5 cutting edge tech companies making Colorado their second home

by Garrett Reim
December 30, 2014

The measure of any tech ecosystem is not only its ability to create successful startups, but also the way it convinces outside companies to setup secondary offices. For years, Colorado has been a great place for successful tech companies to add new physical locations. These five companies chose Colorado as their second home. 

 

Gogo - Broomfield, Colorado

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When you’re flying at 500 miles per hour at 30,000 feet, do you ever wonder how airlines get you internet access? Gogo is how. More than 2,000 commercial aircraft are equipped with Gogo internet access. It's fitting that a company that brings the world wide web to people cruising in the stratosphere has a major office at high altitude in Broomfield, Colorado. And though the company has been in Colorado for years, its business aviation unit Aircell recently moved 200 employees into a new 112,300 square foot space in February 2014

 

GitHub - Boulder, Colorado

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GitHub is where developers go to share and find useful code. As developers are especially important to Colorado’s enterprise software focused tech industry, naturally GitHub is right at home in Boulder. The company has been working out of its 3,500 square foot Boulder space since August 2014. The company’s strategy when it comes to adding physical locations is to build where it already has a concentration of employees or where its employees want to be. GitHub already had 12 employees working out of Colorado remotely, so an office just made sense. 

 

Google - Boulder, Colorado

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Google has been on a product launch, hiring, and building spree lately. As part of its expansion plans, the Internet search giant is expanding its Boulder, Colorado offices. Google already has 300 employees at its Boulder, Colorado office, but wants to expand and employ more. The company has plans for three new 110,000 square foot buildings that would host up to 1,500 employees.
 
"Historically, we've grown at a fairly rapid clip. We've had great success at attracting good talent in Boulder, and we don't want the space to be a constraint," said Scott Green, director of Google's Boulder operations to the Denver Post. Boulder, "it's a good place to attract technical talent. The community supports things Google supports."
 
 
PlaceIQ - Boulder, Colorado
 
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PlaceIQ’s platform organizes over a trillion physical location data points. Those data points are spread across the entire United States and are used by advertisers to send advertisements to consumer demographics within certain locations. The company is able to determine demographics by using data from social networks. The startup for example, has helped McDonald’s restaurants better target nearby customers. Though PlaceIQ is headquartered in New York City, the growing startup was founded in Boulder, Colorado. It relocated its headquarters to get closer to advertising customers and partners in New York City, but still maintains a Boulder office. 
 

IBM - Boulder, Colorado

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IBM first opened its Boulder facility in 1997, investing $34 million to get the resiliency services center up-and-running. Since then, the campus has been upgraded and expanded. Today it is 500 acres with 26 buildings, 2.5 million square feet of space and a 350,000 square foot raised floor data center. The operations at IBM’s Boulder campus focus on helping big companies plan for and recover from large data outages. As such, “the Boulder Colorado site was specifically selected as an ideal location for its stable climate and low risk of natural disasters.
 
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