About Groundspeak

Building location-based tools that inspire real world discovery and global play

Groundspeak is a privately held company in Seattle, Washington. The company was initially founded in November of 2000 to support the ongoing development of the Geocaching.com web site. Jeremy Irish, Elias Alvord and Bryan Roth met at a late 90's dot-com era startup and obtained initial funding for the site from the sale of 144 donated geocaching t-shirts (really!).

From the beginning the founders were inspired by the combination of location-based technology (GPS) with outdoor recreation. As the site and tools have developed, the values of Groundspeak and the Geocaching community have shaped the direction of the activity.

Groundspeak, Inc. is a team of 20+ Lackeys who focus on web site development and design, software development, game creation, network and systems administration and of course the nuts and bolts customer service, community and volunteer relations, finance and accounting, HR, marketing and business development. And to top it all off, 100+ exceptional geocaching volunteers dedicate their time in support of the overall needs of the community. Whew!

The company owns and operates Geocaching.com, Waymarking.com and Wherigo.com

Groundspeak's Mission

Our mission is to inspire global play with location-based technology. Born from a grass-roots movement, Groundspeak is committed to:

• Getting people outside by using location-based technology
• Providing or enhancing real-world adventures or experiences
• Supporting parks and outdoor recreational areas (often through Cache In Trash Out)
• Educating about GPS and other location-based technologies (through the GPS Adventures Maze and partnerships)
• Bringing online communities together in physical locations

Our Management Ethos

We started as a hobby site and it turned into a business, by necessity, over several years. Our core values are based on being self-starters, having entrepreneurial spirits and bringing ideas and solutions to the marketplace. Our employees are like-minded professionals who thrive in a relaxed, informal business setting.

As we strive to keep pace with the changing needs of larger user community, we hold our employees to a high standard of excellence and service. Doing our job is about more than what we do, it's also about how we do it. Here are some "hows" we strive to embrace while we do our work:

• Create – great products, great services, a great environment to work in
• Share – our ideas, our adventures, our world
• Care – about how we treat each other, our user community and the environment in which we all live
• Resolve – problems and issues by proposing solutions and being open to other people's ideas
• Recognize – each other's contributions and collaboration
• Own – our ability to be part of the solution, own up to our mistakes
• Strive – to keep improving

Interested in becoming a Groundspeak Lackey? Check out our job openings.

What's a Lackey?

A "Groundspeak Lackey" is a term used to refer to the employees and founders of Groundspeak who do the most basic tasks to support the overall needs of the community. This willingness to serve each other and provide recreation for a worldwide community is a core value of our company.

We accept the term Lackey with pride since we are beholden to the community for our success.