Biography | Gabe Newell — 520 Kirkland Way, the Day the Papers Were Signed

People look for Valve in a Bellevue tower. The first office sat here. On 24 August 1996 Newell and Mike Harrington signed the formation papers for Valve, L.L.C. The company's own handbook later recorded that the papers were signed on the same day as Newell's wedding. They set up in downtown Kirkland, about five miles from the Microsoft campus they had just left. Business directories list the early address as 520 Kirkland Way, the Emerald Building, a four-storey office finished in 1995. They funded the first game from their own Microsoft earnings and took a publishing deal from Sierra On-Line, also in Washington. The product that had to justify the bet was Half-Life. The building still stands as ordinary downtown office space. Valve outgrew Kirkland and moved to Bellevue in 2004. This pin is the former shop, not the present headquarters. What changed here was the job. A Windows producer became a founder with a modified Quake engine and no storefront of his own. Photo: Gabe Newell in 2002, jon jordan, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons