eZ systems coming to (North) America
When I started at eZ systems, one of my early conversations with the headquarters team was about how to serve the markets in North American. I advised that we follow the well-beaten path to Silicon Valley; send over a few solid team members from our HQ in Skien, integrate them into a strong team of Valley veterans and then work like mad to keep them from gutting our corporate culture in their pursuit of the market.
Perhaps this was good advice… For ambitious young tech companies, it seems that all roads lead to the Bay area. MySQL (who is now a customer :) made the trans-Atlantic hop to establish a major office in the area, as did Zend, Trolltech and a host of others. For them, it was a solid decison - the Valley is ripe with opportunity and they have done well with their choice.
… or maybe it was just plain dumb advice. When we started to really think about it, why should we choose the Valley? We are a small company who is funding our growth (mostly) from our own hard work. We grow at our own pace and on our own terms. The Valley is an amplifier; everything there seems to grow to gigantic proportion, be it good, bad or ugly. Even the daily commute becomes an Odyssey.
We thought about setting up our major North American subsidiary in Boston, where we could be close to MIT (who is also now a customer! :), the Free Software Foundation and (importantly) an office of the exceedingly helpful Norwegian Trade Council.
Eventually, we settled on Vancouver. It is a livable city that has many, many benefits for eZ as a team and as a company. It is close to the Valley, has a fantastic local tech community, a wonderful mix of cultures, proximity to nature and even a few nearby fjords. While it is not exactly the cheapest spot in Canada, it is still less expensive than the Valley or Norway. Additionally, we are getting excellent advice from the team at Leading Edge BC.
Expect a real eZ office in Vancouver in August, with a small crew getting everything ready for the opening from about March forwards.
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Posted on Saturday, February 4th, 2006 at 1:15
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February 4th, 2006 at 3:25
Welcome to Vancouver ;)