncrasies as the real-world landscape is currently shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Here’s what the map looks like.
