It’s been a while since the TechCrunch TV team has taken a tropical vacation, but we were able to take a walk on the wild side (no passports required) while shooting this latest episode of Cribs at open platform-as-a-service startup DotCloud.

DotCloud’s office is smack in the middle of the financial district of San Francisco, but when you step inside it feels like you’re in the middle of a jungle — albeit a very well-connected jungle with desks, computers, and intensely-focused programmers. That’s because DotCloud has decorated its office with dozens of plants in every space possible, on the floor, on desks, and even hanging from the ceilings. The greenery provides a very cool juxtaposition with the cityscape outside DotCloud’s 16th floor windows — a blend of Gordon Gekko’s office and Jurassic Park that somehow works really well.

And it’s not just people who enjoy DotCloud’s leafy oasis. The company’s staff also includes an adorable baby tortoise named Gordon who I may or may not have tried to abduct adopt. What can I say, we bonded.

Check it all out in the video above.

It’s time for a brand spankin’ new edition of Cribs, the TechCrunch TV series where we snoop around inside the employee-only sections of the tech industry’s hottest companies.

Just like Walt Whitman, the tech industry contains multitudes, and we try to represent it all in Cribs. That means that in addition to touring bootstrapped startups, we also like to go inside established tech giants — and it was pretty amazing to have the chance to take an in-depth tour of LinkedIn, the professional social network that’s grown from its 2002 inception in Reid Hoffman’s apartment to a staff of thousands, a user base of hundreds of millions, a hugely successful initial public offering, and continued stock market success.

What’s even cooler was that our guide was none other than Allen Blue, LinkedIn’s very charismatic co-founder and current VP of product who has been with the company since day one. I think it’s fair to say that he’s the best possible person that we could have asked to give us a tour, even though it meant I had to suffer a pretty humiliating loss at expert-level Rock Band along the way.

Watch the video above to see what it’s like inside LinkedIn — from the in-house rock band, to the unlimited Indian food, to Allen Blue’s excellent elephant impression, and beyond.

It’s unfortunate, but true: Since venture capital funding rounds often provide a straightforward time to meet and report on growing tech companies, awesome bootstrapped startups sometimes slip under our radar here at TechCrunch.

Up until now, that’s been the case with NerdWallet, the personal money management and advisory platform that has bootstrapped its way to profitability, a full-time staff of more than 30, and a sweet office in downtown San Francisco — all since 2009, and without a dime of VC funding.

So hopefully we made up for some lost time with this latest episode of TechCrunch Cribs. Co-founder and COO Jacob Gibson led the way for our long-overdue look around NerdWallet HQ, and we really liked what we found: A beautifully designed space furnished with pyramids of Diet Coke, designated “Nerding” rooms, a conference room/DJ booth, a few very well-dressed canine friends, a front-and-center set of monkey bars perfect for impromptu pull-up competitions, and much more.

Check it all out in the video above!

It’s time for another episode of Cribs, the TechCrunch TV series that takes you inside the hallowed gates of the tech industry’s hottest companies to get a first-hand look at what they’re really like.

This time, we headed to the shiny new San Francisco headquarters of HotelTonight, the company that makes the popular mobile apps for booking same-day hotel rooms at discounted prices. HotelTonight is very choosy about the hotels it offers on its platform, showing deals only from higher-end places with strong reviews and good design. Being that the company’s staff is on a first-name basis with some of the most gorgeous hotels in the world, HotelTonight had a pretty high bar to meet when it came to designing its own digs.

As you’ll see in the video embedded above, HotelTonight’s new office does not disappoint. Taking cues from some of the top properties available on its app, such as the hipster hotspot Ace Hotels, HotelTonight has created a very cool space that’s a cut above the typical startup scene, with sophisticated furniture and amazing art. They’ve also kept it funky, with some very eclectic elements — I never thought I’d bang a real gong and play a round of cornhole within the same ten minute period, but somehow it all works out at HT HQ.

And a real perk is the company’s fully-stocked bar with a view of the iconic Powell Street cable car turnaround, which would give many real hotel bars a run for its money. Pro tip: If you ever find yourself at HotelTonight, don’t turn down an offer to have a drink mixed by CEO Sam Shank. That man can make a mean martini.

A big part of what makes our Cribs series so fun to make is going behind closed doors to get a real glimpse at how a company works (and plays.) But it’s not every day that Cribs take us behind a second set of closed doors — ones that are completely hidden — and enter into top secret rooms.

So our tour of Weebly, the San Francisco-based startup that has helped millions of people start their own sites, was quite the treat. Weebly is based in the Jackson Square neighborhood of San Francisco bordering North Beach, both historical regions that factored big in the Barbary Coast days and later hosted lots of speakeasy activity during the Prohibition era. Weebly’s office is certainly very clean and modern, but it also has a few nifty features that fit into the more shadowy past of its surroundings.

Watch the video embedded above to see the underground tunnel portal that opens into Weebly HQ, the company’s top secret meeting room (complete with a sneaky bookshelf door), and Weebly’s non-official mascot Lucy, possibly the cutest English bulldog ever.

We’re back with a brand new Cribs, the TechCrunch TV series where we go inside the gates of the hottest tech companies and get a grand tour of what the day-to-day work life is like — warts, perks, and all.

In this episode, we headed to an industrial stretch of San Francisco’s Folsom Street that’s generally better known as a home for greasy car mechanic shops than for geeky web startups. But that’s fitting, because the company we were visiting is a unique combo of both worlds: Lit Motors, the startup that made it to the Battlefield finals at the most recent Disrupt SF conference with the C-1, the sleek self-balancing fully electric car that is so plugged into the latest digital tech that it purports to function like a “rolling smart phone.”

We were able to have some hands-on time with the C-1, which really does make you feel like a real-life Tron character when you climb inside, as well as the Lit Scooter, which is aimed at the developing world.

But what’s really fun about Lit Motors’ office is the genuine maker spirit that permeates everything founder Daniel Kim and his team do, from vehicles, to furniture, surfboards, guitars, and more. That environment leads to some interesting (and terrifying exhilarating) moments for visitors — climbing up a fully homemade staircase was a personal first, for example.

But all’s well that ends well, and we had a lot of fun with this Cribs. Check it all out in the video embedded above.

It’s time for another episode of Cribs, the TechCrunch TV series that takes you behind the gates of some of the tech industry’s hottest companies to see the factory floors where your tastiest app and gadget sausage is made.

It’s great to go beyond TechCrunch’s San Francisco headquarters to check out Cribs in other locales — and our latest sojourn was particularly worth it. Earlier this month we were in Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show, and while we were in town we headed over to the Ogden Building, which is the home of a number of startups — including smartphone-controlled robot maker Romotive.

Romotive is one of the most buzzed-about companies in the quickly growing Downtown Vegas tech scene, so it was great to have co-founder and CEO Keller Rinaudo give us a tour of his company’s digs and give us a hands-on look at the “Romo” robot. While the Romotive team has built hundreds of Romos themselves right there in its Sin City headquarters, the company just recently signed a production contract with an Asian manufacturer that will help the company scale up its output dramatically. That means that Romos will now be poised to enter the homes (and hearts) of millions of people across the globe.

That idea might sound a bit scary at first, but I think after seeing the gadgets in action you will soon welcome our new Romo robot overlords with open arms. Who can resist those big blinking eyes?

A big tip of the hat to Steve Long, John Murillo, and Ashley Pagán for their camerawork; Ashley Pagán for her editing wizardry, and Felicia Williams for organizing the shoot.

Welcome back to Cribs, the TechCrunch TV series that takes you inside the offices of the industry’s hot companies to see what it’s really like inside the belly of the tech innovation beast (and check out the free food and fun perks that often help power it.)

In this episode, we visited the downtown San Francisco headquarters of Airbnb, where we received a tour from co-founder and CTO Nate Blecharczyk. Now, I have to admit that our expectations were pretty high — after all, by running possibly the most well-known online marketplace for booking short-term accommodations, I figured that the folks at Airbnb have seen their fair share of interestingly designed interiors.

I’m happy to report that the Airbnb office did not disappoint. The company has actually re-created rooms from some of the coolest properties available for rent on the site, and uses them as conference rooms. This means that there are replicas of spaces in Hong Kong, Berlin, New York City, and elsewhere that are accurate down to the smallest details, which was pretty neat to see.

Watch the video embedded above to see those re-created Airbnb spaces for yourself, along with a particularly historic Skee-Ball machine, surprisingly tasty looking gourmet raw food, some *very* unique bathrooms, and more.

After a long vacation, TechCrunch Cribs is back! But as TechCrunch alum Jason Kincaid left us with some pretty big shoes to fill, for our first installment we decided to start with a company that knows the Cribs drill already — enterprise cloud storage company Box.

It was just eight months ago that Box last got the Cribs treatment, but lots has changed since then: Its employee count has doubled in size to a staff of 400, they dropped the “.net” from their name, and they moved into a bigger and better new headquarters in Los Altos, California.

Watch the video above to see Box CEO Aaron Levie and enterprise general manager Whitney Tidmarsh Bouck give us a tour of all three floors of Box’s new office: We took the elevator and steps up, the slide back down, and a scooter all the way back home.

Baidu is one of the most known of the Chinese Internet giants. Some of the buzz is admiration for Robin Li, one of the pioneers of the Chinese Web scene who built a global giant that succeeded in a political environment where Google cried “uncle.” Others have painted Baidu as the mirror image of Google’s lofty “do no evil” credo.

So on our recent trip to Beijing, we decided to take our cameras to the search giant’s massive headquarters– which spans more than one million square feet– to see if we could find any torture chambers. Big thanks to our gracious host and good sport, Baidu spokesperson Kaiser Kuo.

We’re back with a new episode of TC Cribs, and it’s featuring one of the most tricked-out offices yet: YouTube.

Yes, the world’s biggest archive of cute cat videos (among other things) invited us to take a stroll through their halls, which are brimming with nifty artifacts, viral video memorabilia, and gnomes. A lot of gnomes.

There’s also a big surprise that comes around two-thirds through the episode that had me hurting for a couple of days. Don’t miss it!

Thanks to John Murillo and Jon Orlin for the camerawork, and to Mr. Murillo once again for the fantastic editing.

Here are some of our past episodes (oh, and don’t worry — we’ll feature some much smaller companies very soon!):

• Inside The Psychobox: A Tour Of Dropbox’s Bumping Office
• Take A Doc On The Wild Side At Scribd (With Bonus Go Karts!)
• Dogs, Unicorns, And Mysterious Gongs: Inside Yelp’s 5-Star Pad
• TC Cribs: IGN HQ Gets Its Game On With Lawn Gnomes, Plumbers, And Creepy Dinosaurs
• TC Cribs: From Frenchmen To Randy Raccoons, An Inside Look At Seesmic
• TC Cribs: Inside The Snuggified Home Of Posterous
• TC Cribs: Meebo’s Headbanging, Rocket-Flinging Office (With Magical Passageways)
• TC Cribs: Unlock The Secrets Of GroupMe HQ (Beware The Time-Out Chair)
• TC Cribs: Inside The Escheresque Home Of Justin.tv and Socialcam
• TC Cribs: Inside Tumblr’s Reblog-Worthy Digs
• TC Cribs: Inside Etsy’s Handcrafted Wonderland
• TC Cribs: A Magical Journey Through Box.net (In The Cloud)

We’re back for a new episode of TC Cribs, and this one is chock-full of unique, incredible creations that you’ll never see in another office: yep, we made it to Etsy.

The Brooklyn-based company gives artists, designers, sculptors, and all sorts of other creative people a place to sell their wares online — and the startup is eating its own dogfood by decorating its office with items purchase from the site. And boy, does it work. You can’t walk three feet without stumbling across a man-made out of metal wire or freakishly massive owl.

Bonus: if you watch til the end, you’ll see a sleep-deprived version of me make a painful attempt at playing Heart and Soul. Yeah, we had to cut out some profanity.

Thanks, as always, to Ashley Pagán and John Murillo for the camera work, and to Mr. Murillo for the editing and fantastic music selection.

Also make sure to check out our previous episodes of TC Cribs:

• Inside The Psychobox: A Tour Of Dropbox’s Bumping Office
• Take A Doc On The Wild Side At Scribd (With Bonus Go Karts!)
• Dogs, Unicorns, And Mysterious Gongs: Inside Yelp’s 5-Star Pad
• TC Cribs: IGN HQ Gets Its Game On With Lawn Gnomes, Plumbers, And Creepy Dinosaurs
• TC Cribs: From Frenchmen To Randy Raccoons, An Inside Look At Seesmic
• TC Cribs: Inside The Snuggified Home Of Posterous
• TC Cribs: Meebo’s Headbanging, Rocket-Flinging Office (With Magical Passageways)
• TC Cribs: Unlock The Secrets Of GroupMe HQ (Beware The Time-Out Chair)
• TC Cribs: Inside The Escheresque Home Of Justin.tv and Socialcam
• TC Cribs: Inside Tumblr’s Reblog-Worthy Digs

We’re back with a new episode of TC Cribs, and this one is sure to be a crowd pleaser: red-hot blogging platform Tumblr. The NYC-based startup has been growing like crazy (they’re now up to 11.6 billion page views per month), and they’ve given us a chance to take a peek inside their headquarters.

For a company with over $40 million in funding the Tumblr team is still surprisingly small, and the office is relatively humble. But there’s plenty of charm: handcrafted furniture, board games abound, and robots that look suspiciously like my favorite wizard.

Be sure to watch til the end, when I get to walk Tumblr founder David Karp’s dog. Huh?

As always, credit to Ashley Pagán and John Murillo for the camera work, and to Mr. Murillo for the fantastic editing.

Also be sure to check out our previous episodes of TC Cribs:

• Inside The Psychobox: A Tour Of Dropbox’s Bumping Office
• Take A Doc On The Wild Side At Scribd (With Bonus Go Karts!)
• Dogs, Unicorns, And Mysterious Gongs: Inside Yelp’s 5-Star Pad
• TC Cribs: IGN HQ Gets Its Game On With Lawn Gnomes, Plumbers, And Creepy Dinosaurs
• TC Cribs: From Frenchmen To Randy Raccoons, An Inside Look At Seesmic
• TC Cribs: Inside The Snuggified Home Of Posterous
• TC Cribs: Meebo’s Headbanging, Rocket-Flinging Office (With Magical Passageways)
• TC Cribs: Unlock The Secrets Of GroupMe HQ (Beware The Time-Out Chair)

I need to start with a warning. Depending on your work environment, this may not be safe for work. Especially if you don’t want to hear some a lot of four letter words. It may not be safe around small children either. But for everyone else, you might enjoy watching this video over and over again.

One of our popular TCTV shows is TC Cribs, where Jason Kincaid goes behind the scenes of a tech company to see what it’s like to work and play there. Of course, we edit it and don’t use all the material we shoot. Our editor John Murillo decided to edit together some of the outtakes.

We posted the video on our internal Yammer and it was quite a hit. Jason says “wow that was painful for me to watch.” Michael Arrington’s favorite part comes around 1:55 and he said this needs to be posted. So, check it out. You might not look at Jason the same way again.

For the regular Cribs episodes, check out TC Cribs at techcrunch.tv/show/tc-cribs

We’re back for a new episode of TC Cribs, and it’s featuring a startup long-time TechCrunch readers will know well: Justin.tv. The office is a quirky mix of hallways, rooms that probably shouldn’t be rooms, and secret stairways — and it’s loaded with character and condiments.

The company got its start back in 2007 as founder Justin Kan livecasted his life with a camera hooked up to a backpack that was loaded with batteries and modems, letting thousands of viewers watch his every move. He’s a brave man.

The company’s come a long way since then: they’re now one of the most popular live streaming platforms on the web (Kan has hung up his backpack, which you’ll see in the tour). And they also recently launched a sister product called Socialcam, which is best described as an Instagram for video. Tune in!

Credit once again goes to Ashley Pagán and John Murillo for the camera work, and to Mr. Murillo for the editing and fantastic music selection.

Also make sure to check out our previous episodes of TC Cribs:

• Inside The Psychobox: A Tour Of Dropbox’s Bumping Office
• Take A Doc On The Wild Side At Scribd (With Bonus Go Karts!)
• Dogs, Unicorns, And Mysterious Gongs: Inside Yelp’s 5-Star Pad
• TC Cribs: IGN HQ Gets Its Game On With Lawn Gnomes, Plumbers, And Creepy Dinosaurs
• TC Cribs: From Frenchmen To Randy Raccoons, An Inside Look At Seesmic
• TC Cribs: Inside The Snuggified Home Of Posterous
• TC Cribs: Meebo’s Headbanging, Rocket-Flinging Office (With Magical Passageways)
• TC Cribs: Unlock The Secrets Of GroupMe HQ (Beware The Time-Out Chair)

Yes, it’s been a long time since we braved the curious smells of LikeALittle’s hacker hose. And while TechCrunch Disrupt may have kept you occupied for a week, that emptiness you’re feeling inside can only really be cured by one thing: a new episode of TC Cribs. Happy to oblige.

This episode features GroupMe, the hot group messaging startup that has its roots in a TechCrunch Disrupt hackathon and has since landed over $10 million in funding. The NYC-based startup is full of bright hackers eager to show off their custom rugs and bingo games — and they have a decent sense of humor, too. This is one of our best episodes, so tune in.

I might even dance a little. Thanks for the memories, Petey. And if you enjoy the dancing, you can study the moves here.

Credit once again goes to Ashley Pagán and John Murillo for the camera work, and to Mr. Murillo for the great editing.

Also make sure to check out our previous episodes of TC Cribs:

• Inside The Psychobox: A Tour Of Dropbox’s Bumping Office
• Take A Doc On The Wild Side At Scribd (With Bonus Go Karts!)
• Dogs, Unicorns, And Mysterious Gongs: Inside Yelp’s 5-Star Pad
• TC Cribs: IGN HQ Gets Its Game On With Lawn Gnomes, Plumbers, And Creepy Dinosaurs
• TC Cribs: From Frenchmen To Randy Raccoons, An Inside Look At Seesmic
• TC Cribs: Inside The Snuggified Home Of Posterous
• TC Cribs: Meebo’s Headbanging, Rocket-Flinging Office (With Magical Passageways)

Warning: if you are an obsessively clean person, you may want to skip this episode of TC Cribs.

For those of you brave enough to tune in, here’s a bit of an explanation.

Over the last few months we’ve seen some pretty blinged-out offices, featuring go-karts, gorgeous skyline views, and endless supplies of free snacks and beer. But the reality is that most startups don’t look anything like that. Instead, they often consist a handful of founders working (and sleeping) out of somebody’s apartment and eating ramen noodles twice a day with the occasional pizza splurge. LikeALittle (LAL) is a lot like that.

For those that haven’t seen it, LAL is a college-focused service that’s like a more structured version of Craigslist’s missed connections, allowing students to post ‘flirts’ to other nearby users. The company just raised some seed money from a very impressive list of investors. And the team consists of a dozen young guys sitting in one room in a house in Palo Alto.

There’s stuff everywhere. Not necessarily gross stuff, but the floor was littered with dolls, photos of Ashton Kutcher, iPads, markers, venture capitalist business cards, and popcorn. In other words, it was a lot like my college dorm. And it’s awesome.

Credit once again goes to Ashley Pagán and John Murillo for the camera work, and to Mr. Murillo for the great editing.

Make sure to tune in to our past episodes of TC Cribs:

• Inside The Psychobox: A Tour Of Dropbox’s Bumping Office
• Take A Doc On The Wild Side At Scribd (With Bonus Go Karts!)
• Dogs, Unicorns, And Mysterious Gongs: Inside Yelp’s 5-Star Pad
• TC Cribs: IGN HQ Gets Its Game On With Lawn Gnomes, Plumbers, And Creepy Dinosaurs
• TC Cribs: From Frenchmen To Randy Raccoons, An Inside Look At Seesmic
• TC Cribs: Inside The Snuggified Home Of Posterous
• TC Cribs: Meebo’s Headbanging, Rocket-Flinging Office (With Magical Passageways)

We’re back with another episode of TC Cribs, taking you inside the offices of some of the tech world’s hottest companies. This episode features Meebo, which rose to popularity as a multi-protocol web-based chat client, and has since gotten tons of traction with their Meebo Bar (not to be confused with the numerous drinking holes located in the office, as you’ll see in the episode)).

Tune in to learn about Meebo’s traditions, their giant cookies, their hidden staircase to the happiest place on Earth, and the wooden board they call a ‘rock wall’ that is much, much harder than it looks. Seriously, it’s really hard. You’ll see. And do be sure to watch til the end.

Also be sure to check out our past episodes of TC Cribs:

As always, credit to Ashley Pagán and John Murillo for the camera work, and to Mr. Murillo for the fantastic editing (he’s seriously a wizard).

• Inside The Psychobox: A Tour Of Dropbox’s Bumping Office
• Take A Doc On The Wild Side At Scribd (With Bonus Go Karts!)
• Dogs, Unicorns, And Mysterious Gongs: Inside Yelp’s 5-Star Pad
• TC Cribs: IGN HQ Gets Its Game On With Lawn Gnomes, Plumbers, And Creepy Dinosaurs
• TC Cribs: From Frenchmen To Randy Raccoons, An Inside Look At Seesmic
• TC Cribs: Inside The Snuggified Home Of Posterous

It’s time for a new episode of TC Cribs, and this week we’re showcasing the home of one of the easiest-to-use blogging platforms around: Posterous, the service that lets you turn an email into a blog post (among other things).

As you’ll see in the tour, the Posterous office is located in the heart of San Francisco’s Mission District so there’s always something exciting going on outside the window. The team has also developed a strange affinity for a certain inexpensive beer… and Snuggies. Oh, and don’t worry if you’re not sure how to actually pronounce “Posterous” — in this episode, we answer the question once and for all.

Once again, credit to Ashley Pagán and John Murillo for the camera work, and to Mr. Murillo for the great editing.

If you haven’t already, make sure to check out the past episodes of TC Cribs:

• Inside The Psychobox: A Tour Of Dropbox’s Bumping Office
• Take A Doc On The Wild Side At Scribd (With Bonus Go Karts!)
• Dogs, Unicorns, And Mysterious Gongs: Inside Yelp’s 5-Star Pad
• TC Cribs: IGN HQ Gets Its Game On With Lawn Gnomes, Plumbers, And Creepy Dinosaurs
• TC Cribs: From Frenchmen To Randy Raccoons, An Inside Look At Seesmic

Tune in for our full walkthrough of the office, led by Seesmic CEO Loic Le Meur.

Oh, and if you want to watch Loic’s full description of Seesmic (which ran a bit long), you can watch it right here.

As usual, credit to Ashley Pagán and John Murillo for the camera work, and to Mr. Murillo for the great editing.

Here are the past episodes of TC Cribs:

• Inside The Psychobox: A Tour Of Dropbox’s Bumping Office
• Take A Doc On The Wild Side At Scribd (With Bonus Go Karts!)
• Dogs, Unicorns, And Mysterious Gongs: Inside Yelp’s 5-Star Pad
• TC Cribs: IGN HQ Gets Its Game On With Lawn Gnomes, Plumbers, And Creepy Dinosaurs