Why Startup of the Month Votigo chose Boulder after starting off in SF

by Brad Shannon
March 5, 2014

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Built In Colorado would like to congratulate its March Startup of the Month: Votigo. When this SaaS company was founded in mid-2006, co-CEO and founder Jim Risner saw an opportunity to expand. A CU grad, he decided to return to Boulder, opening an office on 15th Street. The company has been a Facebook preferred developer since 2010, and was on the Inc. 500/5000 list of fastest growing companies in the U.S. in 2012 and 2013.

Built In Colorado caught up with Risner to learn more about Votigo’s origins and its social marketing suite.

Where did the company start, and how did you decide on SF, Boulder and India for offices?

When we first started Votigo, I was living in Chapel Hill, NC, and my co-founder, Mike La Rotonda, was living in the San Francisco Bay Area. I quickly moved back to the Bay Area, where I'm originally from, to be closer to Mike and because we both had a lot of connections there. But I wanted to come back to Boulder ever since I went to school at CU. So after getting the company up and running for a few years and knowing that we were going to be expanding, I chose to open an office in Boulder. Boulder has become such a great place for startups, entrepreneurs, and creative agencies that it made perfect sense. Our first employee and head of technology, Mandy Singh, is from India and he worked for me at my previous company for almost seven years so that was an easy decision.

What does the Votigo platform do?

The Votigo Social Media Marketing & Promotions Platform allows brands and agencies to acquire, engage, and manage customers across all of their social channels, websites, and mobile. They can choose from a self-service toolset or full-service solutions.

What sorts of problems does it solve, and for whom?

Brands (and their agencies) are always looking to acquire new customers or create more brand awareness. Promotions like contests and sweepstakes are a great solution for attracting new customers and engaging existing customers. Brands use our promotions apps on Facebook, Web, Mobile, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, etc., to create brand awareness, collect email addresses for re-marketing, and collect user-generated content (UGC) for engagement and re-marketing as well. Marketing apps like social content galleries let brand advocates share their stories and experiences. The rest of our platform allows brands to manage conversations across their social channels as well as gain actionable insights and track customer engagement over time.

What inspired you to create this platform?

Our initial inspiration centered on UGC video and photo content in the form of contests. We looked at YouTube, MySpace, and American Idol and really brought them all together to form the Votigo Contest Community. From there, we quickly evolved into more of a marketing technology company servicing large brands and agencies.

What demonstrated that there was the need for this service?

The demand from brands and agencies was overwhelming. They all wanted our technology branded or white-labeled for themselves. We followed that path and here we are almost eight years later servicing some of the most recognizable brands in the world like Starwood Hotels, Live Nation, DreamWorks, GoPro, Sony, Heinz, and others.

How does Votigo differ from other services out there that describe themselves in similar ways?

Our technology platform is very solid. Our customer services is top notch. And our ability to customize our platform is a major differentiator. We have solutions for almost any size company, from SMB to Enterprise. And we offer both self-service solutions and full-service or custom offerings.

What does 2014 - and beyond - hold for the company?

2014 will hopefully be our best year yet. We've had seven years of consistent growth and we plan to continue. We continue to bring on great customers as well as expand our technology and product offerings.

Jobs at Votigo

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