Startup Stars: Q&A with Outright's Ben Curren and Billy Estoque

Our new Startup Star profiles explore the playful side of new venture companies in Mountain View–and we want to put a face to a name. Each week we’ll highlight people from different Mountain View startups and give you some fun facts about them.

This week we spoke with Ben Curren and Billy Estoque. Curren is co-founder and CTO of Outright, an accounting platform that helps small businesses organize their finances, and Estoque is a software engineer who joined six months ago. Outright was one of three Mountain View startups that hosted last week, an evening-long event where innovative people came together for everything from drinks to jobs.

Read on for some fun facts Curren and Estoque gave us at the slide about themselves and the company.

Mountain View Patch: What kind of games do you have in your office?

Ben Curren: We have a Wii…We also have Ping Pong, we play our remote control helicopters in the office. We have little mini helicopters and I have one big helicopter that we’ll fly, but not when there’s a lot of people there. We also do pull-ups – people rock-climb, so we have a little climby thing above our door jam and we’ll do pull ups competitions and holding competitions on there.  

Patch: What's been your favorite company outing?

Curren: We took everyone on a fishing trip. We went out under the Golden Gate Bridge and it was supposed to be rainy but it was really the most perfect day. The water was so glassy, we caught literally a shark and like 20 fish. It was crazy!

Patch: What’s the longest time you’ve spent working?

Curren: I think I always work. What I do for fun is also what I do for work–so I tend to work all the time on different projects. I’ve worked 16 to 18-hour days straight for weeks.  

Patch: What kind of phone do you have?

Curren: I have an iPhone. It’s a 3G and it’s the slowest thing I’ve ever had, and I cannot wait until a new phone comes out. I’ve kind of been really patient, so I was like, "Oh, I’ll wait until the next iPhone 4 or 5" and that’s literally been way too long now and my phone hardly works. So I use an Android phone that I do hardware development for and I’m almost about to switch to it.

Patch: What’s your favorite mobile app?

Curren: I guess Yelp is my favorite app because I love to eat. I’m always using it to find places to eat.

Patch: How do you like working for Outright?

Billy Estoque: [Outright's] a ten because the culture's really good. Every Friday we go out for margaritas, we help each other out with different problems and we're very open with different things–we also have a "20 Percent Time" like Google, so every[day] after, like, 4 p.m. we can do whatever we want...and then we also do our own startups on the side.

Patch: What's the longest time you've spent in the office without sleep?

Estoque: 24 hours. Red bull–that's like, four or five.

Patch: Do you have a nice vending machine?

Estoque: No, but we have a fridge. That fridge has beer and vodka...I'm pretty happy, every Friday too we can drink in the office after like 12.