Biography|Nat Friedman — The Third-Floor Company on Market Street

People treat Xamarin as a Microsoft footnote.

It was a company Friedman and Miguel de Icaza founded on 16 May 2011, after both had left Novell, to keep Mono alive as a way to write mobile apps in C#.

De Icaza announced the new firm on his blog that day.

The name swapped the T in tamarin for an X, the same primate joke they had used at Ximian.

By the time the firm listed a headquarters it was on the third floor of 1355 Market Street, the old Furniture Mart, later famous as Twitter's building.

Xamarin also kept a Cambridge office at 225 Main Street.

Friedman was chief executive.

Microsoft announced the acquisition on 24 February 2016.

He stayed inside Microsoft as a corporate vice president for mobile developer tools.

That title is why Redmond could put him in charge of GitHub two years later.

The building is public and still stands on Market Street.

The third-floor lease is not a tourist interior.

The pin is the door on the street.

Photo: Doc Searls, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Portrait made 24 April 2006.