How St. Louis became a tech town

[Arch City]

How St. Louis became a tech town
May 24, 2013 1:35 PM
Venture Beat
Aaron Perlut, Guest Post



In spite of being home to some of America’s most successful companies, as varied as Anheuser-Busch, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Purina and Energizer, St. Louis has never been perceived as a bastion of progressivism.

The question as to “why” has no easy answer. Maybe it’s the old-line manufacturing heritage, a culture of Midwestern conservatism, or perhaps even the vast amount of trust fund dollars controlled by families who seemingly invested more into charitable causes (how dare they?) rather than into new technologies.

Regardless, for many years the perception from outside of St. Louis was of a nice, conservative Midwest town, possibly waiting for a rebirth of the industrial revolution. But over the past two-plus years the region’s business and entrepreneurial ecosystem has begun to drastically evolve and flourish.
On several fronts, St. Louis is very much becoming a tech town.

“St. Louis is seeing an incredible amount of early-stage tech activity right now, which is leading to a strong funnel of great deals,” said Gabe Lozano, CEO of LockerDome, whose company recently closed a $6 million Series A financing round. “Without question, we will be globally recognized as a top 10 city in technology within 10 years.”

There’s the unexpected, such as the big data pioneers Appistry, which has pulled in nearly $40 million from private investors; digital media-based upstarts ranging from Lozano’s LockerDome to CrowdSource.com, which recently closed on a $12.5 million Series A from Highland Capital Partners; to later-stage tech companies like Answers.com, which is valued in the nine-figure range. And then the not so unexpected, like the biosciences and ag-tech principally headquartered on the CORTEX and BRDG Park incubator campuses.

“The collective energy and momentum surrounding innovation and entrepreneurship in St. Louis right now is pretty palpable,” said Chad Stiening, who’s early-stage life sciences company Kypha has raised more than $3 million in private capital since moving to St. Louis is 2011.

“We’re seeing the human, intellectual, physical and financial capital all reaching critical mass and it’s creating an ecosystem that’s essential to be competitive in the marketplace,” he added.

Indeed, the number of St. Louis-based technology jobs posted on Dice.com jumped 25 percent over the past year, with average salaries rising 13 percent — besting the likes of Austin, Charlotte and Phoenix. And that was before Boeing announced it is moving 600 tech jobs to St. Louis over the next three years.

In addition, there are now more Ph.D. plant scientists in greater St. Louis than anywhere else in the world, according the Danforth Plant Science Center. While much of the activity has flowed from the robust talent pools coming from Monsanto, the Danforth Center, Washington University Medical Center, and others — the reality is that easy access to capital is breeding a deeper degree of innovation.

“Entrepreneurs follow opportunity,” said St. Louis native and Square founder Jim McKelvey in explaining why so many companies with St. Louis DNA have left town previously. “We now see that trend reversing. Entrepreneurs are moving here, and well they should. I know two successful firms that would be dead now if they hadn’t come to St. Louis.”

Venture capital and angel activity, of course, is an essential and growing component. There are organizations like Cultivation Capital, in which McKelvey is a partner, or Arch Angels, Billiken Angels and upstart iSELECT Fund; the State of Missouri is leveraging its Missouri Technology Corporation (MTC) to lure out-of-state start-ups, and there are unique incubator programs like Arch Grants and Capital Innovators.

Change is afoot, and just as there was no easy answer as to “why” the region has not in recent years been considered a progressive business environment, there’s no easy answer as to why there’s been dramatic shift in St. Louis’ “Progressivism DNA.”

It’s more than likely the culmination of many colliding factors: A new generation of leaders with a collective vision for the region, young, smart minds producing fresh ideas that are now more readily accepted, an increase local funding sources, and a reduction of silos amongst varying organizations.
Whatever the case might be, the region’s clear progress indicates better days ahead for start-ups and investors alike.

Read more

[Arch City]

More Washington University technology grads stay in St. Louis
May 23, 2013 4:57 pm • By David Nicklaus
St. Louis Post-Dispatch


An aerial view Brookings Hall at Washington University on March 11, 2011.

Washington University played a big role in the development of computing, and some old hands are organizing a 50th anniversary reunion this weekend for the university's Computer Labs. They'll be swapping stories about many accomplishments, including early work on the LINC, a forerunner of today's personal computers.

Jerry Cox, a senior professor of computer science and engineering, emailed me about the festivities, and somehow our correspondence turned into a discussion of the university's impact on St. Louis' technology work force. Cox told me he thinks more graduates of his program are finding opportunities in St. Louis, and he obtained some numbers from the school's alumni office to back up that intuition.

Between 1992 and 2001, the school turned out 471 computer science and engineering graduates, and 25 percent of them stayed in St. Louis. Thirteen percent went to the San Francisco area, including Silicon Valley.

Between 2002 and 2012, 677 students obtained CSE degrees. Thirty-three percent found jobs in St. Louis, and just 11 percent went to San Francisco. That's a "serious fraction" staying here, Cox notes, even as Washington U. recruits more students from distant parts of the country.

The difference is probably due to increased opportunity. In the 1990s, a young engineer had to go to Silicon Valley or Seattle to work for an interesting technology startup; St. Louis is now home to firms like Lockerdome. Larger companies like Boeing and World Wide Technology also are hiring more technology workers here.

Boeing, by the way, was the biggest employer of the CSE graduates between 2002 and 2012, followed by Microsoft, Washington University itself and Google.

Cox himself is no slouch at the startup game. He launched Growth Networks, which was acquired by Cisco Systems in 2000 at the very peak of the Internet bubble, and is now working on Blendics, which is developing ways to speed processing on computer chips.

Read More

[Arch City]

May 13, 2013, 6:56am CDT
Boeing to bring jobs to IT center in St. Louis



The Boeing Co. plans to bring 600 jobs to a new information technology center it plans to establish in St. Louis, as it eliminates 1,500 IT jobs in Washington state over the next three years.

The Chicago-based company plans to announce the moves today, the Seattle Times reported. Boeing has about 4,700 IT workers in the Seattle area. The cuts will be done through a combination of layoffs, attrition from retirements, and relocation of jobs to St. Louis, as well as another new IT center to be established in North Charleston, S.C., Boeing spokesman Andrew Favreau told the newspaper Friday.

The new centers in Missouri and South Carolina will initially grow to 600 workers each, with only about 300 to 400 of the 1,200 expected to be filled by relocating Seattle-area Boeing workers, a Boeing IT veteran, who asked not to be identified, told the newspaper. The remainder of the positions would be filled by new hires or contract labor, he said.

Boeing Defense, Space & Security, based in Hazelwood, is a $33 billion business with 59,000 employees worldwide.

Related Story

[Arch City]

Biotech.

Monsanto Announces $400 Million St. Louis Expansion Plan At Chesterfield Village Research Center

Apr 23, 2013


Monsanto campus expansion with a new laboratory facility and greenhouse

ST. LOUIS, April 23, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Monsanto Company today announced plans to bring together its St. Louis-based industry-leading research and development team on one campus when it completes a more than $400 million expansion at its Chesterfield Village Research Center. The company plans to begin work this summer and expects to add 675 jobs across St. Louis County over the next three years.

Monsanto plans to add 36 new greenhouses, additional offices and laboratory space as well as additional plant growth chambers to facilitate development of its seed and trait pipeline. Greenhouses and plant growth chambers, which can be programmed to represent any climate around the world, are a critical component of Monsanto's research work as they offer Monsanto scientists an opportunity to observe and select only the best performing seeds for in-ground testing.

"Our Chesterfield Village Research Center is already a world-class facility, and with our planned new investment, will truly be a home worthy of what I believe is the most innovative team in agriculture," said Robb Fraley, Ph.D., Monsanto's chief technology officer. "Monsanto has pledged to help those in agriculture find new ways to produce more while using less of our globe's resources."

Monsanto's proposed expansion will enable greater collaboration between researchers, as they work to develop new systems of technologies to make agriculture more productive and more sustainable.

Monsanto currently has approximately 1,000 employees at its Chesterfield site, which could have the capacity to house 2,000 local technology employees once the project is complete. Today, the site comprises 1.5 million-square-feet and includes approximately 250 laboratories, 122 plant growth chambers and two acres of greenhouses. In addition to the new office and research space, the company plans to add a new cafeteria for employees, a conference center and a parking structure. The expansion is being made possible with the support of the State of Missouri and St. Louis County.

Read More
Site Selection: Related Story

[Arch City]

World Wide Technology Opens New Global Headquarters
May 22, 2013 4:39 pm • By Tim Logan
St. Louis Post-Dispatch


World Wide Technology's new headquarters in suburban Maryland Heights

World Wide Technology Inc. said Wednesday that it had finished work on its new headquarters in Maryland Heights.

The fast-growing systems-integration company has added at least 100 jobs as part of the expansion, St. Louis County officials said.

The new 57,200-square-foot facility on Fee Fee Road will house continued growth, said chief executive officer Jim Kavanaugh.

“WWT’s continuing success and growth has driven this expansion and the new facility is a natural extension of our well-established commitment to transformative technologies,” he said in a press release.

One of the St. Louis region’s largest private companies, World Wide Technology says its revenue climbed to $5 billion last year, up from $3 billion in 2010. It has added about 500 jobs companywide in the last 18 months, a spokesman said. Today the company, which makes data storage, networking and wireless technology for the military and large private companies, employs about 2,200 people, at least 600 here in St. Louis.

World Wide Technology’s growth is the latest in a string of expansions in the region’s tech industry, said Denny Coleman, president of the St. Louis County Economic Council. Boeing Co., Monsanto Co., department-store operator Hudson’s Bay Co. and other companies have all added high-tech jobs in recent months, too.

“We’ve just seen an explosion of IT jobs here,” said Coleman, who notes that World Wide Technology’s new positions pay, on average, $100,000 a year. “There’s a real cluster that’s forming around this in St. Louis.”

Read More

[Arch City]

Question: What is Answers.com, and How Did They End Up in U. City?
ST LOUIS MAGAZINE / MARCH 2013



They called it Project Snuggie. The goal: Dispatch an army of interns to contact 40,000 businesses. And so the interns went forth, sitting in cubicles, dialing many numbers and sending many emails. And as they feverishly phoned and typed, they evolved into Team Snuggie, “because we wanted to have full coverage,” says design manager Mike Hunigan, whose goal was to boost offerings for Coupons by Answers from 3,000 retailers to tens of thousands. So at the end of the fall 2011 semester, after the team had prevailed, the interns were rewarded 
with Snuggies.

They were blue Snuggies, to be exact. Specifically, Answers Blue—a sort of friendly, Cookie Monster hue used for the logo at answers.com. It’s a Q&A site that draws 10 million visits a day, more than The New York Times. The company has satellite offices in New York, California, and Beijing, but it’s based in University City.

At the local office, Hunigan stands in a huge, sunlit room full of desks. It’s quiet, the only sounds typing and mouse-clicking. It feels ministerial, the digital version of hyperfocused 13th-century monks illuminating manuscripts. Hunigan points out tiny rooms equipped with just a desk and phone, where people can make personal calls without disturbing the hush of the main room.

Yet the environment is anything but all-work-and-no-play. Elsewhere in the office are foosball and ping-pong tables; a Segway; a gorilla suit with a horned Brunhilde helmet; a Lego room with an Answers.com logo made of Legos on one wall; and the newest acquisition, a full-size, blindingly chrome Terminator statue (a T-800 endoskeleton, that is).

“We act like big kids,” Hunigan says. “It’s like a San Francisco office was transplanted here in St. Louis.”

So how did this little piece of Silicon Valley land in St. Louis?

Answer: David Karandish, the company’s 29-year-old CEO. A Maplewood native and Washington University grad, he was the youngest contestant to appear on The Apprentice: Martha Stewart, at age 21.

“I finished my last exam, which was in competitive strategy, and then jumped on a plane and did the TV show,” Karandish recalls. “I would have liked to have won the show, but right afterwards was when I helped to incubate this business. I think everything ended up working out for the best.”

In fact, the domain has existed since the ’90s. A search on the Internet Archive Wayback Machine at archive.org, a digital library of Internet sites, reveals answers.com’s various iterations during the past 15 years. In 1997, it tried a model similar to the now-defunct Google Answers, where users paid a small fee to have a question answered. By 1999, it was a long, micro-fonted list of questions in various categories. (For instance, the question “How many wings does a flea have?” was under the category “Interesting.”) It was then sold to Jerusalem-based GuruNet. By 2004, Answers Blue had made its appearance in the logo; the site had billed itself as “The Answer Engine” and assumed a Google-like minimalism. By February 2011, when the domain was acquired by AFCV Holdings, founded by Karandish and business partner Chris Sims, it had become a sprawling Q&A site with a robust community of users.

Today, Answers claims to draw visitors am-
ounting to about a third of all U.S. Web users every month and boasts 200 million registered users, says Karandish. Questions on the site are broken into categories: Entertainment, Technology, Animals, Sports… They range from technical inquiries about Excel spreadsheets to offbeat queries like “How do you know if your parrot is pregnant?” To a casual visitor, it might seem like the point is just questions and answers—but as Team Snuggie demonstrated, the site’s willing to expand its mission.

Read More

[the urban politician]

Isn't everyplace a 'tech town' these days?

[Arch City]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

Isn't everyplace a 'tech town' these days?

True with larger metros - although some more so than others.

The point here is that St. Louis is on the cusp of changing its rust-belt manufacturing image as tech momentum continues to build.

[Arch City]

May 16, 2013, 6:28am CDT
CORTEX inks deal with Cambridge Innovation Center
Amir Kurtovic, Reporter
St. Louis Business Journal


St. Louis mayor, Francis Slay, at the ground-breaking for @4240

Wexford Science & Technology, the company developing the Heritage Building at the CORTEX biotech and medical research district in Midtown, Thursday announced that the Cambridge Innovation Center will be a major tenant at the $73 million development. It is the center's first location outside of Boston.

The Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC), located next to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has built a successful business providing co-working space for the scientists, researchers and student entrepreneurs in the Boston area. CIC St. Louis will occupy the majority of the second floor of the 183,000-square-foot building, located at Duncan and Boyle avenues, and will be able to house up to 100 companies when fully occupied, according to a statement.

“We were struck by the breadth and energy of the startup community in St. Louis,” said Ranch Kimball, president and CEO of CIC Partners. “We saw that energy in the dynamic companies we met and the university campuses we visited. When we decided to expand, we felt we could play an exciting role in the innovation environment in St. Louis.”

The Business Journal reported the fact that the CIC was looking to expand in St. Louis back in February but CIC Partners officials would not confirm plans to locate at the building.

The other announcement coming from Wexford Thursday is that the building, formerly known as the Heritage Building, would be called @4240 and that construction is expected to be complete by late 2013. The building is part of the $186 million second phase of development at CORTEX, which also includes the construction of a $45 million office building for BJC Healthcare and major infrastructure improvements.


A rendering of @4240's interior

“@4240 puts the CORTEX District on a competitive playing field with other research districts across the country. It makes St. Louis even more attractive to national companies,” said Dennis Lower, president and CEO of CORTEX. “It’s amazing to look out of my CORTEX window and I see an old Southwestern Bell telephone factory transforming into a high tech research facility — and know it will house nearly 500 high tech jobs in the heart of our city.”

Wexford officials expect that the renovated building will attract national research organizations and will house more than 450 full-time research, technology and related jobs. Washington University’s offices of Technology Management and Research Administration are two of the building’s first tenants with additional lab and office space available for lease.

Read More

[Arch City]

Who Are The Top U.S. Cloud Providers For 2012?
Brian Proffitt
Readwrite.com
May 1st, 2013



The data for the rank list was aggregated over the 2012 calendar year, measuring average response time, availability, and consistency. Consistency is the standard deviation of the response time, indicating the range of values for the reported response times over the course of the year, according to Compuware APM Technology Strategist Stephen Pierzchala.

To come up with the overall ranking, Pierzchala explained, the company combined the individual ranks for all of the three categories.

In 2012, based on overall rank, the top five providers were:

Connectria (US Central - Missouri)
Layered Tech (US Central - Illinois)
Qube (US East - New York)
Layered Tech (US South - Texas)
Layered Tech (US Central - Missouri)

Not exactly widely known providers, are they?

The players with more notoriety - like Rackspace, Google, Windows Azure and Amazon Web Services - are conspicuously missing from the top five listing. Looking at the rest of the list, Rackspace's Texas facility rolled in at number 6 overall, with Windows Azure's Illinois data center tying for ninth. Google App Engine was ranked number 15, and the highest Amazon Web Service rank was the EC2 facility in California, which came in at number 26 in a list of 38.

___________________________________________________

St. Louis Company Bests Google And Amazon In Cloud Computing
Posted on: 5:45 pm, May 14, 2013, by Patrick Clark, updated on: 05:52pm, May 14, 2013

Video

[Justin_Chicago]

I wish some of these announcements were for companies moving into downtown St. Louis instead of the suburbs. I visited St. Louis two years ago and it seemed empty. I am rooting for a Detroit/St. Louis turnaround to keep the Midwest strong.

[Justin_Chicago]

That $100M VC Fund for St. Louis is huge. I wish your city the best. Below is another great article from Venturebeat.

http://venturebeat.com/2013/06/17/st...e-mississippi/

“St. Louis is seeing an incredible amount of early-stage tech activity right now, which is leading to a strong funnel of great deals,” said Gabe Lozano, the chief executive officer of LockerDome. “Without question, we will be globally recognized as a top 10 city in technology within 10 years.”

[Arch City]

Originally Posted by Justin_Chicago

That $100M VC Fund for St. Louis is huge. I wish your city the best. Below is another great article from Venturebeat.

St. Louis has a number of large of VC Funds, however, this proposed one would be for tech only. There are VC Funds for health, bio, etc., but none specifically for late-stage tech.

And thanks for sharing the VB link.

[Arch City]

Givver Puts Booker, McAuliffe Fundraising 1 Click Closer
By Joan E. Greve
ABC News
Jul 8, 2013 4:12pm



Newark Mayor Cory Booker’s nearly 1.4 million Twitter followers now have a one-click way to help the “social media phenom” in his campaign for U.S. Senate.

So, too, do supporters of Terry McAuliffe, the former Democratic National Committee chairman running for governor in Virginia.

The two campaigns have started using Givver, the “first platform dedicated to fundraising with Twitter,” according to its website, which allows backers to tweet dollar contributions to charitable and political causes, ranging from $3 to $250. Users must sign up for Givver before they can donate.

Booker introduced Givver to his supporters June 14 by tweeting, “Help me reach $100k goal by tomorrow. You can tweet to #give $5 to our Senate campaign – sign up at givver.com/cory-booker-for-senate #Booker4Senate.” “The folks at Givver reached out to us and helped us get set up just to see how it goes,” said Larry Huynh, a member of Booker’s digital team.

“When the idea and the platform was brought to our attention, we said, ‘For sure, let’s give it a go.’ With his huge presence on Twitter, it really made sense that we were providing folks who are supporters of Cory Booker any mechanism to support the campaign in any way they see fit,” Huynh added.

The Booker campaign declined to say how much money it has raised on Givver. “I think it’s overall been successful because, again, it’s a pretty straightforward process,” Huynh said. “It doesn’t require a huge infrastructure on our end and so there aren’t huge fixed costs.”

McAuliffe hasn’t tweeted about it, and his campaign’s Givver activity isn’t as far along. A McAuliffe representative confirmed to ABC News that the campaign has signed up to use Givver and is setting up its account.

The campaigns’ participation could also help Givver, a start-up founded last summer in St. Louis.

Read More

[Arch City]

Jul 11, 2013, 11:23am CDT
Call from Google is a game-changer for catering startup



It’s not every day that Google calls, offering up a piece of new business.

But it’s a heck of a day — and a business game-changer — when it happens, according to Ed Spinaio of Time to Cater, a concierge catering service based in St. Louis.

Launched in 2011, the startup arranges catering for clients, taking into account budget, event information and food preferences via a network of more than 300 caterers and restaurants in the U.S. and Canada. “You hope that something this great happens to your business,” Spinaio said. “And it did actually happen.”

Spinaio, a former medical sales rep, founded the company with partner Gary Hilligoss, who thought there had to be an easier way to arrange catered food for visits to doctor’s offices. Time to Cater, which lets customers enter their preferences online, took its first order in March 2011, and within four months was handling 10 to 15 orders a month and had gross revenue of nearly $4,000 a month. By mid-2012, the business had grown to 150 clients and $15,000 to $25,000 in gross revenue monthly, as the company shifted from medical sales clients to a broader, corporate clientele. The Google call came this past November.

So how did the search engine giant find it? A Google search, of course.

Last summer, Chief Technology Officer Chris Gorrell relaunched the company’s website and began using enhanced search engine optimization techniques. “I said, ‘Is this real? Are you really from Google?’” Spinaio recalled thinking at the time.

In November 2012, Time to Cater coordinated lunch for 150 people participating in a Google webinar in 12 different locations. The company grossed $10,000 and landed an even bigger job in December, when Google again called to see if Time to Cater could handle an event for 5,000 people in more than 200 locations.

Read More

[Arch City]

Oct 21, 2013, 11:54am CDT
Done deal: CIC signs lease to move into @4240
Brian Feldt
Reporter-
St. Louis Business Journal



The Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC), a small business incubator, is officially expanding in St. Louis.

The CIC put pen to paper earlier this month when the incubator signed a 15-year lease with Wexford Science & Technology to occupy a majority of the second floor at the @4240 building in Midtown.

The @4240 building is part of the $186 million second phase of development at CORTEX, which also includes construction of a $45 million office building for BJC HealthCare and major infrastructure improvements.

With the lease finalized, CIC Founder and CEO Tim Rowe said the incubator will now move forward with plans for its St. Louis expansion — the first location outside of the CIC’s Cambridge, Mass., home.

Rowe said most of his time will now be spent building out the space at @4240. He said officials will look to emulate the success of the Cambridge location, where a quarter of startups are in the life sciences field and another quarter are in software.

“St. Louis certainly has strengths in the life sciences and biotech areas, so we may have a stronger concentration in that area (in St. Louis),” Rowe said. Rowe said the incubator is looking for companies to occupy the space, but those companies wouldn’t move in until September 2014. He hopes eventually to house as many as 100 St. Louis startups.

CIC Director Dougan Sherwood said a number of individuals from St. Louis have already reached out about moving into the space as word has spread about CIC’s plan. Rowe said St. Louis reminds him of Cambridge at the time when the CIC was just getting off the ground.

While visiting St. Louis previously, he made pit stops at the Downtown T-REx, Lab1500, the Center for Emerging Technologies and other tech hot spots. “The whole area feels like it did in Cambridge when we first got started,” he said. “There’s lots of interest and startups but not a lot of venture capital here just yet. I think we see the same characteristics in St. Louis (as we did in Cambridge).”

Rowe said he hopes to join forces with St. Louis entrepreneurs to create a burgeoning tech hub in St. Louis.

Read More