At the start of the Lafayette Day trip, we went to a restaurant just outside of Purdue’s campus and in downtown Lafayette where we had a back room to ourselves and had pulled pork, mac and cheese, and lots of other good food. We all hung out as a group for a few minutes before heading out to walk toward the destination of the day, and that was a good time.
Soon after, we began the short walk over to the MatchBox studio, the ideal place for a young entrepreneur or a work-from-home employee just looking for a quiet, accommodating place to work. When we arrived, we were greeted by Sara Poer. She was one of the managing directors of MatchBox and she began giving us a tour.
The first thing we saw was the wall of all the sponsors of MatchBox. Since it is a non-profit, it must get money from sponsors so the prices for memberships can be reasonable. We then walked over to a 3D printing studio and on the way passed a complimentary coffee and snack bar. Next, we went upstairs and a more expensive workspace. These workspaces cost a little bit more than your typical $99.99 membership at $279.99 but had lots of perks like a permanent desk space, storage space, etc. When we went downstairs, we met Amanda Findlay who joined Sara in giving us a presentation about what MatchBox does on a day-to-day basis and what services they provide. They brought in one of the students of their program to present his business to us and it was actually very interesting to see. He was creating an app to make it possible to debate different topics seriously. His vision is to mix the seriousness and community of apps like Reddit into the seamless scrolling of apps like Twitter and Instagram. It is a really good idea, in my opinion, and I am looking forward to seeing how far the app gets.
After this, we began working our way out and had a few of the CIBE guys slide down the slide they have inside at MatchBox. Overall, it was a phenomenal visit and I would honestly recommend anyone ranging all the way from people working from home to entrepreneurs pursuing startups to get a membership to MatchBox if they live in the Lafayette area.
