Perks Give Area Firms a Silicon Valley Feel

"One of the things I think really helped here was that the D.C. area has a wealth of experience -- gray-bearded talent from the telecom and Internet space -- the actual formation of the Internet," Patterson said, referring to when the Internet was a Pentagon program.

And while two-thirds of the company's revenue today comes from the government, which is required to upgrade to IPv6 by June, Patterson expects commercial clients such as Bechtel and Cisco to increasingly dominate its customer base.

"We're absolutely going after a huge new market," he said. "But we're doing it in a very low-risk way."

That more cautious attitude is welcomed by East Coast venture firms, in contrast to those on the West Coast, which are often looking for the next big thing.

April Young, senior vice president and managing director of Comerica Bank's Mid-Atlantic technology and life sciences division, said Washington area venture capitalists look for companies in markets "that are better known or more predictable rather than a truly disruptive technology that nobody's ever thought of."

In deciding to start his Web company in Washington, Radfar said he appreciated the sustained attention he received from investors and the fact that he could count on employees to stay on.

"If you go to the Valley, there's the glamour side of it and the becoming-a-Google side of it," he said. "It's not uncommon for a person in Silicon Valley to have three or four jobs in a year or two."

By contrast, in Washington, "when you do get capital, the venture capitalists are long term and the employees are long term."

During the dot-com era, lavish benefits became a symbol of the tech bubble. By contrast, the benefits today are less about displaying wealth and more about relaxing corporate culture. The idea of building the business -- a constant worry for startups -- even shows up in perks.

For Command Information, the Porsche doubles as a marketing vehicle. Earlier in the summer, Command employee Forrest Snowden borrowed the Porsche to drive to Maryland's Eastern Shore. He decided he had to see what the Porsche could do. "You've just got to try it," he said.

But in "trying it," he attracted a police officer's attention as he hit 90 mph.

Snowden received only a warning. "The officer was more interested in the logos and the verbiage," Snowden said.

That would be the words "Command Information" and "veesix" planted on the Porsche's sides and rear.

Watch a video of how one company, Command Information, is attracting and retaining its employees with different kinds of perks. Go tohttp://washingtonpost.com/business.