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Pictured from left to right, Altay Sarikaya, Jerry McKee, Bailey Nagamatsu. Photo by Perris Larson
By: Perris Larson, contributing writer
LAKE FOREST PARK - Altay Sarikaya has always wanted to start a business, but it wasn’t until 2020 that he found the correct motivation. Sarikaya did not just want to make a profit, but to start a business around an experience he personally enjoyed: gaming. At the time, there were not a lot of businesses in the Seattle area that sold PCs. Customers would have to rely on businesses like Best Buy or Amazon.Thus, after taking the time to build personal computers, or PCs for friends during the height of the COVID-19 Pandemic and enjoying the process, Seattle Built PCs was born.
Places Seattle Built has sent PC's. Photo by Perris Larson“The motivation would be to create experiences for people,” Sarikaya said. “It is a little cheesy but to make people happy. That was much more motivating than just looking to earn money.”
Three individuals make up the Seattle Built team: Sarikaya, Hans Linder, the Systems Manager and James Springer, the Liaison Director. Seattle Built has created PCs not just for locals and local businesses, but notable celebrities as well, one of their first major customers being Youtuber, TheRussianBadger. Since then, the team has built PCs actors like Simu Liu, athletes like JT Brown and George Kirby, as well as for schools like Burlington-Edison High School.
Now that Seattle Built has a physical location in Lake Forest Park Town Center, more possibilities are on the horizon. “We want to do more than just showing our PCs. We want to do more community stuff,” Sarikaya said. “We would love to offer PC building classes, a parents education class for gaming.”
The end goal for Seattle Built is to delve deeper into the community aspect of the business. The team, as well as customers would love to see this business expand, whether it be through advertisement at community events, or weekly workshops. In the near future, Sarikaya would want to create a workshop that would be equivalent to Build-A-Bear, but creating custom keyboards instead.
“We do not have to be for profit in everything we do, we can do cool things that don’t directly make us money because we do not have shareholders to answer to,” Sarikaya said.
Since moving to Lake Forest Park, Seattle Built has sold 35 PCs in-store, on top of 80 online, close to eighty-percent of their customers are local. In total, the business has created 1,774 PCs since 2020.
On March 6, Seattle Built hopes to show off their PCs at the Third Place Commons Annual Fundraising Breakfast, as well as contribute a gift card to the auction.
Editor's Note: I've enjoyed watching Altay, Hans, and Jerry grow up as they all played on my son's soccer team and were frequently at our house. This pic is of Hans, his brother Leo, and one of my sons (Carter) being tutored (by me) in building their first gaming rigs in our dining room in 2016.
