Softbinator Technologies at Plug & Play: New Silicon Valley Office

Softbinator Technologies is now officially open for business at the Plug & Play Tech Center—a world-leading startup accelerator and innovation hub!

As a global software development company with a strong European foothold, we’re taking our next big step: expanding our US presence with new offices in the heart of the Bay Area’s high-tech hotbed.

This article, which draws from insights shared by Daniel Ilinca (CEO) and Mark Stevenson (VP of Sales), discusses our plans for the Plug & Play office space and growth initiatives in the US market, such as:

Joining the top incubators in Silicon Valley
Partnering with leading-edge startups
Building a supportive community for Romanian startups in the US

Find Softbinator at Plug & Play in Sunnyvale, California

Watch Daniel Ilinca (CEO) and Mark Stevenson (newly appointed VP of Sales) lay out our US strategy while touring Plug & Play.

For a quick summary of the highlights, read the transcript* below.

* Transcript edited for clarity.

Key Takeaways

1. Strategic Priorities for Growth in the US

🗣️ Mark Stevenson: We want to get into PayPal and do their early engineering stack—back when PayPal was 10 people, back when LendingClub had five people—and grow as they grow.

The strategy is to partner with these startups and have a presence in the incubators.

Every day is different at Plug & Play; you talk to everybody here because everybody is a founder. We want to talk to all these founders and work with all these companies [that Plug & Play has backed].

10 years from now, Softbinator will be there [on the wall of unicorns at Plug & Play]. These companies [currently on the wall] will move on, we will move up, and we will work with all of them. That’s the game plan for the US strategy.

2. Top US-Based Companies We Aim to Partner With

🗣️ Mark Stevenson: Arctic Wolf, for example, is a company that was here 10 years ago. We [at Champion Recruiting, a company founded by Mark] started working with them. They had 10 guys in the corner on a third floor over here. I had no clue they were going to become a big IPO. They’re going to be as big as Databricks and Stripe this year going out.

We want to go after Pure Storage, ServiceNow—all the big companies. Softbinator is well-positioned because, in my opinion, it has the same brilliant engineers that you can get at Google, Meta, and Uber—any of the big shops, right?

🗣️ Daniel Ilinca: That’s actually the dream! Instead of having our best engineers move from Romania to Silicon Valley, they can just stay in their hometowns and work through us with Silicon Valley companies.

3. A Call to Romanian Startups to Join Us in Silicon Valley

🗣️ Daniel Ilinca: We need more Romanians coming to Silicon Valley and building amazing startups that become unicorns and then do the IPOs. We have a very nice corner here at Plug & Play. It’s actually the Softbinator corner, but we’d like to make it into the Romanian corner.

This is a call to all Romanian startups and founders who are here and are looking for a small office.

We should all stay together and build a Romanian superpower here. I see India has that, China has that, Japan has that—they just had a big tour today, so we should do that for Romania, as well.

4. Starting a Business in the World’s Leading Tech Hub

🗣️ Mark Stevenson: If you’re going to start a company, it’s so much easier if you’re in Silicon Valley because venture capitalists (VCs) want to keep an eye on their investments.

If Daniel’s going to give me X amount of money, he’s going to want to keep an eye on that. So it’s important to be close to where he is—and if the VCs happen to be in Silicon Valley (and there are tons of them), you have to get here.

Come to Silicon Valley! Just pick an incubator like Plug & Play or Draper U and set up shop. You don’t even have to go look for venture capital money; you just build your product and they will find you.

From Romania to Silicon Valley’s Dynamic Tech Ecosystem

We’re ready to make Romanian-developed tech a household name in the US—and we can do that by partnering with some of the most brilliant founders, fastest-growing startups, and bleeding-edge companies through incubators like Plug & Play.

Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to grow our presence in Silicon Valley, the world’s leading technology hub!

by Rareș Cârligeanu HR Manager